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xvi Language. BELGIUM.
The Belgian Carus closely resemble those of Paris. They are
most frequented about midday and in the evening. Coffee, liqueurs,
and beer are the beverages offered here. It is not the custom of
the country to breakfast at a café, and hence the price of this meal
is apt to be as high as at a hotel. Gratuity 5-10 c. — At the Con-
FEOTIONERS (patisseries) ices and liqueurs of numerous kinds and
occasionally beer may be obtained. Breakfast may in some cases
be secured at a moderate price.
Newspapers (Journaux). The chief cafés are usually supplied with
the Brussels newspapers and the chief Paris journals; English papers are
rare. The principal Brussels journals are L’Indépendance, LEtoile Belge,
Le Petit Bleu, La Gazette, La Chronique (all liberal), Le Courrier de Bruzelles,
Le Patriote, Le Petit Belge (clerical), and Le Peuple (socialist). The Belgian
Gazette is an English weekly paper. At Antwerp the leading papers are
Le Précurseur, Le Matin, De Niewwe Gazet (liberal), La Métropole, De Gazet
van Antwerpen (clerical), and De Werker (socialist).
The most widely-read journal in Ghent is the neutral Gazette van Gent,
which appeared first in 1667 and is one of the oldest of existing newspapers.
VI. Language.
The population of Belgium is mainly divided between two chief
races: the Walloons, almost exclusively confined to the basin of the
Meuse or Maas, and the Flemings (about five-eighths of the whole),
in the basin of the Scheldt. The boundary between the Walloon
and Flemish languages is a fairly straight line drawn from Vis6é
(p. 264) southwards past Brussels and Courtrai to Calais, Walloon
being spoken in a few isolated districts to the N., and Flemish
here and there to the S. of the line.+
In spite of the efforts of the Flemish population (p. xvii), Francu
is still the language of the government, the army, of most of the
newspapers, of public traffic, of scientific literature, and indeed of
all the upper classes, as it has been since the time of the crusades.
The WaLLoon language is an early French (Romanic) patois,
with Celtic and Teutonic elements, but almost as unintelligible to
a Frenchman as Flemish is to a German. Its literary importance
is of the slightest. The learned Florentine @uicciardini (d. 1589),
who as Tuscan ambassador resided for severalyears in the Nether-
lands, describes the Walloon language, in his Descriptio totius Belgii,
as ‘sermo communiter G@allicus; sed quia Galliam inter atque Ger-
maniam et Belgicam positi, corruptus valde et perabsurdus’. The
following popular rhymes from the ‘Almanach par maitre Mathieu
Laensbergh’ will serve as a specimen of the language:
JANUARY:
Il gna pu @broali ki dpoussir. | Il y a plus de boue que de poussieére.
+ Of the total population of 6,693,548 in 1900, 2,822,005 spoke Flemish
only; 2,574,805 French only; 804,587 Flemish and French; 28,314 German
only; 66,447 German and French ; 7238 Flemish and German; 42,889 Flemish,
French, and German; and 22,567 other languages only. |
