The Alsatian people safely maintain the components of a specific and complex identity. The vast majority of Alsace's population uses both Alsatian and French. The Elsässerditsch dialect of the region is part of their heritage. Alsatian dialects predate standard German, Hochdeutsch, which appears at the end of the 15th century. They came with the Alamans and the Franks in Alsace in the 4th and 5th centuries. Alemannic became the language used in the Vosges, and Francic spread in the north of Alsace, in Lorraine, and the Palatinate. When Hochdeutsch was imposed in Alsace as a written language, Alsatian kept being used orally.