*beats her head against her lap for a few seconds*

[conuly]

I'm on my bed, I don't have a desk :)

So, let's list my obsessions:

Autism (yeah, you knew that)
Breastfeeding (a bit counterintuitive, but you knew that too, I'm sure)
Fighting against prescriptivism (tell me you didn't know that, just try!)
Correcting people's grammar/spelling (um....)
Walloon (this is why I say djusk' a sometimes.)

Now, I really do want to learn walloon. Really.

Unfortunately, ALL the resources about walloon are in French. Which would be useful if, y'know, I spoke French, but I don't... GAH!

Language of my ancestors, here, and I can't speak to my living relatives, so can I learn the language of my ancestors? Of course not! And it's going to take me forever to learn enough French to be able to learn Walloon! Expletive profanity cursewords!

Oh, and there's information about learning Walloon in Walloon. I don't see the logic.

Comments

[joeno.livejournal.com]

Isn't Walloon a lot like French anyway? Basically some sort of dialect. I know it's that way with Dutch and Flemish - They're a lot alike, with just a handful of words different and minor differences in pronounciation, but when (like me) you speak Dutch, it's easy to understand those speaking Flemish.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Walloon is closely related to French, and when you look at the words it does often just look like rephoneticised French, but the languages began to split as far back as the 8th century and it was given its own name in the 16th. It has structural differences and has, naturally, taken influence from Dutch and German.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

To be fair, most people trying to learn Walloon have French as their mother tongue (from what I read, there is a movement to get it taught to all Walloon children in schools.) Besides, if you're serious about studying in Belgium, French would probably be of far more use to you than Walloon (by the way, I seem to recall your case against studying in the Netherlands was that you needed to live with relatives - a daily commute to NL would probably take less time than your current daily commuter ;0)

I'm annoyed at all these sources saying that Walloon differs from French in that "the adjective is usually before the noun whilst in French it is after" when in French the adjective is also only *usually* in that position, there are some adjectives where it isn't.

[conuly]

I love you. Seriously.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Yay! But why?

[conuly]

Because you know about Walloon. That's about it.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Nice to know what my only lovable trait is ;0)

But actually, I just researched it. I mean, I knew vaguely about it an stuff, that it was related to French and so on, but I also knew that it was not one of Belgium's official languages (at least, I don't believe it is) and just other vague stuff like that. It was fun researching it, I like learning about languages, it's very interesting.

I'm actually living with a Belgium girl at the moment, but she's the Flemish type (says she's from near Brussels but never goes there "because they speak French" ;0) rather than Walloon. This is probably a good thing - we live in a building infested with Dutchies, not French people ;0)

[conuly]

*giggles* I can see that. For a while, my sister had a Flemish boss. Ei, it was "sure we spoke Flemish - in the kitchen."

My mom thinks Belgium is going to tear itself apart, though, with the Flemish and the Walloons (and the germans too!)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

*giggles* I can see that. For a while, my sister had a Flemish boss. Ei, it was "sure we spoke Flemish - in the kitchen."

Come again?

Oh, and just so you know, I read "ei" as "no" - was that what you intended?

[conuly]

Ei - to/for him/her/it.

His family very much denigrated Flemish, they only wanted to speak French.

It's very interesting, the "better" language is always the language spoken by the richer population, so when the walloons were richer, it was all about French (and Walloon died, just about) and when the Flemish are richer it's all about Flemish (or more likely Dutch...)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

That is interesting, yeah. Not entirely surprising.

And ei = third person singular negative in Finnish (and also just used generally for no) so you can see my confusion... ;0)

[conuly]

Incidentally, while I *would* like to speak to my relatives (and thus need French), I want to learn Walloon for personal reasons - language of my ancestors and all that. It doesn't *have* to be useful.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I completely understand your desire to speak Walloon, I was just remembering you wanting to study in Belgium and language being a consideration in all that - I figured you'd need to learn some French for that anyway.

I understand useless languages, I'm learning Finnish ;0)

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

*raises hand* I didn't know about the anti-prescriptivism!

...mostly becase I don't pay attention. Now I know, and Knowing is half the battle!

[joeno.livejournal.com]

Isn't Walloon a lot like French anyway? Basically some sort of dialect. I know it's that way with Dutch and Flemish - They're a lot alike, with just a handful of words different and minor differences in pronounciation, but when (like me) you speak Dutch, it's easy to understand those speaking Flemish.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Walloon is closely related to French, and when you look at the words it does often just look like rephoneticised French, but the languages began to split as far back as the 8th century and it was given its own name in the 16th. It has structural differences and has, naturally, taken influence from Dutch and German.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

To be fair, most people trying to learn Walloon have French as their mother tongue (from what I read, there is a movement to get it taught to all Walloon children in schools.) Besides, if you're serious about studying in Belgium, French would probably be of far more use to you than Walloon (by the way, I seem to recall your case against studying in the Netherlands was that you needed to live with relatives - a daily commute to NL would probably take less time than your current daily commuter ;0)

I'm annoyed at all these sources saying that Walloon differs from French in that "the adjective is usually before the noun whilst in French it is after" when in French the adjective is also only *usually* in that position, there are some adjectives where it isn't.

[conuly]

I love you. Seriously.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Yay! But why?

[conuly]

Because you know about Walloon. That's about it.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Nice to know what my only lovable trait is ;0)

But actually, I just researched it. I mean, I knew vaguely about it an stuff, that it was related to French and so on, but I also knew that it was not one of Belgium's official languages (at least, I don't believe it is) and just other vague stuff like that. It was fun researching it, I like learning about languages, it's very interesting.

I'm actually living with a Belgium girl at the moment, but she's the Flemish type (says she's from near Brussels but never goes there "because they speak French" ;0) rather than Walloon. This is probably a good thing - we live in a building infested with Dutchies, not French people ;0)

[conuly]

*giggles* I can see that. For a while, my sister had a Flemish boss. Ei, it was "sure we spoke Flemish - in the kitchen."

My mom thinks Belgium is going to tear itself apart, though, with the Flemish and the Walloons (and the germans too!)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

*giggles* I can see that. For a while, my sister had a Flemish boss. Ei, it was "sure we spoke Flemish - in the kitchen."

Come again?

Oh, and just so you know, I read "ei" as "no" - was that what you intended?

[conuly]

Ei - to/for him/her/it.

His family very much denigrated Flemish, they only wanted to speak French.

It's very interesting, the "better" language is always the language spoken by the richer population, so when the walloons were richer, it was all about French (and Walloon died, just about) and when the Flemish are richer it's all about Flemish (or more likely Dutch...)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

That is interesting, yeah. Not entirely surprising.

And ei = third person singular negative in Finnish (and also just used generally for no) so you can see my confusion... ;0)

[conuly]

Incidentally, while I *would* like to speak to my relatives (and thus need French), I want to learn Walloon for personal reasons - language of my ancestors and all that. It doesn't *have* to be useful.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I completely understand your desire to speak Walloon, I was just remembering you wanting to study in Belgium and language being a consideration in all that - I figured you'd need to learn some French for that anyway.

I understand useless languages, I'm learning Finnish ;0)

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

*raises hand* I didn't know about the anti-prescriptivism!

...mostly becase I don't pay attention. Now I know, and Knowing is half the battle!