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'Belgian French' (French: ''français de Belgique'') is the variety of French spoken by the French speakers of Belgium, alongside related minority regional languages such as Walloon, Picard, Champenois and Gaumais. Belgian French and the French of northern France are almost identical, but there are a few distinct phonological and lexical differences.

Contents

History

Influences

Pronunciation differences

Vocabulary

See also

External link

History

Historically, French-speaking Belgium was never a single political entity until being unified under French rule during the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule. Prior to that, the region had never belonged to France. It was composed of the County of Hainaut (half of which was annexed by France under Louis XIV), the County of Namur, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, the southern part of the Duchy of Brabant and the western part of the Duchy of Luxembourg.
The reason why French was spoken in the southern part of the Low Countries while it never belonged to France goes back to ancient times, when the Franks crossed the Rhine to settle in the Roman Empire. They occupied the region comprising modern Belgium, the French Nord-Pas-de-Calais and the German Rhineland. The Franks had become the first Latinised Germanic tribe, although Latin was spoken only by the elite.
With Clovis's capital, Tournai (in modern Wallonia), was an old Roman city, and Latin was thus spoken there more than in other parts of the Low Countries. Two centuries later, the Carolingian dynasty progressively took over the power from the Merovingian kings. They were based in Liege, just at the opposite end of Wallonia. Tournai and Liège still mark the western and eastern limits of French-speaking Belgium. It is interesting to note that French isn't spoken north of either city.
The Merovingian and Carolingian courts thus had a vital importance in spreading Latin to the otherwise Germanic Low Countries. Latin naturally evolved into French (or the Walloon dialect) over the centuries, without any need for this part of Europe to ever belong to France.
Nevertheless, the proximity with northern France, the numerous intermarriages (as attested by the presence of surnames of both origins on either side of the border), the close economic relations, the French occupation between 1792 and 1815, the standarisation of French in education, as well as modern media, have all contributed in making modern Belgian French almost identical to its Gallic counterpart. In fact, the French spoken in the southern half of France is more different from Parisian French in both accent and usages than the one spoken in Belgium nowadays.

Influences

Until the beginning of the 20th century, most residents of what is now Wallonia, the French-speaking part Belgium south of the country, spoke Walloon. Many speakers were bilingual in both French and Walloon; Walloon thus had a large influence on the development of Belgian French.
The proximity of Dutch-speaking Flanders and the Netherlands has led to a sizable lexical contribution from various Dutch dialects. To a lesser extent, the proximity of Germany, and the inclusion of German speaking communities within Belgium's borders since World War I has led to some borrowings from German.

Pronunciation differences

There are a few consistent phonological differences between the French spoken in France and Belgian French, but usually no more than the differences between regional dialects within France. It is important to note that not everybody speaks with the same accent in French-speaking Belgium. Regional accents can vary from city to city (e.g. the famous Liège accent), but on the whole in varies more according to one's social class and education. Stronger accents are more typical of working-class people. On the contrary, many upper-middle-class Belgian Francophones speak with a Parisian accent.
Major phonological differences include:

★ Lack of the approximant : The combination is replaced by , and in other situations becomes a full vowel . Thus for most Belgian speakers, the words ''enfuir'' (to run away) and ''enfouir'' (to bury) are homonyms.

★ The distinction between the nasal vowels and is upheld, whereas in many regions of France, these two sounds have merged. Thus, although for many French people, ''brin'' (stalk) and ''brun'' (brown), are homonyms, for Belgians they are not.

★ A stronger distinction exists between long and short vowels.

★ The letter "w" is almost always pronounced as , the same as in English, which also approximates Flemish "w". In France, it is often pronounced as in German. For example, the word ''wagon'' (train car) is pronounced in Standard French, but in Belgian French.

★ For some speakers, final stops are devoiced, i.e., "d" becomes "t", "b" becomes "p", and "g" becomes "k". Combined with the dropping of consonants in final consonant clusters, this leads to pronunciations like instead of ("grande") and instead of ("table").
Certain accents, such as certain urban accents (notably those of Brussels and Liège), as well as the accents of older speakers, display greater deviation from Standard French pronunciation. For example, in the dialect spoken in and around Liège, particularly among older speakers, the letter "h" is pronounced in certain positions, whereas it is never pronounced in Standard French. That dialect is also known for its slow, slightly singing intonation, a feature that is even stronger further east in the Verviers area.

Vocabulary

Words which are unique to Belgian French are called "belgicisms" (French: ''belgicismes''). This term is also used for Dutch words used in Belgium and not in the Netherlands. There are too many to try to form any complete list in this article. Some of the better-known usages include:

★ The use of ''septante'' for "seventy" and ''nonante'' for "ninety", in contrast to Standard French ''soixante-dix'' (literally "sixty-ten") and ''quatre-vingt-dix'' ("four score and ten"). These words are also used in Swiss French. Unlike the Swiss, however, Belgians never use ''huitante'' in the place of ''quatre-vingts'' ("four score"). This, however, is not a belgicism. It was standard French in France as well until the 19th century.

★ The verb ''savoir'' is generally used instead of ''pouvoir'' in the sense of ability to do something (in other varieties of French, "savoir" is exclusively used to mean "to know"). Thus in Belgian French: ''Je ne sais pas dormir'' means "I am not able to sleep", whereas ''Je ne peux pas dormir'' means "I am not allowed to sleep". This usage is often amusing to speakers of other varieties of French, who understand "I do not know how to sleep" in the first sentence.

★ The words for meals vary, as described in the table below. The usage in Belgian, Swiss, and Quebec French accords with the etymology—''déjeuner'' comes from a verb meaning "to break the fast". In Standard French, however, breakfast is rendered by ''petit-déjeuner''. The change is supposedly due to the practices of Louis XIV, who rose at noon to take his first meal of the day, which he called ''déjeuner''. Since the king's servants still had to get up early, they had a small breakfast, which they called ''petit déjeuner''. The French court soon adopted the changes, spreading the new use of the word ''déjeuner'' throughout France, but Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada kept the old terms. ''Souper'' is instead used in France to refer to a meal taken around midnight, after going to the opera or the theatre.
:

English	Belgian, Swiss, and Canadian French	Standard French
morning meal	''déjeuner''	''petit déjeuner''
midday meal	''dîner''	''déjeuner''
evening meal (before going out)	''souper''	''dîner''
late-evening meal (after going out)	N/A	''souper''

★ Many Walloon words and expressions have crept into Belgian French, especially in eastern regions of Wallonia. There are many examples of it, but they are difficult to transcribe, because Walloon has no official written form. Examples include ''Ka tôt rât'' (a cognate of ''à bientôt'', "see you soon"), ''peket'' ("jenever"), ''barakî'' (a chav).

★ Germanic influences are also visible:

★
★ ''Ça me goûte bien'' (roughly translated as "I like it") is a calque of Germanic patterns such as ''Das schmeckt mir gut'' in German or ''Het smaakt me (goed)'' in Dutch.

★
★ ''Tu viens avec?'' (Are you coming with [me]?) is comparable to ''Kommst du mit?'' in German and ''Kom je mee?'' in Dutch.

★
★ The mayor of a city is called a ''bourgmestre'' in Belgium (rather than the Standard French ''maire''), reflecting the influence of Dutch ''burgemeester'' and German ''Bürgermeister''.

★
★ ''Crole'' ("curl") comes from the Brabantic (a Dutch dialect spoken in parts of Belgium) word ''krol''.

★
★ ''S'il vous plaît'' is used to mean "here" (when handing someone something) as well as "please", whereas in France the meaning is limited to "please". This is comparable to the use of ''alstublieft'' in Dutch and ''bitte'' in German.

See also

★ Walloon, a separate Romance language, similar to French, spoken in Belgium

★ Dutch, one of the major spoken languages in Belgium, and one of three official languages, along with French and German

External link

★ Dictionnaire des belgicismes. A dictionary of belgicisms in French.