Linguistic makeup of Brussels without Belgian independence
- Thread starter miguelrj
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Mainly Dutch, I would say. In the 19th century it was just the upperclass and the upper middle class that spoke French and a large majority of the people spoke Dutch (or at least Flemish/a Dutch dialect). This was not much different from most Flemish cities (or even Dutch cities). If Brussels remains Dutch (especialy if Wallonia ends up not being Dutch), the main language will not differ from the rest of Flemish Brabant.
Actualy I would even say that the linguistic border would lie to the south. Places in Walloon Brabant that speak now French (like Waterloo) or just below Dutch Limburg (east of Voeren) used to speak a Dutch dialect (or at least a dialect related to the Dutch dialects). They too would most likely speak Dutch in such a situation.
Like pompejus wrote: Brussels would end up mostly Dutch-speaking. The overbearing cultural and linguistic influence of the Francophone Walloons in Belgium only really came about after Belgian independence. What's more, it came about because of that independence. For a long time, Wallonia was the rich, industrializing part of the country, while Flanders was regarded as an agrarian backwater.
Without the Belgian revolution, OTL 'Flanders' would not be seen as a distinct region: those would be just five of the fourteen Dutch-speaking provinces (fifteen if they still split Holland into two provinces, as per OTL), as opposed to the four Francophone ones. (And I'm being generous, counting Luxemburg as Francophone, which less than half of it really was.)
Needless to say, the Dutch would be culturally, linguistically, economically and politically dominant. My guess is that French would decline as a spoken language in Wallonia for some time. By the present day, we might very well see Walloon nationalists trying to secede from the United Netherlands, rather like OTL's Flemish nationalists trying to secede from Belgium.
Without the Belgian revolution, OTL 'Flanders' would not be seen as a distinct region: those would be just five of the fourteen Dutch-speaking provinces (fifteen if they still split Holland into two provinces, as per OTL), as opposed to the four Francophone ones. (And I'm being generous, counting Luxemburg as Francophone, which less than half of it really was.)
Needless to say, the Dutch would be culturally, linguistically, economically and politically dominant. My guess is that French would decline as a spoken language in Wallonia for some time. By the present day, we might very well see Walloon nationalists trying to secede from the United Netherlands, rather like OTL's Flemish nationalists trying to secede from Belgium.
No, I doubt that. French will have the strong support France and the strong reputation of the French language in general, while the Dutch language OTL was only spoken or supported by the Netherlands, which was in the 19th century an impoverished, backwards, irrelevant country. Although I believe that with a Dutch Belgium the Frenchification will be stopped, I doubt that it will be replaced by Dutchification.
That is certainly possible, if not likely. I always like the idea of reversing the faith of the Flemish and Walloon situation in a Belgium remains Dutch scenario. It makes for a nice irony.
So it's consensual: Dutch it is. 
I was considering that with OTL's north-south power share (being Brussels co-capital of the Kingdom), the Southern Netherlands' French-speaking elite could still flock to Brussels and influence it...
I mean, I do believe that Walloon is doomed to be replaced with Standard French but Wallonia is just a small region overall. So if we continue to have the usage of the French language as more of a class thing than a regional thing, what language shifts can we expect from Amsterdam to Brussels?
I was considering that with OTL's north-south power share (being Brussels co-capital of the Kingdom), the Southern Netherlands' French-speaking elite could still flock to Brussels and influence it...So that trend eventually died out IOTL and no one in the Netherlands use it as a first language. But if we have a surviving United Kingdom of the Netherlands, couldn't the resulting larger French-speaking elites remain and pressure the whole country to be functionally bilingual?
I mean, I do believe that Walloon is doomed to be replaced with Standard French but Wallonia is just a small region overall. So if we continue to have the usage of the French language as more of a class thing than a regional thing, what language shifts can we expect from Amsterdam to Brussels?
- Will the French-speaking elites in Flanders and Northern Netherlands be drowned by a sea of Dutch like IOTL?
- Or - if French carries on being spoken by the upper class - will it attract more and more people from the middle class (be it in the Hague or in Antwerp) into learning French and pass both languages to their children?
French was already on its way out in the early 19th century. In the 18th century basicly all the upper classin the Netherlands and Germany spoke French. In the 19th century, partly because of the rise of nationalism, partly because of the decline in importance of France and partly because of the rise of social mobility this was disappering. I don't think it can be stopped. Belgium was unable to stop it in most of Flanders (with Brussels and some border areas as the only exceptions). So in a united Netherlands I expect the same thing to happen. In the end, even with the rise of an industrialised Wallonia, the balance of power in the Netherlands lies in the Dutch speaking area, which makes out the overwhelming majority of the country (mind you, I do believe the Walloons will be quite influential).
Considering that premise I begin to lose faith on the inevitability of Standard French replacing Walloon...
I don't know about that. Walloon basicly is a French dialect (although Walloons might disagree, just wait until Xgentis posts about it and he gives his opinion). If we look at the OTL situation in the Netherlands, you can see that on a local level various dialects are spoken (like Limburgish, Twents, Zeelandic, etc), but everyone speaks Dutch to people from outside those regions (or to other people who don't speak the dialect). So if I extrapolate the situation In Wallonia, my guess would be that the same aplies there. On a local level they speak their dialects, but they speak French to communicate with others from outside those regions.
Unless the Dutch try to enforce Dutch on the Walloons (which i not only consider unlikely, I consider it unlikely to succeed) or try to create a national identy based on the Walloon dialect, I believe French will be the main language thaught at schools.
I know this is a bit of an aside from the thread at hand, but since most Francophone residents of Brussels have only spoken the language for three generations tops why are they so attached to it? Couldn't an appeal be made by the Flemish to "come home" rather than the current mutual antagonism?
IIRC Walloon is from a different branch of the Langue d'Oil than the branch from which standard French developed.
Regarding the OP, I too agree that Brussels will stay a majority Dutch speaking town. BTW the (Dutch) dialect of Brussels is Brabantian* not Flemish. Unless you use Flemish as a basket case for Dutch in Belgium.
(*= from the southern branch, my own Brabantian dialect is from the nothern branch; a split which had grown due to the 80 years' war)
Regarding the OP, I too agree that Brussels will stay a majority Dutch speaking town. BTW the (Dutch) dialect of Brussels is Brabantian* not Flemish. Unless you use Flemish as a basket case for Dutch in Belgium.
(*= from the southern branch, my own Brabantian dialect is from the nothern branch; a split which had grown due to the 80 years' war)
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You know, that is still very closely related to each other. At least more closely than Occitanian is related to French.
It is of course hard to say, but I think you can compare the different dialects in Northern France (Langue d'Oil) to the different dialects in Germany (even ignoring Lower Saxon). Close enough to basicly say they are dialects of the same language, although with various degrees of differences among themselves. In short, there is nothing stopping the Walloons to speak French.
The problem is that wallon can't be understood by a french speaker it is more then a small difference.
Exactly, they are not mutually intelligible. Standard French and Walloon are distinct languages. Related, yes, but the situation is similar to Mandarin/Cantonese.
If Belgium doesn't secede from the Netherlands, I think the south of this Greater Netherlands will try to keep a cultural specificity. I mean, they're not Protestant and the elite is still widely influenced by France. Brussels would be certainly Flemish-speaking but French would be largely present, just like it is in Luxembourg city: the natives speak Luxembourgish as a 1st language but they're all perfectly able to speak French (without an accent).
Isn't the situation more similar to Dutch and Limburgish? Limburgish is considered a dialect of Dutch, but unless you are familiar with Limburgish, you won't understand it if you can only speak Dutch. The same is true for many dialects in the Netherlands.
Only around 300,000 Walloons today speak the Walloon language with any regularity. The rest speak Belgian French. Parts of Wallonia never spoke Waloon (they instead spoke Picard, Lorrain, or Champenois), and even in the Waloon section there has been language shift towards standard French. Only about 15% of the Walloon population speaks the language today.