Rhinelandic regiolect

The terms Rhinelandic, Rhenish, and Rhinelandic regiolect (German: Rheinischer Regiolekt, pronounced [ˈʁaɪnɪʃɐ ʁeɡi̯oˈlɛkt]) refer to the vernacular lect spoken in the so-called Rhineland of western Germany. This linguistic region roughly consists of the western portion of North Rhine-Westphalia, the northern areas of Rhineland-Palatinate and several smaller adjacent areas, including some in neighbouring countries.

Although there is such a thing as a Rhinelandic accent, and the regiolect uses it, the Rhinelandic variety is not simply German spoken with an accent. Indeed, it differs from Standard German in several thousand commonly used additional words, phrases, and idioms, and some grammatical constructions. Like other German regiolects, there is not a strict definition of what constitutes Rhinelandic; it can be spoken in a way very close to the standard idiom, but if locals talk to each other, it is mostly unintelligible to inhabitants of other German-speaking regions.

Linguists classify the Rhinelandic regiolect as a dialectal variety of Standard German having a strong substratum of the many diverse local community languages of the Rhineland. As such, it occupies a middle position between the group of older West Central German languages, and Low Franconian languages spoken in the Rhineland, and the newer Standard German. The latter has only been brought into the area recently, under the Prussian reign, when local speakers merged many common properties and words of their local languages into the standard language. Thus a new regiolect formed, which in many respects follows the conventions of Standard German, but at the same time continues local linguistic traditions, making it comprehensible in a much wider area than the original local languages. Nevertheless, it still reflects differences inside the dialect continuum of the Rhineland, since speakers often prefer distinct words, styles or linguistic forms depending on the subregion they come from.