Most of Lorraine has a clear French identity except for the northeastern part of the region, today known as Moselle, which was historically German-speaking. In 1871, Bismarck annexed about a third of today's Lorraine to the German Empire following the Franco-Prussian War. The disputed third, Moselle, had a culture not easily classifiable as either French or German, where both Romance and Germanic dialects were spoken. Like many border regions, Lorraine was a patchwork of ethnicities and dialects which were not mutually intelligible with either French or standard German.

 

Traditionally, two languages are native to Lorraine. The first is Lorrain which is a moribund minority Romance language spoken in southeastern Lorraine. The second is Lorraine Franconian, a group of three Franconian dialects independently surviving in northern and western Lorraine. Lorraine Franconian is distinct from neighboring Alsatian, to the south, although the two are often confused. Neither has official status where they are spoken, but Alsatian is far more widely spoken.

 

Like most of France's regional languages (e.g. Breton, West Flemish, Catalan, Provençal and Alsatian), Lorrain and Lorraine Franconian have been mostly replaced by French in the 19th and 20th centuries as a direct result of nationalistic policies that public schooling be in French only. However, there are efforts underway to revive Lorraine Franconian, whose linguistic vitality is still relatively high. Recent efforts include the use of bilingual signage in Franconian areas, and Franconian-language classes for young children whose parents do not speak it.