Which is why it’s all the more idiotic for the Walloons to call the Flemish who stand up for their language and identity “fascists”. Don’t understand me wrong, call those who have fascists ideas fascist. But not those who still stand for the same fight you (unpersonal) lost, i.e. for the Flemish identity.
So often in discussions it’s like they’re unknowingly arguing that because they lost, we should too.”The Belgian identity” is a myth created by the bourgoisie, much more even than the Flemish idendity is supposedly a myth from the Flemish movement.
It’s why it’s absolutely ridiculous for Walloon politicians like GLB to claim they are Belgian, when the identity he speaks of is only shared along one side of the language border. He may call it “Belgian”, but it’s nothing more than some horrednous bastardism of “neo-Walloon”.
Interesting! I had no idea.
​
Is the Flemish language doomed to dissapear and be replaced by French?
Just wait until he finds out that Dutch was literally imported from the 1950’s onwards from Holland and shoved onto the population as a ‘purification’ campaign, wiping out the Brabantian dialects and the Flemish and Limburgish languages (although still ongoing). To this day, Belgium has one of the most repressive language situations in Europe, even France starts teaching Flemish as of next year. And FYI: Flemish refers to West-Flemish, not the political term nationalists use to refer to Flemish, Brabantian and Limburgish
Doesn’t Wallonia still have some leftover Walloon like ‘nonante’?
I did some additional research because I wanted to learn more. I’ll share what I found.
So, the dialects started disappearing under French rule (late 18th century), because France had a strict language policy. It wasn’t super successful and many people still spoke dialects like Walloon.
In the early 20th century, the use of local language was strongly discouraged and later banned in favor of French. This led to the language not being passed down, especially not to young people, and very few people still speak the dialects today (estimated at 600 000 people who still speak it to some degree).
So, some people, especially the elites, probably did speak French, but rural communities didn’t. Very interesting to learn, thanks!
I don’t really agree with how intelligible it was. As with most dialect continuums, it’s a matter of learning the sound shifts and a bit of new vocabulary, and you can understand it.
At worst, it would have been like a Flemish dialect vs German. With a bit of effort from both sides, it’s intelligible.
But it’s indeed true that, due to being closely related to French, the Walloons lost their language a lot earlier than the Flemings.
It is. It is literally class conflict. The upper classes spoke French, influenced by prestige from France (and often literal family ties). They wanted to create an artificial idea of a nation, which would hold the nation-state together. Every European country that now exists did that. The point is to have the working people believe they have so much more in common with the owning people of the same “nation”, than with the working people of another “nation”.
This is why the (general) left’s perspective on culture and identity is so interesting. Take for example our own PvdA/PTB’s [campaign around “we are one”](https://www.pvda.be/we-are-one-boek). The point of the campaign isn’t to literally say “we have the same culture”, because we don’t. Note how the author is described as “a true zinneke”. The point was to unite working people from both sides of the linguistic divide in Belgium, by stressing what parts of history the current Walloon and Flanders regions have in common (much more than people think; see also the youtube comment this post is about!), how the big thing we have in common is that we’re all workers, working to make the owning class richer (true all over the world), and how these two come together in a rich history of pan-belgian (yes, I made that word) class struggle. Note also, however, that not all on the general left agree with this campaign — the main criticism revolves around “replacing one artificial identity with another doesn’t solve the issues”.
Globally speaking, the general left is staunchly in favour of *some* nationalist movements — specifically, *where they aim to end cultural and economic oppression by a dominant, imperialist nation*. See Ireland, or Palestine, or the Kurds, or Rojava, or Vietnam, or the many landback initiatives in the Americas, or many others. Hell, in the early days of the Flemish movement, you could probably have found leftists defending the Flemish identity — because there was truth to it being oppressed and in danger of being destroyed by an owning class who had an interest in everyone conforming to their culture; now however, it isn’t anymore. We now have our Dutch/Flemish speaking bourgeoisie, who have co-opted Flemish nationalism to, once again, divide people along an artificial “nation” rather than the material position one takes up in our society. Hence why today, not a single leftist will call himself a Flemish nationalist. Our “nation” and culture(s) are not in any danger, and are, in fact, used to solidify the status-quo. But back to the global level: The main idea is *solidarity between working people of all cultures*.
Sometimes you’ll hear people who don’t understand the leftist theories surrounding this saying “the left wants to destroy our culture!” but like, no dude. our cultures are not in any danger whatsoever, and are in fact used to make you forget your actual, material place in society. They *dont need* *such support or activism.* There are other cultures out there, that are in actual danger through imperialism, and having them get bolstered through national unity is necessary and can be used for people’s liberation. As for the things you consider Flemish: you can go *vinkenzetten* or *wipschieten* all you like, and in fact, I think those things are really cool and local! I also love visiting medieval festivals and the like.
I recently came across this video, which nicely explains the leftist POV on the “nation” by a leftist [https://youtu.be/nxVoron-JWk](https://youtu.be/nxVoron-JWk) . the whole channel is pretty cool imo
It’s all artificial. Just as the Flemish cultural identity is artificial.
tldr: local culture: good, nation: artificial (i.e. bad, but can, in certain circumstances, be used for good), your position in the economic system: material
hell, even my tldr is long. Welcome to leftist theory everyone :^) also remember I am just one guy
How little of Belgian and Walloon history can you know that you only learned that today?
I still don’t understand why they feel this fact is somehow relevant to ‘Flemish seperatists’.
Noone is stopping Walloons from re-introducing their own language, except for the Walloons … . They’re the ones that decided that their region should speak French.
If anything, they should be understanding to the appeal of losing your own language (to French), instead of constantly pushing it onto the Flemish – as in discussions about Brussels for example (or Leuven a while ago).
Eh, it’s not really right. Walloon is a dialect of “French”, that’s just a fact. The actual thing people don’t understand is that every single language is actually a dialect continuum and that the standardised forms of languages are just as much a part of those dialect continuums as any of the other varieties of the language, the only difference is that the standardised form gets promoted by the state. Dialects are a variety of a language, not a subgroup of the standardised form. Walloon is part of the French dialect continuum, so are Picard, Lorrainian, and Standard French.
Also the idea that Walloon is “quasi unintelligible” to French speakers is just laughable. There’s is a fair degree of mutual intelligible between between ***all*** Romance languages, including even Romanian. For Walloon to be quasi unintelligible it’d have to be some kind of isolated language like Basque or at the very least not be a part of the Romance languages lol.
edit: it’s absolutely hilarious that people are downvoting objective linguistics but nobody can reply with anything more than some anecdotal stories.
Yeah, I was working as a consultant in a Walloon company (near Brussels) and that’s where I first learned about the existence of the Walloon language. Most Walloons didn’t even speak the language. My manager referred me to one of the directors who knew a few words.
I still remember them using the word loch/loq which means door in Walloon.
That’s about all I know of it
But the important question is what language does James Bissonette speak?
Last time this was posted, there was some Walloon guy bitching in the comments that Flanders should just have taken the cultural genocide, because then we’d have a monolingual country. Weirdest fucking take ever imho.
“the victim of French”…. Indeed if you consider you as a victim, I understand why you loose so many energy fighting rather than open your mind…
Maybe I can give an exemple. My family is rooted into the Liège High bourgeoisie. I have letters from my ancestors lying around and they are about half walloon and half French.
It seem like official and business dealings were done mostly in French (but sometimes in Waloon) but all friendly conversations were in Walloon.
From my grandfather (so beginning in the 20s) it was exclusively in French
k. we kunnen dus de fransen verder haten?
My uncles were being punished at school (early 50’s) for speaking Walloon at home. The language was obliterated.
Why does your phone show the seconds?
While it’s a way less strong case, I believe that even the Flemish who know this piece of really interesting history would make the (I guess valid) point that, considering Walloon was Gallic, it was a lot easier to learn French than it was for the Flemish.
On the other hand, for the Flemish, speaking all sorts of Germanic dialects, French really was a totally different language.
With Wallonia back then also being the by far higher educated region, youths would pick up on the newly imposed French more quickly than Flemish, and unfortunately policy makers *then* made the choice to only make French the official language.
I reckon that the Flemish movement did actually do a great job in making sure Dutch became a official language. The stories about Flemish people being on trial for murders they didn’t commit, with a French-speaking barrister, in a French-speaking court, who got convicted of a murder they didn’t commit simply because they weren’t able to defend themselves, are horrendous.
It’s not particularly the French’s fault either, that French became the only official language after a while. It’s the Belgian policy makers that made that mistake, so the Flemish movement in my opinion still made a strong, and important case.
To give some perspective, as someone from a mostly (one west-flemish great grandmother) walloon family (from Liège):
– My (walloon) great-grandparents were native walloon speakers
– My grandparents were more or less fluent, at least spoken. Not sure if they could write and/or read it.
– My parents have a basic grasp of the language, I’m pretty sure my mom can read it as well.
– I only know some expressions that I picked up from my grandparents/parents, cannot read or write it.
It is not completely lost yet, but has been declining noticeably with each generation.
Flemish is a dialect of Dutch spoken in the Netherlands/aka Holland.
23 comments
Link to the relevant video?
Which is why it’s all the more idiotic for the Walloons to call the Flemish who stand up for their language and identity “fascists”. Don’t understand me wrong, call those who have fascists ideas fascist. But not those who still stand for the same fight you (unpersonal) lost, i.e. for the Flemish identity.
So often in discussions it’s like they’re unknowingly arguing that because they lost, we should too.”The Belgian identity” is a myth created by the bourgoisie, much more even than the Flemish idendity is supposedly a myth from the Flemish movement.
It’s why it’s absolutely ridiculous for Walloon politicians like GLB to claim they are Belgian, when the identity he speaks of is only shared along one side of the language border. He may call it “Belgian”, but it’s nothing more than some horrednous bastardism of “neo-Walloon”.
Interesting! I had no idea.
​
Is the Flemish language doomed to dissapear and be replaced by French?
Just wait until he finds out that Dutch was literally imported from the 1950’s onwards from Holland and shoved onto the population as a ‘purification’ campaign, wiping out the Brabantian dialects and the Flemish and Limburgish languages (although still ongoing). To this day, Belgium has one of the most repressive language situations in Europe, even France starts teaching Flemish as of next year. And FYI: Flemish refers to West-Flemish, not the political term nationalists use to refer to Flemish, Brabantian and Limburgish
Doesn’t Wallonia still have some leftover Walloon like ‘nonante’?
I did some additional research because I wanted to learn more. I’ll share what I found.
So, the dialects started disappearing under French rule (late 18th century), because France had a strict language policy. It wasn’t super successful and many people still spoke dialects like Walloon.
In the early 20th century, the use of local language was strongly discouraged and later banned in favor of French. This led to the language not being passed down, especially not to young people, and very few people still speak the dialects today (estimated at 600 000 people who still speak it to some degree).
So, some people, especially the elites, probably did speak French, but rural communities didn’t. Very interesting to learn, thanks!
I don’t really agree with how intelligible it was. As with most dialect continuums, it’s a matter of learning the sound shifts and a bit of new vocabulary, and you can understand it.
At worst, it would have been like a Flemish dialect vs German. With a bit of effort from both sides, it’s intelligible.
But it’s indeed true that, due to being closely related to French, the Walloons lost their language a lot earlier than the Flemings.
It is. It is literally class conflict. The upper classes spoke French, influenced by prestige from France (and often literal family ties). They wanted to create an artificial idea of a nation, which would hold the nation-state together. Every European country that now exists did that. The point is to have the working people believe they have so much more in common with the owning people of the same “nation”, than with the working people of another “nation”.
This is why the (general) left’s perspective on culture and identity is so interesting. Take for example our own PvdA/PTB’s [campaign around “we are one”](https://www.pvda.be/we-are-one-boek). The point of the campaign isn’t to literally say “we have the same culture”, because we don’t. Note how the author is described as “a true zinneke”. The point was to unite working people from both sides of the linguistic divide in Belgium, by stressing what parts of history the current Walloon and Flanders regions have in common (much more than people think; see also the youtube comment this post is about!), how the big thing we have in common is that we’re all workers, working to make the owning class richer (true all over the world), and how these two come together in a rich history of pan-belgian (yes, I made that word) class struggle. Note also, however, that not all on the general left agree with this campaign — the main criticism revolves around “replacing one artificial identity with another doesn’t solve the issues”.
Globally speaking, the general left is staunchly in favour of *some* nationalist movements — specifically, *where they aim to end cultural and economic oppression by a dominant, imperialist nation*. See Ireland, or Palestine, or the Kurds, or Rojava, or Vietnam, or the many landback initiatives in the Americas, or many others. Hell, in the early days of the Flemish movement, you could probably have found leftists defending the Flemish identity — because there was truth to it being oppressed and in danger of being destroyed by an owning class who had an interest in everyone conforming to their culture; now however, it isn’t anymore. We now have our Dutch/Flemish speaking bourgeoisie, who have co-opted Flemish nationalism to, once again, divide people along an artificial “nation” rather than the material position one takes up in our society. Hence why today, not a single leftist will call himself a Flemish nationalist. Our “nation” and culture(s) are not in any danger, and are, in fact, used to solidify the status-quo. But back to the global level: The main idea is *solidarity between working people of all cultures*.
Sometimes you’ll hear people who don’t understand the leftist theories surrounding this saying “the left wants to destroy our culture!” but like, no dude. our cultures are not in any danger whatsoever, and are in fact used to make you forget your actual, material place in society. They *dont need* *such support or activism.* There are other cultures out there, that are in actual danger through imperialism, and having them get bolstered through national unity is necessary and can be used for people’s liberation. As for the things you consider Flemish: you can go *vinkenzetten* or *wipschieten* all you like, and in fact, I think those things are really cool and local! I also love visiting medieval festivals and the like.
I recently came across this video, which nicely explains the leftist POV on the “nation” by a leftist [https://youtu.be/nxVoron-JWk](https://youtu.be/nxVoron-JWk) . the whole channel is pretty cool imo
It’s all artificial. Just as the Flemish cultural identity is artificial.
tldr: local culture: good, nation: artificial (i.e. bad, but can, in certain circumstances, be used for good), your position in the economic system: material
hell, even my tldr is long. Welcome to leftist theory everyone :^) also remember I am just one guy
How little of Belgian and Walloon history can you know that you only learned that today?
I still don’t understand why they feel this fact is somehow relevant to ‘Flemish seperatists’.
Noone is stopping Walloons from re-introducing their own language, except for the Walloons … . They’re the ones that decided that their region should speak French.
If anything, they should be understanding to the appeal of losing your own language (to French), instead of constantly pushing it onto the Flemish – as in discussions about Brussels for example (or Leuven a while ago).
You can also read Wikipedia in Walloon https://wa.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mwaisse_p%C3%A5dje
Eh, it’s not really right. Walloon is a dialect of “French”, that’s just a fact. The actual thing people don’t understand is that every single language is actually a dialect continuum and that the standardised forms of languages are just as much a part of those dialect continuums as any of the other varieties of the language, the only difference is that the standardised form gets promoted by the state. Dialects are a variety of a language, not a subgroup of the standardised form. Walloon is part of the French dialect continuum, so are Picard, Lorrainian, and Standard French.
Also the idea that Walloon is “quasi unintelligible” to French speakers is just laughable. There’s is a fair degree of mutual intelligible between between ***all*** Romance languages, including even Romanian. For Walloon to be quasi unintelligible it’d have to be some kind of isolated language like Basque or at the very least not be a part of the Romance languages lol.
edit: it’s absolutely hilarious that people are downvoting objective linguistics but nobody can reply with anything more than some anecdotal stories.
Yeah, I was working as a consultant in a Walloon company (near Brussels) and that’s where I first learned about the existence of the Walloon language. Most Walloons didn’t even speak the language. My manager referred me to one of the directors who knew a few words.
I still remember them using the word loch/loq which means door in Walloon.
That’s about all I know of it
But the important question is what language does James Bissonette speak?
Last time this was posted, there was some Walloon guy bitching in the comments that Flanders should just have taken the cultural genocide, because then we’d have a monolingual country. Weirdest fucking take ever imho.
“the victim of French”…. Indeed if you consider you as a victim, I understand why you loose so many energy fighting rather than open your mind…
Maybe I can give an exemple. My family is rooted into the Liège High bourgeoisie. I have letters from my ancestors lying around and they are about half walloon and half French.
It seem like official and business dealings were done mostly in French (but sometimes in Waloon) but all friendly conversations were in Walloon.
From my grandfather (so beginning in the 20s) it was exclusively in French
k. we kunnen dus de fransen verder haten?
My uncles were being punished at school (early 50’s) for speaking Walloon at home. The language was obliterated.
Why does your phone show the seconds?
While it’s a way less strong case, I believe that even the Flemish who know this piece of really interesting history would make the (I guess valid) point that, considering Walloon was Gallic, it was a lot easier to learn French than it was for the Flemish.
On the other hand, for the Flemish, speaking all sorts of Germanic dialects, French really was a totally different language.
With Wallonia back then also being the by far higher educated region, youths would pick up on the newly imposed French more quickly than Flemish, and unfortunately policy makers *then* made the choice to only make French the official language.
I reckon that the Flemish movement did actually do a great job in making sure Dutch became a official language. The stories about Flemish people being on trial for murders they didn’t commit, with a French-speaking barrister, in a French-speaking court, who got convicted of a murder they didn’t commit simply because they weren’t able to defend themselves, are horrendous.
It’s not particularly the French’s fault either, that French became the only official language after a while. It’s the Belgian policy makers that made that mistake, so the Flemish movement in my opinion still made a strong, and important case.
To give some perspective, as someone from a mostly (one west-flemish great grandmother) walloon family (from Liège):
– My (walloon) great-grandparents were native walloon speakers
– My grandparents were more or less fluent, at least spoken. Not sure if they could write and/or read it.
– My parents have a basic grasp of the language, I’m pretty sure my mom can read it as well.
– I only know some expressions that I picked up from my grandparents/parents, cannot read or write it.
It is not completely lost yet, but has been declining noticeably with each generation.
Flemish is a dialect of Dutch spoken in the Netherlands/aka Holland.