Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Belgicism (French)
Summary
A belgicism (belgicisme) is a word, expression, or turn of phrase that is unique to Belgian French. Even though the French spoken in Belgium is closer to the French spoken in France than the French spoken by Québécois, there are a considerable number of words and phrases that have disappeared from common usage in other Francophone nations that remain common in everyday Belgian speech.
Certain words used in Belgium that are not used in Standard French are also found in northern France and in Switzerland, for example chicon ('endive') and septante ('seventy', unlike the ventigesimal soixante-dix, or 'sixty-ten', used in France.) In these cases, these words are sometimes not classified as being solely belgicisms.
Belgium has three national official languages, and consequently, the French spoken in the French part of Belgium is considerably under the influence of the languages of the other Belgian regions, and is also enriched by vocabulary from the languages of neighbouring countries, mainly Dutch, but to a much lesser extent German as well. In addition, there's also influence from English on Belgian-French distinct from its influence on French-French (e.g., the word boiler is not used in Metropolitan French).
Belgian French is also enriched by vocabulary from other regional Romance languages, such as Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Champenois. Belgicisms directly influenced by Walloon are specifically called Wallonisms.
One can point to:
phonetic belgicisms, which are not written differently from standard French words, but are pronounced differently:
Many Belgians pronounce /ɥi/ like /wi/, unlike French speakers of French. Most French individuals notice a difference between the two sounds, but many Belgians do not. Another difference in pronunciation stems from how loan words with the letter 'w' are pronounced. Belgian Francophones tend to always pronounce w as /w/ in words like wagon /waɡɔ̃/ whereas in Standard French, this would be pronounced /vaɡɔ̃/, since French Francophones generally pronounce /w/ like /v/.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.