Responsibilities of Altar Boys - David Chaudoir & Francis Jauquet

The languages of Belgium

This video is all about the languages of Belgium, and the fascinating linguistic situation in the country. The three official languages of Belgium are Dutch, French, and German, but that's just the beginning.

It covers the area history which explains how the langauges became part of this one country. It explains the federal state and it's three administrative regions which are based on language.

What's a Walloon and Why Does It Matter

To understand the language you need to understand the history. As the language is older than the country, being as that only became it's own in 1830.

What follows is an excerpt from Chapter I: What's a Walloon and Why Does It Matter? by Judith Carlsen

Belgium is the country of our origins, and Belgium is a very small country, approximately the size of Maryland. One would think that designating our forebears as Belgian would be sufficient.

Yet Belgium has always been a divided country. It has long been fought over and subdivided by larger surrounding nations, rather like a solitary bone among a pack of hungry dogs. There are relics of civilizations from earliest antiquity associated with the area we know today as Belgium. The first named inhabitants were the Belgae. These people groups were Celtic tribes that settled the European landmass about 500 BC.

By 51 BC, the Belgae were overtaken by Julius Caesar's armies. Caesar referred to the Belgae as "the bravest of all the Gauls," and Belgium, or Belgica, flourished as a Roman province. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes invaded. The Franks, one of these Germanic tribes, eventually took over Belgium and installed Clovis I as king of the dynasty. After he converted to Christianity he recruited Irish monks and other Christian scholars to preach Christianity to the Belgium populace.

Spain and the Vikings had their turns in conquering and ruling Belgium. Charlemagne was born near Leige, Belgium and he brought a huge part of Europe under his rule. He was crowned "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire" in the year 800. As his empire lost its power in the 11th and 12th centuries, the country we know as Belgium was divided into separate states. These feudal states correspond roughly to the provinces of Belgium from which our ancestors emigrated. It's important to note that the country is divided, geographically, into two halves, roughly corresponding to the language that is spoken : Flemish, the language of the northern, more populous, half, has Germanic-Dutch derivation, while Walloon, a regional dialog with similarities to French, is the dominant language of the southern half. The populace of each half has genetic kinship to their neighboring country, whether it be Holland or France.

Walloon Wisdom (Proverbes Wallons)

The proverbs are voiced by Jacques Desmet from Jodoigne.

This has English captions and is narrated in English. Merci!

History of the French Phonology

I stumbled upon a pretty good History of the French Phonology in a paper titled "The French Phonological Corpus with Equivalents in English, German and Turkish, as Part of a New Multilingual Dictionary Project" by Dr Metin Yurtbaşı, it starts at page 4 of: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED579983.pdf

In Quebec, the French they speak there is closer to our Walloon. In any event a number of Quebecois Canadian's have noted that they understand our Wisconsin Walloon videos better than the French they speak in France. The things to consider is the much earlier time period of when the French Canadian's left France (mostly 15-16th century), and for that matter it's worth noting there are some Quebecois Canadian's who have Belgian ancestors, so they weren't all from France.

I recommend reading through page 7, if not the whole paper. I'll share some excerpts here:

1 Gallo-Romance (5th-8th centuries)
The Vulgar Latin in Gaul has developped specific features that made it distinct from the Latin spoken in the other regions of the Roman empire. The Reichenau Glosses are a good example of its phonetics and vocabulary.

2 Old French (9th-13th centuries)
The dialects of Northern Gaul developed into separate language (Langue d'oil, see below) with a grammar of its own. The first written materials in it date from the Strasbourg Oaths of 842. The Old French literature flourished since the 10th century (chansons de geste etc.). French in this period was already taught in the neighboring countries (especially in Germany). In 11th13th centuries it was the dominant language of the English administration. It was, also, the language of the crusaders in the Levantine countries.

3 Middle French (14th-15th centuries)
This period was marked by changes both in the pronunciation and in the grammar. A common literary language, based on the dialect of Île de France (the region of Paris), was promoted by the writers. French was replacing Latin in the texts of the public administration in France.

4 Early Modern French (16th century)
The aim of the writers of this period, as is the case of the poets of La Pléiade, was to elevate the French language to the level of Latin as a medium for literary expression, In 1539 a royal decree proclaimed French official language of the public administration. Since that period the government was always involved in the development and the standardization of the language.

5 Classical Modern French (17th-18th century)
In this period were fixed the main grammar convention of the modern French. By then it was used as an international language throughout Europe and even in the administrative correspondence of countries as Germany. With the colonial expansion of France French spread to America (Canada, Louisiana, the Caribbean islands etc.)

6 Contemporary Modern French (since 19th century)
The contemporary pronunciation of the standard language was fixed in that period, namely between 1789 and 1918. French was established as an official language in the French and Belgian colonial possessions in Africa (ibid).

Now that you have the basics on the History of the French Phonology, here is a a side-by-side recorded comparison that I have pieced together for those curious about the differences between spoken Walloon and French.

https://archive.org/details/spoken-walloon-french-comparison

Community-Driven Language Preservation and the Development of a Wisconsin Walloon Primer

Jadin Ice Fishing Process