Belgian French
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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 like Walloon, Picard, Champenois and Gaumais. Belgian French and the French of France are almost identical and hence mutually intelligible, but there are distinct phonological and lexical differences.
Influences
Until the beginning of the 20th century, residents of Wallonia, the mostly French-speaking region in the south of Belgium, spoke Walloon. Many speakers were bilingual in both French and Walloon; Walloon thus had a large influence on the development of Belgian French. Dutch and to a lesser extent German have also contributed words and turns of phrase, especially in Brussels.In addition, the fact that Belgium has been politically separate from France for several centuries (except during a short period of time under Napoleonic rule) has allowed the French of Belgium and that of France to diverge; this is particularly evident in fields such as food and public administration.
Pronunciation differences
- Lack of the approximant /ɥ/: The combination /ɥi/ is replaced by /wi/, and in other situations /ɥ/ becomes a full vowel /y/. Thus for most Belgian speakers, the words enfuir (to run away) and enfouir (to bury) are homonyms.
- The distinction between the nasal vowels /ɛ̃/ and /œ̃/ 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 /w/, the same as in English, which also approximates Flemish "w". In France, it is usually pronounced /v/ as in German. For example, the word wagon (train car) is pronounced /vagɔ̃/ in Standard French, but /wagɔ̃/ 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 /gʁɑ̃t/ instead of /gʁɑ̃d/ ("grande") and /taːp/ instead of /tabl/ ("table").
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").
- 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 the 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 nearly impossible to transcribe, seeing that Walloon has no official written form. Examples include Ka tôt rât (a cognate of à bientôt, "see you soon"), peket ("jenever"), barakî (a vulgar, trashy person).
- Germanic influences are also visible. Take for example the construction Ça me goûte bien, a calque of Germanic patterns such as Das schmeckt mir gut, Het smaakt me (goed) in Dutch, or Tu viens avec?, comparable to Kom je mee? in Dutch. The mayor of a city is called bourgmestre in Belgium (rather than the Standard French maire), reflecting Dutch influence. crole ("curl") comes from the Dutch word krul.
- There are also some words that exist only in Belgian French and that are not of Walloon or Dutch origin, like guindaille (a party, particularly among students), syllabus ("course book"), and the use of s'il vous plaît to mean voici.
See also
- Walloon, a separate Romance language, similar to French, spoken in Belgium
- Dutch, the major language in Belgium, and one of three official languages, along with French and German
External link
Dialects of the French Language Europe
(France) Metropolitan French, Meridional French
(Belgium) Belgian French • (Switzerland) Swiss French • (Italy) Aostan French • (Channel Islands) Jersey Legal French
North America
(Canada) Quebec French • Acadian French • (US) Cajun French
Africa
African French (Maghreb)
Asia
Cambodian French • Vietnamese French
Oceania
New Caledonian French
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