Walloon Language - Disputed Nature of Walloon

Disputed Nature of Walloon

Linguists have long classified Walloon as a dialect of French (See langues d'oïl). Like French, it descended from Vulgar Latin. Arguing that a French-speaking person could only understand Walloon with difficulty, 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 has defined the precise geographical repartition of the four chief dialects of Walloon. In addition, he has 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 Encyclopaedia Britannica identified Walloon as the "northern-most Romance language".