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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.
Dutch is the most spoken primary language of Belgium and the official language of the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region (merged to Flanders). Along with French, it is an official language of the Brussels-Capital Region. The main Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium are Brabantian, West Flemish, East Flemish, and Limburgish.
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 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. [1]
French-speaking cities, with Liège as the largest one, appeared along the Meuse, while Gallo-Roman cities such as Tongeren, Maastricht and Aachen became Germanized. The Lion's Mound commemorates the Battle of Waterloo, fought in present-day Wallonia. Belgium was united with the Netherlands following the Napoleonic Wars.
In Belgium, French is an official language in Wallonia and Brussels. [35] French is the primary language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons, which are German-speaking) and in the Brussels-Capital Region, where it is spoken by the majority of the population often as their primary language. [118]
Belgium is also home to two main linguistic communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemish Community, which constitutes about 60 percent of the population, and the French-speaking French Community, [e] which constitutes about 40 percent of the population; a small German-speaking Community, comprising around one percent of the population, exists in the ...
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 ...