Rhinelandic

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Rhinelandic is a term for linguistic varieties in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, including the Limburgish language,, Zuid-Gelders, Moselle Franconian and Ripuarian . Tonality is a major feature of the Limburgish language.

The Benrather line both clearly divides the tonal area into two language areas and clearly fails to conceal they are yet very similar. There is a clear western group of Limburgic dialects, spoken roughly in the middle and some western areas of Belgian Limburgish. The northwesternmost strip of Belgian Limburg and Dutch Limburg above the village of Arcen (near Venlo) are anyway out of the Limburgish language area.

Any language border for Limburgish, both internal and external, even those on which it is agreed about the existence, is very vague and has a transition area; a strip which is sometimes more then ten miles broad. In Germany, they delimit Limburgish by the Uerdinger line (ik / ich for the pronoun I) and the Benrather line (maak / mach(e) for the verb make). Limburgisch and Bergisch are taken as one group of dialects. Bergisch is supposed to refer to the dialects spoken in Germany East of the Rhine, Limburgisch to those in the Netherlands and Belgium. Nowadays, one usually takes tonality as the defining property. From the village of Tegelen just under Venlo to the small town of Valkenburg in the south, Limburgish changes only slightly, and within the sound, dialects change rapidly as one travels westward or eastward.

The "German definition" excludes the dialects of Kerkrade and Venlo. The German definition - "Limburgish are all dialects between the Uerdinger and Benrather Linie" - is obsolete: those dialects have nothing in common except one single word (ich). However, taking tonality would include the dialect of Cologne (Köln). The Limburgish language is often taken to stop at the German border (with the exception of the Selfkant). It starts on the Flemish-Wallonian border and runs through Limburg, Belgian Limburg, with Sint Truiden west of it and Hasselt east of it (so the Hasselt dialect is tonal, the Sint Truiden dialect is not). Then it turns from running vertically to running horizontally at the Belgian-Dutch border and runs over the southwesternmost villages of the Noord-Brabant province, before entering Netherlands Limburg just over Weert (which has, thus, a tonal dialect as well). Then it makes a bow to the north over Venlo and enters Germany. But it stretches very wide, until well over Cologne, where it starts moving back eastward. Finally it enters Belgium again, in the German speaking eastern parts of Liege province, between Eupen and Sankt-Vith, where it touches the Romance language area.

There is a clear distinction between mere pitch accents, like the "tones" in Swedish, and the Limburgish sleeptoon, which is really more profound. Yet the way in which Limburgish is tonal is indeed much more like Swedish than, say, Chinese or even many African languages (though some Bantu languages come close): the pitches are still largely dictated by the rhythm of a sentence and the meaning or function a certain word has. Only before pauses the tonal nature of a word really wins out over the demands of a sentence, that is easily to be made out. In non-accented syllables it does not occur and in stressed syllables in the middle of a sentence it is present, but less prominently so.

The Benrather Linie, one of the isoglosses most frequently mentioned in books, runs through Netherlandic Limburg. Thus, it would be attractive to trim the few remain Ripuarian dialects (there are five places in the Netherlands where Ripuarian is spoken) from the Limburgic language area, but it frequently is chosen not to do so, since the speakers themselves consider their language "Limburgic".