Limburgish in the context of "Belgians"

A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (linguistic tone) rather than by volume or length, as in some other languages like English. Pitch-accent languages also contrast with fully tonal languages like Vietnamese, Thai and Standard Chinese, in which practically every syllable can have an independent tone. Some scholars have claimed that the term "pitch accent" is not coherently defined and that pitch-accent languages are a sub-category of tonal languages in general.

Languages that have been described as pitch-accent languages include: most dialects of Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Baltic languages, Ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, Tlingit, Turkish, Japanese, Limburgish, Norwegian, Swedish of Sweden, Western Basque, Yaqui, certain dialects of Korean, Shanghainese, and Livonian.

Hollandic or Hollandish (Dutch: Hollands [ˈɦɔlɑnts] ) is the most widely spoken dialect of the Dutch language. Hollandic is among the Central Dutch dialects. Other important language varieties of spoken Low Franconian languages are Brabantian, Flemish (East Flemish, West Flemish), Zeelandic, Limburgish and Surinamese Dutch.

The Hesbaye (French, French pronunciation: [ɛsbɛ]), or Haspengouw (Dutch and Limburgish, Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɦɑspə(ŋ)ˌɣʌu]), is a traditional cultural and geophysical region in eastern Belgium. It is a loamy plateau region which forms a watershed between the Meuse and Scheldt drainage basins. It has been one of the main agricultural regions in what is now Belgium since before Roman times, and specifically named in records since the Middle Ages, when it was an important Frankish pagus or gau, called Hasbania in medieval Latin.

The Uerdingen Line (German: Ürdinger Linie, Uerdinger Linie, Dutch: Uerdinger linie; named after Uerdingen by Georg Wenker) is the isogloss within West Germanic languages that separates dialects which preserve the -k sound in the first person singular pronoun word "ik" (north of the line) from dialects where the word-final -k has changed to word final -ch in the word "ich" (IPA [ç]) (south of the line). This sound shift is the one that progressed the furthest north among the consonant shifts which characterize High German and Middle German dialects. The line passes through Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

North of the line Low German and Dutch are spoken. South of the line Central German is spoken. In the area between the Uerdingen line and the Benrath line to its south, which includes parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, the Germanic dialect Limburgish is spoken. In eastern Germany, the regional languages have been largely replaced by standard German since the 20th century.

Central or Middle Franconian (German: mittelfränkische Dialekte, mittelfränkische Mundarten, mittelfränkische Mundart, Mittelfränkisch) refers to the following continuum of West Central German dialects:

• Ripuarian (spoken in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in eastern Belgium, and the southeastern tip of Dutch Limburg)
• Moselle Franconian (in German Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, in eastern Belgium and French Lorraine)
  • Luxembourgish (in Luxembourg and the adjacent areas of Belgium and France)

Luxembourgish is often included within Moselle Franconian, but sometimes regarded as a separate group. The German-speaking Community of Belgium comprises both Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian dialects. The Central Franconian dialects are part of a continuum stretching from the Low Franconian language area in the northwest to the Rhine Franconian dialects in the southeast.Along with Limburgish, Central Franconian has a simple tone system called pitch accent.