| French Flemish | |
|---|---|
| Frans-Vlams | |
| Native to | France |
| Region | Nord-Pas-de-Calais:Dunkirk,Bourbourg,Calais,Saint-Omer andBailleul |
Native speakers | (20,000 full speakers or 50,000 with varying proficiency[1] – 60,000)[2] cited 1999) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | fran1265 Frans-Westhoek Vlaams |
| Linguasphere | 52-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 (Fransch vlaemsch,Standard Dutch:Frans-Vlaams,French:flamand français) is aWest Flemish dialect spoken in the north of contemporary France.
Place names indicate that Flemish was spoken as early as the 8th century in the region ofFlanders that was ceded to France at the 1659Treaty of the Pyrenees. This area became known asFrench Flanders. Its dialect subgroup, called French Flemish, meanwhile, became a minority dialect that survives mainly inDunkirk (Duinkerke in Dutch,Duunkerke in West Flemish, "dune church"),Bourbourg (Broekburg in Dutch),Calais (Kales),Saint-Omer (Sint-Omaars), with its Flemishethnic enclave of Haut-Pont (Haute-Ponte),[3] andBailleul (Belle).
French Flemish has about 20,000 daily users, and twice that number of occasional speakers. The dialect's status appears to bemoribund,[4] but there has been an active movement to retain French Flemish in the region.[1]
Though generally seen as a dialect of Dutch, some of its speakers prefer to call it aregional language. Jean-Paul Couché, chairman of theAkademie voor Nuuze Vlaemsche Taele (ANVT), argues:[1]
Linguistically, a dialect depends on a larger, national language. That does not apply to French Flemish. We are not connected to standard Dutch because it is an artificial language that was created based on the dialects of North Holland. Research shows that the distance between French Flemish and Dutch is greater than that between Dutch and German.[1]
Although French Flemish and West Flemish are together withLimburgish the most distant dialects from Standard Dutch, Standard Dutch and Standard German are more distant still. However, that is not the case for dialects spoken at both sides of the Dutch-German border. This is partly due to the fact that those German dialects are not dialects of High German but ofLow German andLow Franconian.
A growing, re-introduced language, French Flemish is taught in several schools in theFrench Westhoek. The ANVT-ILRF was given permission to carry out experimental lessons in four public schools (inEsquelbecq,Noordpeene,Volckerinckhove,Wormhout) for the school years of 2007–08 until 2010–11, after which it would be evaluated. Afterwards, all requirements were met but it was only allowed to continue them, but not to expand to other schools or to thecollège. On the other hand, the private Catholic education began teaching standard Dutch in collèges inGravelines andHondschoote.[5]