Walloon
From UniLang Wiki
Walloon is a romance language from Wallonia (south of Belgium), of the same family as French (but distinct from it); its ISO language codes are wa and wln.
It is the northmost latin language and has had, due to its exposure to germanic languages, a great influence in vocabulary and pronounciation from them.
It is currently not an official language in Wallonia (French and German are), and is not taught in school nor used in media; however 10% of Walloons still speak it regularly, and 40-60% are able to understand it. Before World War II it was the common communication language of the majority of people from Wallonia. A movement for revival of the language is taking place, with reveindications to rehabilitate it, to teach it in school, and to use a common writting system.
The area of Walloon language doesn't cover the whole Wallonia, on the borders there are also spoken Picard at the West, German at the East, Luxemburgish on the southeast, and Lorrain and Champenois on the South. Walloon is also spoken in a small portion of France and in the Green Bay area in Wisconsin, USA, where Walloon immigrants settled in 19th century.
It is written in the Latin alphabet. In the modern pan-walloon orthography, called rifondou walon, the Q is never used, and X is only used in the digraph xh. In addition, the following diacritics are used: å, â, ç, é, ê, è, î, ô, û.
External links
- http://www.wallonie.com/wallang/ presentation of the language in Walloon, French, English and Dutch.
- http://users.skynet.be/lorint/croejh/ a good grammar of the language, presented in French.
- http://moti.walon.org/ an online explicative dictionary, in Walloon; content is free to use and copy.
- http://rifondou.walon.org/ several texts, modern and ancient, written in the new normalized orthography.
Walloon in various languages
- ca: való
- es: valón
- fr: wallon
- nl: waals
- ja: ワロン語
