French Flemish

French Flemish
Spoken in: French Region Nord-Pas-de-Calais,
near border of Flanders, Belgium.
Number of speakers: France - 20 000 (mostly elder) - 60 000 (1999)[1]
Language Family:
 Indo-European languages

 Germanic languages
  West Germanic
   Franconian
    Dutch
     West Flemish
      French Flemish

Official Status
France Half official
Language Code
ISO 639-3: vls
Historic regression of Dutch in the Western periphery.
The blue line indicates the situation in the 7th-8th century; the red line marks the situation during the 20th century; the black line is the current French-Belgian border.
Flemish (green) and French (red/brown) as spoken in the arrondissement of Dunkirk in 1874 and 1972

French Flemish (French Flemish: Fransch vlaemsch, Standard Dutch: Frans-Vlaams, French: flamand français) is a West Flemish dialect spoken in the north of contemporary France. Place names attest to Flemish having been spoken since the 8th century in the area that was ceded to France in the 17th century and which became known as French Flanders. Its dialect subgroup, called French Flemish, meanwhile, became a minority dialect that survives mainly in Dunkirk (Duinkerke in Dutch/Duunkerke in West Flemish = dune church), Bourbourg (Broekburg in Dutch), Calais (Kales), Saint-Omer (Sint-Omaars) with an ethnic enclave Haut-Pont (Haute-Ponte) known for its predominantly Flemish community and Bailleul (Belle). French-Flemish has about 20,000 daily users, and twice that number of occasional speakers. There has been an active movement to retain French Flemish in the region for the last 40 years, and the language's status appears to be moribund.[2]

Education

French Flemish is taught in a few schools in the French Westhoek. The ANVT-ILRF was given permission to carry out experimental lessons in four public schools (in Esquelbecq, Noordpeene, Volckerinckhove, Wormhout) for the school years of 2007-08 until 2010-11, after which it would be evaluated. Afterwards, all requirements were met but it was only allowed to continue them, but not to expand to other schools or to the collège. On the other hand, the private Catholic education began teaching Dutch in collèges in Gravelines and Hondschoote.[3]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Bientôt une charte pour sauver le ch’ti et les 74 autres langues régionales ?, in La Voix du Nord.
  2. ↑ "Flemish in France". UOC, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia), subsite Euromosaic - Research Centre of Multilingualism. Retrieved 14 January 2007.
  3. ↑ "Le flamand fait son entrée dans deux collèges du Dunkerquois" (in French). 1 September 2011.
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