Belgian French

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:BelgieGemeenschappenkaart.png Belgian French 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.

1 Influences
2 Pronunciation differences
3 Vocabulary
4 See also
5 External link

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Influences

Until the beginning of the 20th century, Walloon was widely spoken by residents of Wallonia, the mostly French-speaking region in the south of Belgium. 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.

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 two languages to diverge; this is particularly evident in fields such as food and public administration.

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Pronunciation differences

Template:IPA notice There are few consistent phonological differences between the French spoken in France and Belgian French. Certain accents, such as urban accents (notably those of Brussels and Liège), as well as the accents of older speakers, may seem strong, but many other Belgians could pass unnoticed in France. Major phonological differences include:

Lack of the approximant Template:IPA: The combination Template:IPA is replaced by Template:IPA, and in other situations Template:IPA becomes a full vowel Template:IPA. Thus for most Belgian speakers, the words enfuir (to run away) and enfouir (to bury) are homonyms.
The distinction between the nasal vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA, the same as in English, which also approximates Flemish "w". In France, it is usually pronounced Template:IPA as in German. For example, the word wagon (train car) is pronounced Template:IPA in Standard French, but Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA instead of Template:IPA ("grande") and Template:IPA instead of Template:IPA ("table").

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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 theater.

English	Belgian, Swiss, & 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. Examples include Ka torat (a cognate of à bientôt, "see you soon"), peket ("jenever"), crole ("curl"), 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, 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.
There are also some words that exist only in Belgian French and that are not of Walloon or Flemish origin, like guindaille (a party, particularly among students), syllabus ("course book"), and the use of s'il vous plaît to mean voici.