Nouns and adjectives

French doesn't have the same word order as English.  In French most adjectives go after the noun.

An example is "cher," which is commonly part of a greeting.  If it's used before a noun, it means "dear" (ex: Chere Julie), whereas if it's after a noun, ex: "une robe chere", then it means in this case "expensive", "an expensive dress."

However in Walloon the opposite is true., so you'll find the adjectives first:

on foirt ome; ene blanke majhon (Walloon)

un homme fort; une maison blanche (French)

a strong man; a white house (English)

When it comes to speaking, Walloon's phonology includes sounds, such as 'tch' and 'dj', that do not exist in French. (Speaking of 'dj', and I have also seen 'cz', that seems more Slavic... French with Slavic and Norwegian influences)

The word "cow" is "vache" in French, and "vatche" in Walloon.

The word "leg" is "jambe" in French, and "djambe" in Walloon.

The word "yellow" is "jaune" in French, and "djaene" in Walloon. (think jaundice)

You'll notice that hyphens (-) and apostrophes (’) are used much more than in French. For a good overview of diacritic (accent) marks see this Merriam-Webster page that explains the markings above and below letters.

When it comes to investigating phrases you might have heard, using google translate and clicking the speaker icon so you can hear how it sounds is very helpful. You will come across words that don't translate to anything close to what you might have heard. At first you might attribute this to the differences between modern day French and Walloon. However many times you'll get really close to what you heard if you investigate synonyms for the word or words that don't seem to fit.

Let's look at a common mildly vulgar phrase that means "my god anyway." My first attempt to write this was "mon dieu po sa." You should notice that "dieu", would equate to deity or God. When you put the English "my god anyway" into translate you get "mon dieu en tout cas." So you know the word "anyway" is not right. Substitute the synonym "however" for "anyway" and you get "pourtant". Again click the speaker icon to hear it and you'll recognize this is right. (French words look funny to us English folks.)

Another is "kiss my ass". "Kiss" in French translates to "embrasser", where as the rest "my ass" is "ma cul" which sounded right when I had google say it. So I looked for synonyms. "Buss" is a synonym for kiss, and then you get closer to how its really spelled.. "buss ma cul".

Again all this gives you the modern day French spelling and sound when you use the speaker icon to hear it. This is not how it's spelled in Walloon nor necessarily how it's said, but for us English speakers this is likely as close as we can get. And if you write it this way, at least down the road should you forget what "mon dieu pourtant" means, at least you'll be able to figure it out. And that at the present time is what I am after. A way to write down what I heard in a way that I can later reference and figure it out. Eventually we will have Kelly Biers' Wisconsin Walloon orthography will focus on a standard way to write it for us English speakers that makes more sense to us.

The classic example is the term "booyah." This is one of the few Belgian words that seems to have an accepted English spelling. It appears to be a variant of "bouillon". It is thought to have derived from the Walloon language words for "boil" (bouillir) and "broth" (bouillon). The spelling with an H has been attributed to phonetic spelling by Wallonian immigrants from Belgium.