French Flemish

French Flemish
Frans-Vlams
Native toFrance
RegionNord-Pas-de-Calais: Dunkirk, Bourbourg, Calais, Saint-Omer and Bailleul
Native speakers
(20,000 full speakers or 50,000 with varying proficiency[1] – 60,000)[2] cited 1999)
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologfran1265  Frans-Westhoek Vlaams
Linguasphere52-ACB-agd
This article is a part of a series on
Dutch
Low Saxon dialects
West Low Franconian dialects
East Low Franconian dialects

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 part of Flanders that was ceded to France at the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees, and which hence 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 its Flemish ethnic enclave of Haut-Pont (Haute-Ponte),[3] and Bailleul (Belle).

French Flemish has about 20,000 daily users, and twice that number of occasional speakers. The dialect's status appears to be moribund,[4] but there has been an active movement to retain French Flemish in the region.[1]

  1. ^ a b Lambrechts, Toon (10 September 2014). "French Flemish: group defends a dying language". Flanders Today. Archived from the original on 9 December 2015.
  2. ^ Bientôt une charte pour sauver le ch’ti et les 74 autres langues régionales ?, in La Voix du Nord.
  3. ^ "The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge". Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 1846.
  4. ^ "Flemish in France". UOC, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia), subsite Euromosaic – Research Centre of Multilingualism. Retrieved 14 January 2007.