page_title: Walloon language
section_title: Disputed nature of Walloon
hierarchical_section_title: Walloon language / Disputed nature of Walloon
caption_attribution_description: English: Street sign of the main square in Herstal, written in Walloon (Hesta; province di Lidje). Walon: Plake a Hesta metowe sol måjhon-comene.
context_page_description: Walloon is a Romance language that is spoken in much of Wallonia in Belgium, in some villages of northern France and in the northeast part of Wisconsin, US until the mid-20th century and in some parts of Canada. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, the most prominent member of which is the French language. The historical background of its formation was the territorial extension since 980 of the Principality of Liège to the south and west.
  Despite its rich literature, beginning anonymously in the 16th century and with well-known authors since 1756, the use of Walloon has decreased markedly since France's annexation of Wallonia in 1795. This period definitively established French as the language of social promotion, far more than it was before. After World War I, public schools provided French-speaking education to all children, inducing a denigration of Walloon, especially when accompanied by official orders in 1952 to punish its use in schools. Subsequently, since the middle of the 20th century, generational transmission of the language has decreased, resulting in Walloon almost becoming a dead language.
context_section_description: Linguists had long classified Walloon as a dialect of French, which in turn is a langue d'oïl. Like French, it descended from Vulgar Latin.  Arguing that a French-speaking person could not understand Walloon easily, 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 defined the precise geographical repartition of the four chief dialects of Walloon. In addition, he 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 Encyclopædia Britannica identified Walloon as the "northern-most Romance language".
caption: Hèsta, the Walloon name of the city of Herstal
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