Wallonia

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This article is about the geographic term. For other uses, see Wallonia (disambiguation).

Wallonia (French: Wallonie, German: Wallonien, Walloon: Walonreye, Dutch: Wallonië) is a geographic term of a part of Belgium based on an identity concept.

1 Demographics and language
2 Etymology
3 Cinema
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Demographics and language

The Walloon Region occupies the southern part of Belgium. It has an area of 16 844 km² (55.18% of Belgium) and comprises the following provinces:

Its major cities and towns include Liège, Namur, Charleroi, Mons, Tournai, Verviers, Arlon, Bastogne, Wavre, Dinant,Peruwelz and Eupen.

French is the official language in most municipalities. German (with French facilities) is the official language in nine eastern municipalities which belonged to Germany until 1918 and now form the German-speaking Community of Belgium. Several French-speaking municipalities have facilities in Dutch or German (or both). In a survey conducted by the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-La-Neuve and published in June 2006, only 19% of Walloons stated that they were able to speak Dutch. In contrast, 59% of respondents from Flanders claimed to speak French.^[1]^[2]

The variety of French spoken in Wallonia is Belgian French, which differs from the standard French of France to various degrees depending on the speaker. The French language used in the administration and in the media is very similar in Belgium and in France. One notable difference is the use of the words septante (70) and nonante (90) in Belgium, as opposed to soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix in France.

In 1990, Belgium also officially recognised Champenois, Gaumais, Picard, and Walloon as regional languages. All are langues d'oïl - closely related, but not identical, to French.

Walloon and Picard dialects were the predominant languages of the Walloon people until the beginning of the 20th century; French was the language of the upper class. With the development of education in French, these dialects have been in continual decline. There is currently an effort to revive Walloon dialects: some schools offer language courses in Walloon, which is also spoken in some radio programmes, but this effort remains very limited.

Some 70,000 people live in the German-speaking community of Belgium, which has been presented as the best-protected minority in Europe. Nevertheless, there is a drive in the German-speaking community towards gaining more autonomy from the Walloon Region. The current president of the executive of the German-speaking community, Karl-Heinz Lambertz, wants his community to obtain regional autonomy, thus cutting it completely off from Wallonia.

[edit] Etymology

There are theories about the derivation of the name "Wallonia". It may have come from the Gaulish vellaunos meaning "valorous". Its root vella gave the Cymric wallon as in the famous hero's name Caswallon.

It is also one of many Germanic placenames containing the root Gal or Wal which means 'foreigner'. However this is very improbable since Wallonia was home to Celto-Germanic tribes before Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul, then to other Germanic tribes from across the Rhine, and finally the Franks (Wallonia was part of the Roman province of Germania Inferior). In fact, the Frankish Merovingian Dynasty came from Tournai in Wallonia, and the subsequent Carolingian Dynasty had its roots in the region of Liege, at the other end of Wallonia. French language is thought to have originated in Wallonia (and Northern France), as the Latin of the Frankish court.

The term Walloon' was also used in the late 18th and the 19th century to refer to French-speakers who migrated to the Netherlands, e.g. 'Walloon parishes' in Dutch province of Dutch-Limburg.

To many modern Walloons, Wallonia means "land of the valleys". This could be the real etymology of the word, as the part of Wallonia where Walloon language is traditionally spoken (the provinces of Liege, Namur and Luxembourg) is one of the hilliest region of Europe, and contrasts sharply with the flatness of Flanders. The Walloon Tourism Office supports this etymology, and now indicates "land of the valleys" (pays des vallées) on many touristic road signs.

[edit] Cinema

Walloon films are often characterized by social realism, like those by the Dardenne brothers or Benoît Mariage, and the social documentaries by Patric Jean. At the opposite, the side completely shifted of Thierry Zéno's "Vase de noces" (1974), "Mireille in the life of the others" by Jean-Marie Buchet (1979), "C'est arrivé près de chez vous" (English title: Man bites dog) by Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel (1992) and of extravagant Noël Godin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wallonia does not shelter any Anthology Film Archive Museum. No theater projects pointed cinema (experimental cinema, underground, or simply different, unusual test in the content or the form.) There is however the network of the theater known as "Art and essai" but, in practice, they diffuse only cinema subsidized "general public".