Belgicism (French)

Different types of Belgicisms

Belgicisms can be of phonetic or semantic nature. The following list provides a comprehensive overview of the types of Belgicisms.

• Phonetic belgicisms, which are not written differently from standard French words, but are pronounced differently:
  • Many Belgians pronounce <ui> like , unlike French speakers of French. Most French individuals notice a difference between the two sounds, but many Belgians do not.
  • Another difference in pronunciation stems from how loan words with the letter 'w' are pronounced. Belgian Francophones tend to always pronounce w as in words like wagon whereas in Standard French, this would be pronounced , since French Francophones generally pronounce like . In these cases, however, /ɥi/ and /v/ (the latter in "wagon" but not in "wallon") are supposed to be the norm.
  • The distinction between the nasal vowels and is upheld, whereas in many regions of France, these two sounds have merged. Thus, although for many French people, brin (stalk) and brun (brown), are homophones, for Belgians they are not.
  • The distinction between long and short vowels is also upheld, which can create minimal pairs in the presence of a mute ending consonant. For instance, "bot" (as in un pied bot, a club foot) and "beau" (beautiful) are not homonyms in Belgian French, creating minimal pairs of sentences like J'ai vu son pied gauche, il était bot (~ I saw she was club-footed on the left) vs. J'ai vu son pied gauche, il était beau (~ I saw she had a beautiful left foot). (In this particular case, "bot" might be heard as [boʔ] or [bo] depending on idiolect or regiolect, vs. "beau" [boː].)
  • Another unusual aspect of Belgian French is the clear difference between the pronunciation of 'ai' and 'ais' at the end of a word. Belgians pronounced the first like an and the second like an . As a consequence, Belgians rarely confuse the future tense and conditional when writing.
  • Belgian speakers pronounce the final "t" in certain words that some French do not: for example, huit (eight) and vingt (twenty) are pronounced and respectively before a pause.
• Archaic belgicisms that come from the foreign rule over Belgium in the past. Belgium has been occupied by Dutch, English, Spanish, Austrian, French and German powers, all of which have indubitably laid a footprint on Belgian French.
  • Worth mentioning is the use of 'septante' and 'nonante' for 70 and 90 respectively. Although these words are used in Switzerland and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in Jersey legal French, in the rest of the Francophone world, the ventigesimal 'soixante-dix' and 'quatre-vingt-dix' are used.
  • The term échevin (which existed in Ancien régime French but was replaced in France by adjoint au maire) is still the official Belgian terms for the members of a township's executive power.
• Belgicisms that were manufactured by the Belgian government. Like France and Québec, Belgium too has an administration in place to prescribe language use.
  • Belgium undertook a series of measures to combat linguistic sexism by creating feminine versions of masculine gender occupations. For example, professeur and docteur had no feminine-gender equivalent words, even though many women had these occupations. In March 1989, the Belgian administration prescribed that all jobs would have a grammatically masculine and feminine form (le docteur could be la doctoresse.) This feminization of words has no official equivalent in metropolitan France.
• Belgicisms of Germanic origin such as the word bourgmestre which comes from the Dutch burgemeester and refers to the mayor of a village or township.
• Belgicisms with different meanings from other variants of French. Some words have a different meaning in Belgium from those in other Francophone countries:
  • La cassonade in Belgium is a light or dark brown sugar extracted from beets; in Québec, it is a brown cane sugar.
  • What is called endive in France is called chicorée in Belgium and vice versa. (The chicon is Belgian endive, a chicorée grown in the dark to keep it white rather than green.)
  • Outre-Quiévrain is used to refer to Belgium by the French, and to France by the Belgians; Quiévrain is the border crossing point on the old main Paris-Brussels railway line.
• Words for new concepts created separately in Belgium and in France. For instance, Belgian logopède vs. French orthophoniste, independently formed on different Greek roots to mean "a speech therapist". Similarly, Belgian un parastatal vs. French un organisme semi-public.
• Belgicisms different in grammar, not vocabulary. Some Belgicisms are unfamiliar to speakers of other French dialects due to their syntax, rather than lexicon.
  • Belgians use the verb savoir (to know) for inanimate objects. For instance, a Belgian may say "Ma voiture ne sait pas démarrer" (lit. 'My car doesn't know how to start') for a car that is malfunctioning. Standard French speakers may use “Ma voiture ne peut pas démarrer” (lit. 'My car cannot start').

Examples