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Flemish people or Flemings (Dutch: Vlamingen [ˈvlaːmɪŋə(n)] ⓘ) are a Germanic ethnic group native to Flanders, Belgium, who speak Flemish Dutch. Flemish people make up the majority of Belgians , at about 60%.
Flemish (Vlaams ⓘ) [2] [3] [4] is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch ( Vlaams-Nederlands ), Belgian Dutch ( Belgisch-Nederlands [ˈbɛlɣis ˈneːdərlɑnts] ⓘ ), or Southern Dutch ( Zuid-Nederlands ).
The Dutch language used in Belgium can also be referred to as Flemish Dutch or Belgian Dutch (Dutch: Vlaams Nederlands, Belgisch Nederlands).Dutch is the mother tongue of about 60% of the population in Belgium, spoken by approximately 6.5 million out of a population of 11 million people.
West Flemish is spoken by about a million people in the Belgian province of West Flanders, and a further 50,000 in the neighbouring Dutch coastal district of Zeelandic Flanders (200,000 if including the closely related dialects of Zeelandic) and 10-20,000 in the northern part of the French department of Nord. [1]
Almost all of the inhabitants of the Capital region speak French as either their primary language (50%) or as a lingua franca (45%). [4] [5] Many Flemish people also speak French as a second language. Belgian French is in most respects identical to the French of France, but differs in some points of vocabulary, pronunciation, and semantics.
The official language of the Flemish Region is Dutch. [9] The dialect cluster spoken in the region is sometimes colloquially referred to as Flemish (Vlaams), [10] [11] [12] Flemish Dutch (Vlaams-Nederlands), Belgian Dutch (Belgisch-Nederlands), or Southern Dutch (Zuid-Nederlands).
Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world. This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect.
Like in the Netherlands, a high percentage of Flemish people speak English fluently, and in Wallonia, a lower percentage of people speak English (as it is the case in France), which brings down the total percentage. Israel: 7,303,000: 6,205,000: 84.97: 100,000 1.37: 6,105,000 83.6