On Tue, 3 Aug 1999, Valerie Sutton wrote:
> Waloon is a dialect of French, that is spoken by people of celtic
> decent I believe - and then there is the French-speaking section of
> Belgium - which is different than Waloon - at least that was my
> understanding - but you are welcome to correct me if I am wrong!
> Belgium has such a variety of languages it gets confusing!
The Ethnologue says that the five languages of Belgium are Belgian
Sign Language, Dutch (Flemish), French, German and Luxembourgeois. French
has two dialects in Belgium, Walloon and Picard. The Ethnologue is less
reliable for signed languages, but it lists two dialects of Belgian Sign
Language, North and South.
If we accept the Ethnologue's account, then there is one Belgian
Sign Language, but if we accept Flemish Sign Language as a separate
language, then the proper name (in English) for the language used in the
rest of the country would be Walloon Sign Language, or Belgian French Sign
Language.
--
-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
Linguistics Department
The University of New Mexico
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