I semi-jokingly say that that Alsace deserves to be called Südpfalz since the cultural border there is not clear unlike the country borders. And I mentioned back in the day that a lot of places in central Rheinland-Pfalz (or Rheinland-Palatinate if you don’t recognise its proper name) sound even more French than those close to the border (no matter from which side—e.g. both have river Lauter and a town named after it, be it Lauterbourg or Lauterecken; and Hœrdt is on comparable distance from the border as Hördt). But recently I’ve seen something that made me even more suspicious about the influences.
There’s a small town not far from Mainz called Gau-Algesheim and it has rather peculiar variation of the local dialect. Here are two examples of it:
This is a bench installed in the town centre in the memory of one of its distinguished citizens. The words on that bench are “Weck, Worscht & Woi” which I believe map to the common German “Werk, Wurst & Wein” (or “work, sausage and wine” auf Englisch).
And this is one of the billboards you can encounter there. There are others, featuring other picturesque sights of the town like Graulturm, but the motto remains the same on all of them. I really have no idea what the words “so charmant” may mean in the local dialect but you cannot convince me that they don’t sound suspiciously French.
Hopefully I was able to demonstrate my point that there’s something fishy going there. I’ll keep investigating the mysteries of the land (here’s another example: the centre of local shoe industry was in Pirmasens and yet the museum dedicated to it is located in Hauenstein instead—with a shoe stolen from Montabaur, which is a very long way from either of them), at least for my own amusement.