What country in Europe is divided by a language boundary between a Germanic and a Romance language, and was founded in 1830?
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History of Belgium The history of Belgium predates the founding of the modern state of that name in 1830. Belgium's history is intertwined with those of its neighbours: the Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg. For most of its history, what is now Belgium was either a part of a larger territory, such as the Carolingian Empire, or divided into a number of smaller states, prominent among them being the Duchy of Brabant, the County of Flanders, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and County of Luxembourg. Due to its strategic location and the many armies fighting on its soil, since the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Belgium has often been called the "battlefield of Europe" or the "cockpit of Europe". It is also remarkable as a European nation which contains, and is divided by, a language boundary between Latin-derived French and Germanic Dutch.
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Romance languages The Romance languages (sometimes called the Romanic languages, Latin languages, or Neo-Latin languages) are the modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin between the sixth and ninth centuries and that thus form a branch of the Italic languages within the Indo-European language family.
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Western studies (Germany) Western studies or western research (German: "Westforschung" ) in Germany traditionally refers to area studies concerned with the countries and areas on Germany's western and southwestern borders, including France (particularly its eastern and northern parts), the Benelux countries and Switzerland, as well as the westernmost "border areas" within Germany, i.e. areas near the Dutch, Belgian, Luxembourgish, French and Swiss borders. The concept of western studies arose during the First World War, and like other forms of area studies, it was often motivated by geostrategic considerations. The traditional concept of western studies was largely abandoned with the onset of the Cold War, West Germany's western alignment and the western European integration process. It has largely been succeeded by the broader field of European studies.
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Belgium Belgium ( ), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30528 km2 and has a population of about 11 million people. Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups: the Dutch-speaking, mostly Flemish community, which constitutes about 59 percent of the population, and the French-speaking, mostly Walloon population, which comprises 40 percent of all Belgians. Additionally, there is a small 1 percent group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons.
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Latin Union The Latin Union is a defunct international organization of nations that used Romance languages, with the aim of protecting, projecting, and promoting the common cultural heritage of Latin peoples and unifying identities of the Latin, and Latin-influenced, world. It was created in 1954 in Madrid, Spain, and existed as a functional institution from 1983 to 2012. Its membership rose from 12 to 36 states, including countries in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region.
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French Flemish French Flemish (French Flemish: "Fransch vlaemsch", Standard Dutch: "Frans-Vlaams", French: "flamand français" ) is a West Flemish dialect spoken in the north of contemporary France. Place names attest to Flemish having been spoken since the 8th century in the area that was ceded to France in the 17th century and which became known as French Flanders. Its dialect subgroup, called French Flemish, meanwhile, became a minority dialect that survives mainly in Dunkirk ("Duinkerke" in Dutch/"Duunkerke" in West Flemish = dune church), Bourbourg ("Broekburg" in Dutch), Calais ("Kales"), Saint-Omer ("Sint-Omaars") with an ethnic enclave Haut-Pont ("Haute-Ponte") known for its predominantly Flemish community and Bailleul ("Belle"). French-Flemish has about 20,000 daily users, and twice that number of occasional speakers. The language's status appears to be moribund., but there has been an active movement to retain French Flemish in the region.
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West Frisian language West Frisian, or simply Frisian ("Frysk"; Dutch: "Fries" ] ) is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland ("Fryslân") in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the three Frisian languages.
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Franconian languages Franconian (German: "Fränkisch" ; Dutch: "Frankisch" ) includes a number of West Germanic languages and dialects possibly derived from the languages and dialects originally spoken by the Franks from their ethnogenesis in the 3rd century AD. The languages that evolved in the northern and eastern lands of Francia included Low Franconian, of which present-day Dutch is the primary member, the West Central German Rhine Franconian and Central Franconian dialects (including Luxembourgish), as well as transitional High Franconian German dialects. Linguists have different views about whether these languages and dialects have descended from a single Franconian proto-language, also known as Istvaeonic.
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Occitania Occitania (Occitan: Occitània , ] , ] , ] , ] ] , is the historical region in southern Europe where Occitan was historically the main language spoken, and where it is sometimes still used, for the most part as a second language. This cultural area roughly encompasses the southern half of France, as well as Andorra, Monaco, and smaller parts of Italy (Occitan Valleys, Guardia Piemontese) and Spain (Aran Valley). Occitania has been recognized as a linguistic and cultural concept since the Middle Ages, but has never been a legal nor a political entity under this name, although the territory was united in Roman times as the "Seven Provinces" (Latin: "Septem Provinciæ" ) and in the early Middle Ages ("Aquitanica" or the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse, or the share of Louis the Pious following Thionville "divisio regnorumi" in 806).
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Mitteleuropa Mitteleuropa (] ), meaning Middle Europe, is one of the German terms for Central Europe. The term has acquired diverse cultural, political and historical connotations.
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Ancient Belgian language Ancient Belgian is a hypothetical extinct Indo-European language, spoken in Belgica (northern Gaul) in late prehistory. It is often identified with the hypothetical Nordwestblock. While it remains a matter of controversy, the linguist Maurits Gysseling — who himself attributed the term to SJ De Laet — hypothesised a Belgian that was distinct from the later Celtic and Germanic languages. According to the theory, which was further elaborated by Hans Kuhn and others, traces of Belgian can be found in certain toponyms such as South-East-Flemish Bevere, Eine, Mater and Melden.
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Languages of Slovenia Slovenia has been a meeting area of the Slavic, Germanic, Romance, and Uralic linguistic and cultural regions, which makes it the most complex meeting point of languages in Europe. The official and national language of Slovenia is Slovene, which is spoken by a large majority of the population. It is also known, in English, as Slovenian. Two minority languages, namely Hungarian and Italian, are recognised as co-official languages and accordingly protected in their residential municipalities. Other significant languages are Croatian and its variants and Serbian, spoken by most immigrants from former Yugoslavia and their descendants. Slovenia is ranked among the top European countries regarding the knowledge of foreign languages. The most often taught foreign languages are English and German, followed by Italian, French, and Spanish.
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Alemannic separatism Alemannic Separatism is a historical movement of separatism of the Alemannic-German-speaking areas of Germany, France and Austria (viz., South Baden, Swabia (viz. most of Württemberg and all of Bavarian Swabia), Alsace and Vorarlberg), aiming at a unification with the Swiss Confederacy (later Switzerland). The historic origins of the movement lay in the Napoleonic era (ca. 1805–1815) and it was briefly revived both after the end of World War I (1919) and after the end of World War II (1946–1952).
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List of companies of Belgium Belgium is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30528 km2 and has a population of about 11 million people. Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups: the Dutch-speaking, mostly Flemish community, which constitutes about 59% of the population, and the French-speaking, mostly Walloon population, which comprises 41% of all Belgians. Additionally, there is a small group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area, and bordering Germany.
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Catalan language Catalan ( ; autonym: "català" ] ] ) is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain. It is the national and only official language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia (where the language is known as Valencian). It also has semi-official status in the Italian commune of Alghero. These territories are often called Catalan Countries.
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Rhinelandic Rhinelandic is a term occasionally used for linguistic varieties of a region on both sides of the Middle and Lower Rhine river in Central West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. It has at least two distinct meanings which often can only be determined from the fine grain context in which the term is used. (This could be complicated at times since in German publications, local languages of villages or cities are commonly referred to as "the dialects" or "dialect", whereas the regiolects, which are dialects of Standard German in a linguistic sense, are hardly called so, but referred to using terms like "Rhinelandic", "Hessian" or "Bavarian", etc., that also name large compounds of related local languages
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German Confederation The German Confederation (German: "Deutscher Bund" ) was an association of 39 German states in Central Europe, created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries and to replace the former Holy Roman Empire, which the French Emperor Napoleon I ended in 1805. Most historians have judged the Confederation to have been weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state. It collapsed due to the rivalry between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire, warfare in the several European revolutions of 1848, and the 1848-1849 German revolution, and the inability of the multiple members to compromise.
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Isogloss An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel letter, the meaning of a word, or the use of some syntactic feature. Major dialects are typically demarcated by "groups" of isoglosses, such as the Benrath line that distinguishes High German from the other West Germanic languages and the La Spezia–Rimini Line that divides the Northern Italian dialects from Central Italian dialects. However, an "individual" isogloss may or may not have any coincidence with a language border. For example, the front-rounding of /y/ cuts across France and Germany, while the /y/ is absent from Italian and Spanish words that are cognates with the /y/-containing French words.
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Culture of Switzerland Switzerland lies at the crossroads of several major European cultures. Three of the continent's major languages, German, French and Italian, are national languages of Switzerland, along with Romansh, spoken by a small minority. Therefore, Swiss culture is characterised by diversity, which is reflected in a wide range of traditional customs. The 26 cantons also account for the large cultural diversity.
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Lower Sorbian language Lower Sorbian ("Dolnoserbski" ) is a Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. It is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, the other being Upper Sorbian.
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Romance Flanders Romance Flanders or Gallicant Flanders is a historical term for the part of the County of Flanders in which Romance languages were spoken, such as varieties of Picard. Today the region straddles the border of France and Belgium.
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Finno-Ugrian Society Finno-Ugrian Society (French: Société Finno-Ougrienne , Finnish: "Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura" ) is a Finnish learned society, dedicated to the study of Uralic and Altaic languages. It was founded in Helsinki in 1883 by the proposal of professor Otto Donner.