Listen to Belgian accents and dialects!

"Nonante", "septante"... these are some famous Belgicisms that foreigners learn when they visit the country to speak French. But the difference is also in the accent, or the accents even, because depending on the region you come from, you might get one of the specific local accents. Check out a recent YouTube video to listen to samples of people speaking French in various Belgian accents. Another video will show you the variety of local dialects and languages of Wallonia!

Ten examples of Belgian accents in French

1) Flemish accent (okay the speaker's accent is very slight!)
2) Brussels accent (actually an exagerated drunk version of it!)
3) Brussels-Walloon accent, a sort of "norm" in Francophone Belgium
4) Belgian Picard accent (similar to a Northern French accent)
5) Charleroi accent
6) Namur accent
7) Liège accent (very particular tone)
8) Verviers accent (the one where nasal vowels are not nasal, actually this accent is also heard in Liège)
9) Belgian German-speaker accent

This list is non-exhaustive, because there are as many accents and gradations of them as there are cities and social classes in Belgium (e.g. there is a posh Brussels-Brabant accent!).

Ten languages/dialects spoken in the Walloon region

 

Romance languages:

1) Eastern Walloon dialect (Liège)

2) Central Walloon dialect (Namur)

3) Walloon-Picard (West): a transition with the neighbouring Picard dialects
4) Walloon-Lorrain (South): also a transition, but with Lorrain this time
5) Lorrain (Gaume): this Lorrain dialect is spoken in the extreme South of Belgium
6) Picard: very similar to Picard or Ch'ti spoken in France
7) Champenois: a very small area in the South-West speaks a dialect similar to that in Champagne

Germanic languages:
1) Moselle Franconian (or Luxembourgish)
2) Ripuarian (similar to what is spoken in Cologne)
3) Platdiets or Limburgish-Ripuarian (a dialect with mixed German-Dutch influences)