Rhinelandic is a term occasionally used for linguistic varieties of a region on both sides of the Middle and LowerRhine river in Central WestGermany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. It has at least two distinct meanings which often can only be determined from the fine grain context in which the term is used. One of the meanings of Rhinelandic is that of a group of local languages in an area called the Rhineland. Another meaning is that of the regiolect being used by the people approximately of the same area.
Rhinelandic is used for a collection of local languages and their varieties in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, including some varieties of the Limburgish language group, South Guelderish or Cleverlands, Moselle Franconian, and Ripuarian. Its northern areas are also covered by the more modern term of Meuse-Rhenish, which exclusively refers to the Low Franconian varieties, that are Limburgish including Bergish, and South Guelderish including East Bergish. The eastern areas in the North are also said to speak Bergish, a term which has its roots in political history and regional pride rather than linguistic similarities. Likewise, the Eifel inhabitants say, they were speaking Eifelplatt, while linguists rather refer to the Ripuarian varieties of the North, and the Moselle-Frankonian ones of the South of the Eifel. All these local languages and local language groups existed long before Standard German, and developed in parallel since the latter came into existence.
Contrasting the collective term Rhinelandic, that encompasses a wide variety of largely mutually incomprehensible local languages having a long history, also the Regiolect of the Rhineland, geographically roughly coinciding with the former Prussian Rhine Province, is being called Rhinelandic. It is of comparatively recent origin, and derives from Standard German but takes some lexical and grammatical and phonetic features of the local languages up, that Standard German normally does not have. Most of those features are not used in other German regiolects, and are often hardly or not understood in other regiolect areas.
