(only english-speaking presentations from some parts of the walloon edition).

Walloon is the "normal" language of Walloonia; why is it nearly no longer used ?

April 2018

Walloon, a living language in the 22nd century?

Among the oïl languages, Walloon is probably the most differentiated from French, due to its neighboring situation with Germanic languages.

History

It is believed that its identity was acquired as early as the 12th century, within geographical limits corresponding to the furthest possessions of the Bishop Principality of Liège (founded in 980). Other oïl languages individualized in the same period in the neighboring areas: Picard in the diocese of Cambrai, Champenois in the diocese of Reims and Lorrain in the diocese of Trier.

The Principality of Liège remained independent inside the Holly Roman Empire until the 1785 French invasion, but it controlled less than a half of the Walloon-speaking territories. The other part was made of feudal entities which were gathered by Princes of Burgundy in the 15th century, then passed to the Spanish, then to the Austrian Empires.

The French regime, though short (1795-1815), established French as the dominant language with no consideration at all for any preexisting “patois”. This linguistic order was supported by the newly formed elite educated in Napoleonian colleges.

In the late 19th century, while opposing to Flemish who wanted official use of their own language, Walloon politicians promoted French as the sole valuable official language for Belgium, apparently unaware of their own non-French identity.

Timid signs of such a feeling have been present since the mid 19th century, where the word “Wallonia” was created, as well as the “Société de Langue et Littérature wallones” (SLLW, 1856).

Walloon identity was emphasised by the Belgian Royal Question (1945-1951), but this arose from political opposition between socialist Wallonia and catholic Flanders. Nonetheless, it led to major reforms of the State which resulted in a largely autonomous status with a parliament (1998), a president and most other elements usually attributed to independent States. But, due to complex relationships with French-speakers from the Brussels region, culture and education are not managed by the Walloon government.

Unlike in Flanders, there is no political party struggling for the independence of Wallonia. Neither was any official role of the Walloon language inside Wallonia ever mentioned.

Nature of Walloon

Walloon has a Celtic substratum (3% of the traditional words), a Latin stratum (70%) and a large Germanic superstratum (20% of words, the remainder being from onomatopoeic stock). Grammar is French-like, with many conservative traits and specificities, with a few Germanic structures.

Phonology is quite different from French.

tchanter, tchivå, tchén, tchet <> chanter, cheval, chien, chat

djin, djino, Djenvire, djermale <> gent (personne), genou, Geneviève, jumeaux

åjhey, måjhon, pexhon, distrîxhner, texhe <>aisé (facile), maison, poisson, défricher, tisser

manaedje, ovraedje, maraexhe <> ménage / maison, ouvrage / travail, marécage

scole, scrire, spirlin, scoxhî, strinde <> école, écrire, éperlin, ébrancher, étreindre

åbe (/ɔːp/), ovraedje (/...ʧ/), five (/...f/) <> arbre /aʁbʁə/), ouvrage (/...aʒə/), fièvre (/...vʁə/)

mwaisse, tchestea, basti, presse <> maître, château, bâtir, prêt

Due to the historical background, two main, rather uniform dialects, share the central part of the country: Liégeois and Namurois. Western and Southern areas are, respectively, progressively influenced by Picard and Gaumais (Lorrain).

Means of survival

Since school was made compulsory in 1920, the authorities have tried to wipe out Walloon, claiming it was a politically incorrect way of communication. Parents were encouraged to abandon it at home and they accepted the trend.

Since the 1960’s, there has been no more inter-generational transmission of the language. It has survived so far because of belles-lettristic documents which began in about 1600. For two centuries, they were written by nobles and ecclesiastics; in the 19th century, by bourgeois; in early 20th by ordinary people, and in the second half of the century by graduated people from modest origin.

After humorous poems and traditional tails, there was a golden period of suggestive poetry (by so-called “generation 48”). Since 2000, production of novels and other prose texts has been more frequent than before.

Walloon-speaking theater has a particular place in literature, owing to the number of plays – mainly comedies – written and interpreted, and the number of spectators concerned, up to 300,000 per year at present. The maintenance of a Walloon-speaking theater with professional actors (Trianon of Liège) should also be mentioned. However, high quality drama did not meet public agreement. Presently, plays are more often translations or replays than creations, the latter being limited to two or three per year.

Walloon-speaking music is another way for the language to remain popular, with late though constant adaptation to new musical styles. Since 2000, there have been two or three new CD ‘malgs produced every year, in spite of the boycott of Walloon-speaking music by official RTBF radio and TV, except during scarce “dialectal” programmes.

Language planning

An official status for Walloon was only achieved in the late 20th century, with the 1990 “Décret Valmy Féaux” recognizing it as a “regional endogenous language”. However, Walloon is cited together with 5 other minor regional languages; this does not emphasize its unique position as the only language born in Wallonia and covering 70% of the land.

Corpus planning began at the turn of the 19th century, with adoption by SLLW of the “Feller System”, which, slowly but surely, spread all over during the 20th century. Allowing self-learning, it surely permitted a flourishment of lexical studies (more than 500 publications) as well as quality works of literature. But the Feller System does not provide any standard spelling, as each writer can adapt the graph of each word to note his or her particular accent. Together with the varying regional options to note the long O, or K and S consonants, this results in up to 100 different possible “spellings” for words as simple as “dicåce” (village fair) or “roytea” (kinglet).

Normalisation began in the 1990’s. At first, it was suggested and worked up by personalities and official instances. But strong opposition of academic dialectologists (1996) discouraged militants to adopt the trend. Since 2000, advances in unified corpus of “rifondou walon” (the appellation of normalised orthography) has been achieved by a few members of the NGO “Li Rantoele”. Their skills in various languages and in computer science has allowed such noteworthy achievements as Walloon Wikipedia (since 2004), Walloon Wiktionary (since 2009) and “Diccionnaire di Tot l’ Walon” (database on line since 2010, still being completed).

Description of “Rifondou Walon”

The standardization process was largely based on the experience of other minor languages such as Swiss Romansh, Breton, Occitan or Poitevin-Saintongeais. The majority form was preferred when possible (tchambe 90% <> tchombe, tchan.me, cambe 10%). But this was seldom the case, because of large dialectal variation. Use of central forms was not promoted (as in Romansh or in Luxemburgish) because the richest and oldest region of Liège is out of the geographical centre of the language. The use of diasystemic graphs was chosen to keep the main characteristics of Liège dialects as pronunciation options. These graphs where often found back in old spellings (archigraphemes).