West Flemish ( West-Vlams or West-Vloams or Vlaemsch (in French Flanders ), Dutch : West-Vlaams , French: flamand occidental ) is a collection of Low Franconian varieties spoken in western Belgium and the neighbouring areas of France and the Netherlands.
10-501: Bouchain ( French pronunciation: [buʃɛ̃] ; West Flemish : Boesem ) is a commune in the Nord department in northern France . It lies halfway between Cambrai and Valenciennes . Bouchain, seat of the early medieval County of Ostrevent , was taken by Arnulf I, Count of Flanders , in the 10th century and eventually subsumed into the County of Hainaut . During
20-647: A long ie ( [i] ). Like for the ui , the long o ( [o] ) can be replaced by an [ø] ( eu ) for some words but a [uo] for others. That often causes similarities to ranchers English. Here are some examples showing the sound shifts that are part of the vocabulary: Plural forms in Standard Dutch most often add -en , but West Flemish usually uses -s , like the Low Saxon dialects and even more prominently in English in which -en has become very rare. Under
30-522: A short u ( [ɐ] ), a phenomenon also occurring in Russian and some other Slavic languages , called akanye . That happens spontaneously to some words, but other words keep their original short o sounds. Similarly, the short a ( [ɑ] ) can turn into a short o ( [ɔ] ) in some words spontaneously. The diphthong ui ( /œy/ ) does not exist in West Flemish and is replaced by a long u ( [y] ) or
40-523: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . West Flemish language West Flemish is spoken by about a million people in the Belgian province of West Flanders , and a further 50,000 in the neighbouring Dutch coastal district of Zeelandic Flanders (200,000 if including the closely related dialects of Zeelandic ) and 10-20,000 in the northern part of the French department of Nord . Some of
50-404: Is pronounced only if the next word begins with a vowel sound. Another feature of West Flemish is the conjugation of ja and nee ("yes" and "no") to the subject of the sentence. That is somewhat related to the double subject, but even when the rest of the sentence is not pronounced, ja and nee are generally used with the first part of the double subject. This conjugation can be negated with
60-535: The /h/ sounds to a /x/ or /ɣ/ . Standard Dutch also has many words with an -en ( /ən/ ) suffix (mostly plural forms of verbs and nouns). While Standard Dutch and most dialects do not pronounce the final n , West Flemish typically drops the e and pronounces the n inside the base word. For base words already ending with n , the final n sound is often lengthened to clarify the suffix. That makes many words become similar to those of English: beaten , listen etc. The short o ( [ɔ] ) can also be pronounced as
70-655: The War of the Spanish Succession , when the town was fortified, Bouchain was besieged twice. On 12 September 1711 it was seized from the French after a 34 day siege by the Grand Alliance led by the Duke of Marlborough . It was again besieged, and recaptured by French forces, on 19 October 1712 after an 18 day siege . It is twinned with Halesworth and Eitorf . This Nord geographical article
80-583: The best known traits are the replacement of Standard Dutch (pre-)velar fricatives g and ch in Dutch ( /x, ɣ/ ) with glottal h [h, ɦ] ,. The following differences are listed by their Dutch spelling, as some different letters have merged their sounds in Standard Dutch but remained separate sounds in West Flemish. Pronunciations can also differ slightly from region to region. The absence of /x/ and /ɣ/ in West Flemish makes pronouncing them very difficult for native speakers. That often causes hypercorrection of
90-417: The influence of Standard Dutch, -s is being used by fewer people, and younger speakers tend to use -en . The verbs zijn ("to be") and hebben ("to have") are also conjugated differently. West Flemish often has a double subject. Standard Dutch has an indefinite article that does not depend on gender, unlike in West Flemish. However, a gender-independent article is increasingly used. Like in English, n
100-551: The main cities where West Flemish is widely spoken are Bruges , Dunkirk , Kortrijk , Ostend , Roeselare and Ypres . West Flemish is listed as a "vulnerable" language in UNESCO 's online Red Book of Endangered Languages . West Flemish has a phonology that differs significantly from that of Standard Dutch, being similar to Afrikaans in the case of long E, O and A. Also where Standard Dutch has sch , in some parts of West Flanders, West-Flemish, like Afrikaans, has sk . However,
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