Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Belgian French (French: français de Belgique) is the variety of French spoken mainly among the French Community of Belgium, alongside related Oïl languages of the region such as Walloon, Picard, Champenois, and Lorrain (Gaumais). The French language spoken in Belgium differs very little from that of France or Switzerland.
Belgium is part of an area known as the Low Countries, historically a somewhat larger region than the Benelux group of states, as it also included parts of northern France. The capital and largest metropolitan region is Brussels ; [ c ] other major cities are Antwerp , Ghent , Charleroi , Liège , Bruges , Namur , and Leuven .
The Low Countries as seen from space. The Low Countries (Dutch: de Lage Landen; French: les Pays-Bas), historically also known as the Netherlands (Dutch: de Nederlanden), is a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting today of the three modern "Benelux" countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands (Dutch ...
France. Belgium–France relations are the interstate relations between Belgium and France. Relations were established after the independence of Belgium. Both nations are great allies. Both nations have cultural similarities. Both nations are founding members of NATO, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the European Union.
The French Community of Belgium includes 4.5 million people, of whom: 3.6 million live in the Walloon Region (that is almost the entirety of the inhabitants of this region, apart from people who live in the German-speaking communes, who number around 70,000); 900,000 [4] living in the Brussels Capital Region (out of 1.2 million inhabitants).
Belgium is a federal state comprising three communities and three regions that are based on four language areas. For each of these subdivision types, the subdivisions together make up the entire country; in other words, the types overlap. The language areas were established by the Second Gilson Act, which entered into force on 2 August 1963.
Belgium's modern shape can be traced back at least as far as the southern core of the medieval Burgundian Netherlands. The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) later led to the split between a northern Dutch Republic and the Southern Netherlands from which Belgium and Luxembourg developed.
1839. The Belgium–France border, or more commonly the Franco-Belgian border, separates France and Belgium and is 620 km (390 mi) long. Part of it is defined by the Lys river. The western end is at the North Sea (51°5′22″N 2°32′43″E near De Panne and Bray-Dunes). The eastern end is at the Belgium–France–Luxembourg tripoint (at 49 ...