Demographics
The inhabitants of the department are called Mosellans in French.
The population has remained relatively stable since World War II and now exceeds 1 million, located mostly in the urban area around Metz and along the river Moselle.
If the Moselle department still existed in its limits of between 1815–1871, its population at the 1999 French census would have been 1,089,804 inhabitants. The current Moselle department, whose limits were set in 1919, had less population, with only 1,023,447 inhabitants. This is because the industrial area of Briey and Longwy lost in 1871 is more populated than the rural areas of Château-Salins and Sarrebourg gained in 1919.
A significant minority of inhabitants of the department (fewer than 100,000) speak a Germanic dialect known as platt lorrain or Lothringer Platt (see Lorraine Franconian).
Linguistically, Platt can be further subdivided into three varieties, going from east to west: Rhenish Franconian, Moselle Franconian, and Luxembourgish.
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