Валлонский язык: история и современное состояние

Gallo Romance language of Wallonia, Belgium

Walloon (/w//ɒ/'/l//uː//n/; natively walon; ) is a Romance language that is spoken in much of Wallonia and, to a very small extent, in Brussels, Belgium; some villages near Givet, northern France; and a clutch of communities in northeastern Wisconsin, U. S.

It belongs to the langues d'oïl language family, the most prominent member of which is French. The historical background of its formation was the territorial extension since 980 of the Principality of Liège to the south and west. Walloon is classified as "definitely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Despite its rich literature, beginning anonymously in the 16th century and with well known authors since 1756, the use of Walloon has decreased markedly since France's annexation of Wallonia in 1794. This period definitively established French as the language of social promotion, far more than it was before. After World War I, public schools provided French speaking education to all children, inducing a denigration of Walloon, especially when accompanied by official orders in 1952 to punish its use in schools. Subsequently, since the middle of the 20th century, generational transmission of the language has decreased, resulting in Walloon almost becoming a dead language. Today it is scarcely spoken among younger people, with the vast majority of its native speakers being the elderly (aged 65 and over). In 2007, the number of people with knowledge of the language was estimated at 600,000. Numerous associations, especially theatre companies, are working to keep the language alive. Formally recognized as a langue régionale endogène (regional indigenous language) of Belgium since 1990, Walloon has also benefited from a continued corpus planning process. The "Feller system" (1900) regularized transcription of the different accents. Since the 1990s, a common orthography was established (the Wallon unifié), which allowed large scale publications, such as the Walloon Wikipedia officially in 2003. In 2004, a Walloon translation of a Tintin comic was released under the name L'èmerôde d'al Castafiore; in 2007 an album consisting of Gaston Lagaffe comic strips was published in Walloon. Walloon is more distinct as a language than Belgian French, which differs from the French spoken in France only in some minor points of vocabulary and pronunciation.

Linguists had long classified Walloon as a dialect of French, which in turn is a langue d'oïl. Like French, it descended from Vulgar Latin. Arguing that a French speaking person could not understand Walloon easily, especially in its eastern forms, Jules Feller (1859–1940) insisted that Walloon had an original "superior unity", which made it a language. The phonological divisions of regional languages of southern Belgium were studied by the contemporary linguist E. B. Atwood. He defined the precise geographical repartition of the four chief dialects of Walloon. In addition, he defined them against the dialects of Picard, Lorrain and Champenois. Since then, most linguists (among them Louis Remacle), and gradually also Walloon politicians, regard Walloon as a regional language, the first in importance in Wallonia. It is the only one to have originated from that part of Belgium. The eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica identified Walloon as the "northernmost Romance language".

The Walloon alphabet generally consists of the basic ISO Latin Alphabet, and six types of diacritic. It also makes frequent use of digraphs. Various orthographies have been used, most notably the Feller system (sistinme Feller) and Unified Walloon (rifondou walon or rfondou walon).

Walloon is distinguished from other languages in the langue d'oïl family both by archaism coming from Latin and by its significant borrowing from Germanic languages, as expressed in its phonetics, its lexicon, and its grammar. At the same time, Walloon phonetics are singularly conservative: the language has stayed fairly close to the form it took during the High Middle Ages.

The plural feminine adjectives before the noun take an unstressed ending ès (except in the Ardenne dialect): compare li djaene foye "the yellow leaf" and les djaenès foyes "the yellow leaves". There is no gender difference in definite articles and possessives (except in the Ardenne dialect): compare Walloon li vweteure ("the car", feminine) and li cir ("the sky", masculine), with French la voiture and le ciel; Walloon has si coir ("his/her body", masculine) and si finiesse ("his/her window", feminine) with French son corps and sa fenêtre.

Walloon has a few Latin remnants that have disappeared from neighboring Romance languages: compare Walloon dispierter to Spanish despertar and Romanian deștepta (all with the same meaning: "to awaken"). The most distinctive feature is its number of borrowings from Germanic languages (Dutch and German dialects): compare Walloon flåwe to today's Dutch flauw "weak" (cognate of English flaw). Other common borrowings, among hundreds of others, are dringuele ("tip"; Dutch drinkgeld), crole ("curl"; Dutch krul), spiter ("to spatter"; same root as the English to spit, and to spew, or German spützen; Dutch spuwen), li sprewe (the starling; Dutch spreeuw, or German Sperling).

The adjective is often placed before the noun: compare Walloon on foirt ome with French un homme fort, "a strong man"; ene blanke måjhon and French une maison blanche, "a white house". Borrowing from Germanic languages, the construction Cwè çki c'est di ça po ene fleur? "What kind of flower is this?" can be compared word for word to German Was ist das für eine Blume? and Dutch Wat is dat voor een bloem?, as opposed to Standard French Quelle sorte de fleur est ce? or (colloquially) Quelle sorte de fleur est ce que c'est?.

From a linguistic point of view, Louis Remacle has shown that a good number of the developments that we now consider typical of Walloon appeared between the 8th and 12th centuries. Walloon "had a clearly defined identity from the beginning of the 13th century". In any case, linguistic texts from the time do not mention the language, although they mention others in the langue d'oïl family, such as Picard and Lorrain. During the 15th century, scribes in the region called the language "Roman" when they needed to distinguish it. It is not until the beginning of the 16th century that first occurrence of the word "Walloon" appeared in the current linguistic sense. In 1510 or 1511, Jean Lemaire de Belges made the connection between Rommand to Vualon:

And those people [the inhabitants of Nivelles] speak the old Gallic language which we call Vualon or Rommand ( ). And we use the said old Vualon or Rommand language in our Belgian Gaul: That is to say in Hainaut, Cambrai, Artois, Namur, Liège, Lorraine, Ardennes and Rommand Brabant, and it is very different from French, which is more fashionable and courtly. The word "Walloon" thus came closer to its current meaning: the vernacular of the Roman part of the Low Countries. One might say that the period which saw the establishment of the unifying supremacy of the Burgundians in the Walloon country was a turning point in their linguistic history. The crystallization of a Walloon identity, as opposed to that of the thiois (i. e. Dutch speaking) regions of the Low Countries, established "Walloon" as a word for designating its people. Somewhat later, the vernacular of these people became more clearly distinct from central French and other neighbouring langues d'oïl, prompting the abandonment of the vague term "Roman" as a linguistic, ethnic, and political designator for "Walloon". Also at this time, following the Ordinance of Villers Cotterêts in 1539, the French language replaced Latin for all administrative purposes in France. Established as the academic language, French became the object of a political effort at normalization; La Pléiade posited the view that when two languages of the same language family coexist, each can be defined only in opposition to the other. Around the year 1600, the French writing system became dominant in the Wallonia. From this time, too, dates a tradition of texts written in a language marked by traces of spoken Walloon. The written language of the preceding centuries, scripta, was a composite language with some Walloon characteristics but it did not attempt to be a systematic reproduction of the spoken language.

Walloon was the predominant language of the Walloon people until the beginning of the 20th century, although they had a passing knowledge of French. Since that time, the use of French has spread to the extent that now only 15% of the Walloon population speak their ancestral language. Breaking the statistics down by age, 70–80% of the population aged over 60 speak Walloon, while only about 10% of those under 30 do so. Passing knowledge of Walloon is much more widespread: claimed by some 36–58% of the younger age bracket. Laurent Hendschel estimates there are 1,300,000 bilingual people in Wallonia (Walloon French, Picard French ). Many French words that pertain to mining and to the textile trade derive from the Walloon Picard complex. Legally, Walloon has been recognized since 1990 by the French Community of Belgium, the cultural authority of Wallonia, as an "indigenous regional language" which must be studied in schools and encouraged. The Walloon cultural movement includes the Union Culturelle Wallonne, an organization of over 200 amateur theatre circles, writers' groups, and school councils. About a dozen Walloon magazines publish regularly. The Société de Langue et de Littérature Wallonne, founded in 1856, promotes Walloon literature and the study (dialectology, etymology, etc.) of the regional Roman languages of Wallonia. There is a difference between the Walloon culture, according to the Manifesto for Walloon culture, and the Walloon language (even if the latter is a part of the culture).

Walloon Phonetic French Limburgian Dutch German English Walon Wallon Waals Waals Wallonisch Walloon Diè wåde Adieu Diè wah Tot ziens Tschüss Bye (from Goodbye, a contraction of "God be with ye") Bondjoû Bonjour Daag Goedendag Guten Tag Hello (Good day) A Salut Ha/haj Hoi Hallo Hi (often followed by another expression) A rvey Au revoir Saluu/Daag/Hajje/Diè wah Tot ziens Auf Wiedersehen Goodbye (lit. See you again/See you later) Cmint dit st on? Comment dit on? Wie zaet me? Hoe zegt men? Wie sagt man? How do you say (How does one say)? Cmint daloz? Comment allez vous? Wie geit 't? Hoe gaat het? Wie geht es? How are you? (How goes it? / How's it going?) Dji n' sais nén Je ne sais pas Ich weit 't neet Ik weet het niet Ich weiß es nicht I don't know

Maurice Piron, Anthologie de la littérature wallonne, Mardaga, Liège, 1978 (661 pages) de Reuse, Willem J. La phonologie du français de la région de Charleroi (Belgique) et ses rapports avec le wallon. La Linguistique Vol. 23, Fasc. 2. 1987. Hendschel, Lorint. Li Croejhete Walone Contribution à une grammaire de la langue wallonne. 2001, 2012.