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.
Estimates of the French-speaking population of Flanders vary from 120,000, [6] around 200,000, [7] to around 300,000. [8] The French Community of Belgium makes up about 40% of the total population of Belgium; 60% of the population belongs to the Flemish Community, and 1% to the German-speaking Community.
Walloon is the historical language of southern Belgium, and most of the areas where French is now spoken were Walloon-speaking. It is also the traditional national language of the Walloons. Though it has been recognized since 1990, like other vernaculars in Belgium, it is spoken mainly by older people.
Belgian francophone literature is sometimes difficult to distinguish from French literature as a whole, because several great French authors went to Belgium for refuge (e.g. Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and more recently Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt) and conversely, top French-speaking writers sometimes settle in Paris (e.g. Simenon and ...
Approximately 30,000 Roma live in Belgium. [26] The exact number of French-speakers in Brussels is hard to determine, but it is estimated that 85% of the people living in Brussels use French and 10% use Dutch in their households, as the sole language or secondary language, while Arabic is also largely spoken. See the Brussels article for more ...
French is an official language in 27 independent nations. French is also the second most geographically widespread language in the world after English, with about 60 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. [1]
the Dutch language area; the French language area; the German language area; the bilingual Brussels-Capital area; All these entities have geographical boundaries. The language areas have no offices or powers and exist de facto as geographical circumscriptions, serving only to delineate the empowered subdivisions. The institutional communities ...
Its meaning narrowed yet again during the French and Dutch periods and, at Belgian independence, the term designated only Belgians speaking a Romance language (French, Walloon, Picard, etc.) The linguistic cleavage in the politics of Belgium adds a political content to "the emotional cultural, and linguistic concept". [9]