Rhinelandic is a term occasionally used for linguistic varieties of a region on both sides of the
Middle and
Lower Rhine river in Central West
Germany,
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. (This could be complicated at times since in German publications,
local languages of villages or cities are commonly referred to as "the dialects" or "dialect", whereas the
regiolects, which are dialects of Standard German in a linguistic sense, are hardly called so, but referred to using terms like "Rhinelandic", "Hessian" or "Bavarian", etc., that also name large compounds of related local languages ) 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.