Weser-Rhine Germanic is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer for the group of prehistoric West Germanic dialects ancestral to Dutch and, to some extent, the West Central German dialects. It is a replacement for the older term Istvaeonic, with which it is essentially synonymous. The term Rhine-Weser-Germanic is sometimes preferred.
Nomenclature
The term Istvaeonic is derived from the Istævones, a culturo-linguistic grouping of Germanic tribes, mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania.Pliny the Elder further specified its meaning by claiming that the Istævones lived near the Rhine. Maurer used Pliny to refer to the dialects spoken by the Franks and Chatti around the northwestern banks of the Rhine, which were presumed to be descendants of the earlier Istvaeones. The Weser is a river in Germany east of and parallel to the Rhine. The terms Rhine-Weser or Weser-Rhine, therefore, both describe the area between the two rivers as a meaningful cultural-linguistic region of the Roman Empire.
Theory
Maurer asserted that the cladistic tree model, ubiquitously used in 19th and early 20th century linguistics, was too inaccurate to describe the relation between the modern Germanic languages, especially those belonging to its Western branch. Rather than depicting Old English, Old Dutch, Old Saxon, Old Frisian and Old High German to have simply 'branched off' a single common 'Proto-West Germanic', he proposed that there had been much more distance between the languages and the dialects of the Germanic regions.
Maurer considered Weser-Rhine Germanic to be the predecessor of Old Frankish. Today, Dutch and related languages such as Afrikaans are generally seen as having descended from Old Frankish. Arguments for viewing Old Dutch as the successor to the Weser-Rhine Germanic dialects include the apparently-local origin of Frankish in the area that had previously been ascribed to the Istvaeones and the distinctive phonological, grammatical and idiomatic cluster that it forms in contrast to the North-Sea Germanic dialects to its north and the Elbe Germanic dialects to its southeast. Old Dutch and its descendants also include the present-day Meuse-Rhenish dialects, which are also found in Germany's Lower Rhine region. Those dialects form the most isolated and divergent dialectal grouping found within Germany today.
The relationship of the so-called modern Central and Rhine Franconian dialects with regard to Weser-Rhine Germanic is more difficult to determine. Historically, the speakers of those dialects were seen as the descendants of the Ripuarian Franks but with little tangible evidence. The relatively-long survival of Moselle Romance in the area that they conquered suggest that a significant part of the Ripuarii eventually assimilated into the Northern French cultural sphere, as was the case among the Salian Franks who settled below the Somme and Oise. The remainder, most likely between modern Luxemburg and Cologne, was subsequently heavily influenced / assimilated by Germanic tribes speaking Old High German. The influence of these Old High German speakers is not to be underestimated as the general consensus among linguists is that the presence of the High German consonant shift in the Franconian dialects is the result of not internal change but external influences. How that came to be is a matter of discussion. Proponents of the "repression theory / Zurückdrängungstheorie" argue that the area was originally populated by speakers of High German dialects, which were then subjected to a Frankish superstratum following political submission of the area, corresponding to the 6th-century conquests of Clovis. Other linguists argue that Weser-Rhine Germanic forms the substrate in those dialects, which were subsequently influenced by High German.
