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The term Flemish itself has become ambiguous. Nowadays, it is used in at least five ways, depending on the context. These include: An indication of Dutch written and spoken in Flanders including the Dutch standard language as well as the non-standardized dialects, including intermediate forms between vernacular dialects and the standard.
Flemish people make up the majority of Belgians, at about 60%. Flemish was historically a geographical term, as all inhabitants of the medieval County of Flanders in modern-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands were referred to as "Flemings" irrespective of their ethnicity or language. [ 5 ]
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 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.
Flanders (/ ˈ f l ɑː n d ər z / FLAHN-dərz [a] or / ˈ f l æ n d ər z / FLAN-dərz; [b] Dutch: Vlaanderen [ˈvlaːndərə(n)] ⓘ) [c] is the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture ...
Position of East Flemish (colour: brown) among the other minority languages, regional languages and dialects in Belgium and the Netherlands East Flemish (Dutch: Oost-Vlaams, French: flamand oriental) is a collective term for the two easternmost subdivisions ("true" East Flemish, also called Core Flemish, [1] and Waaslandic) of the so-called Flemish dialects, native to the southwest of the ...
The proof that they actually do speak good Flemish is that they bark orders to their servants in Flemish. — Baudelaire, 1866 [ 65 ] The new Belgian capital remained a mostly Dutch-speaking city, where the inhabitants spoke a local South Brabantian dialect .
Due to its cultural importance, "Flemish" became in certain languages a pars pro toto for the Low Countries and the Dutch language. This was certainly the case in France, since the Flemish are the first Dutch speaking people for them to encounter. In French-Dutch dictionaries of the 16th century, "Dutch" is almost always translated as Flameng. [48]