Styria is an Austrian federal state in the south-eastern part of the country. With an area of 16,401 km2 (6,332 sq mi), Styria is Austria's second largest federal state, after Lower Austria. It is bordered to the south by Slovenia, and clockwise, from the southwest, by the Austrian federal states Carinthia, Salzburg, Upper Austria, Lower Austria, and Burgenland. The federal state's capital is Graz. In the European Union's vocabulary, Styria is a province.

Bavarian, alternately Austro-Bavarian, is a major group of Upper German varieties spoken in the southeast of the German language area, including the German state of Bavaria, most of Austria and the Italian region of South Tyrol. Prior to 1945, Bavarian was also prevalent in parts of the southern Sudetenland and western Hungary. Bavarian is spoken by approximately 12 million people in an area of around 125,000 square kilometres (48,000 sq mi), making it the largest of all German dialects. In 2008, 45 percent of Bavarians claimed to use only dialect in everyday communication.