Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is located in western Germany covering an area of and a population of 4.05 million inhabitants, the seventh-most populous German state. Mainz is the state capital and largest city, while other major cities include Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, and Worms. Rhineland-Palatinate is surrounded by the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg, and Hesse. It also borders three foreign countries: France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
Rhine Franconian dialects
Rhine Franconian (German: ), or Rhenish Franconian, is a dialect family of West Central German. It comprises the German dialects spoken across the western regions of the states of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, northwest Baden-Wurttemberg, and Hesse in Germany. It is also spoken in northeast France, in the eastern part of the of Moselle in the Lorraine region, and in the north-west part of Bas-Rhin in Alsace. To the north, it is bounded by the Sankt Goar line (or " line") which separates it from Moselle Franconian; to the south, it is bounded by the Main line which is also referred to as the "Speyer line" which separates it from the Upper German dialects.Saarland (section "Language"), Moselle Franconian (adjacent language area), Palatine German