Some early history

Every now and then I like to look at what recent books have been added to the Internet Archive collection that you can borrow/check out.

The following is from "The growth of the Belgian Nation" by: Jan Albert Goris published in 1946:

Belgium has also at all times evinced a spirit of expansion. Although the Belgians have occasionally been reproached for being stay-at-home folks, history seems to contradict this accusation. A few years after Caesar conquered Belgium, Walloon soldiers were fighting in the ranks of the Roman legions. Later they took part in ail the big European battles, during the wars of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Considerable numbers of Flemings and Walloons followed William the Conqueror to England, and later the weavers of Flanders settled in Great Britain by thousands. There were Belgian migrations to Pomerania, Silesia, Hungary. And at the time of the great voyages of exploration and discovery, natives of Ghent peopled the "Flemish Isles" which later were called the Azores.

This helps explain why you'll find some people with the same surnames in England as you do in Belgium.

And as early as the 9th century, miners and iron workers came to Sweden from southern and eastern Belgium, along with neighboring areas in France. Most of the Walloons were iron workers coming from the Liege and Namur regions, along the Meuse River.

Belgian Population Registers

Ron Flemal has spotted some Belgian Population Registers on FamilySearch that are helpful to settlers in the Door and Kewaunee County areas.

I am reposting it here like I do a number of things since things get lost on social media due to the walled garden effect and generally don't get indexed by the search engines, etc.

The population registers are as close as you get to the United States census records. Kristine Smets' wrote a very good overview of the Belgian population registers, explaining the background and what you can expect to learn from them.

Film#: 008895560 (DGS) https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/1395667?availability=Family%20History%20Library
There are a few neighborhoods on this continuous film, an area of interest; Emimes begins at image 831:

Emines, Namur Population Register 1846-1866: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-Y3GZ-DD41?i=830&cat=1395698

Film#: 008895560 Neuvilles and Gilots, of Emines, Belgium (beginning at image 954): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-Y3GZ-DZY2?cat=1395698

Film#: 008897195 (DGS) Saint-Denis, Namur Population Register 1846-1900: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/1409269?availability=Family%20History%20Library

Film#: 008897195 Delwiche of Saint-Denis, Belgium (beginning at image 92): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-13G6-6611

Film#: 008897195 Jeanquart of Saint-Denis, Belgium (beginning at image 119) https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-B3G6-66N7?cat=1409267

Don't Drink This Water

From the Li walon po tertos group:

Language is about identity

In a 2013 paper by Jacqueline Lee Tinkler, titled "Determinants of Ethnic Retention As See Through Walloon Immigrants to Wisconsin," she pointed out;

"For generations, the community remained a close-knit, cohesive, nearly self-sufficient ethnic island, maintaining their religion, language, and customs.

After Indian reservations and the Amish communities, the settlement of Walloon Belgians in northeast Wisconsin is the most enduring ethnic island in the United States. "

Recently a two page article on revitalizing Indigenous languages in Wisconsin appeared in the local newspaper. (GBPG Wed, Jun 9, 2021)

"Laugauge is at a core of what ie means to be Oneida, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Mohican, Potawatomi or Ojibwe, as the phrases and sentences consistently reinforce an Indigenous way of thinking at looking at the world", Francour and others say. "Language is about identity as a people, and it had been nearly completly taken away through forced assimilation..."

The article about Native American lanugages really can apply to our own native Walloon language. It's worth a read. Think about lanugage in the context that Belgium didn't become its own county till 1830, and just a short time later many left to come to Wisconsin. It wasn't so much their county that defined them as it was their language. That language traces back to the Holy Roman Empire.

And we have all heard or read the story of when our ancestors first came to Wisconsin and had planned to settle near Sheboygan, but had trouble communicating there as it was mostly all Germans. So they headed North as they heard there were French speakers there.

Sewing/Quilting - Margaret Monfils

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.

Wikitongues

 Interesting project I stumbled upon; 

Wikitongues is building a seedbank of linguistic diversity by crowdsourcing video oral histories, audio files, and lexicon documents. Read our archival policy to learn about our preservation methods, or submit your own video."  

Much to my surprise a young man, Thomas Thibaut submitted a video on the Walloon language.