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Belgium is a federal state comprising three communities and three regions that are based on four language areas. For each of these subdivision types, the subdivisions together make up the entire country; in other words, the types overlap. The language areas were established by the Second Gilson Act, which entered into force on 2 August 1963.
The Kingdom of Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French, and German . A number of non-official, minority languages and dialects are spoken as well. As a result of being in between Latin and Germanic Europe, and historically being split between different principalities, the nation has multiple official languages.
Dutch is the mother tongue of about 60% of the population in Belgium, spoken by approximately 6.5 million out of a population of 11 million people. [1] [2] [3] It is the only official language in Flanders, that is to say the provinces of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Limburg, East Flanders and West Flanders. Alongside French, it is also an official ...
A Dutch speaker. Dutch ( endonym: Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts] ⓘ) is a West Germanic language, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language [4] and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders (or 60% ...
Belgian French ( French: français de Belgique ), also known as Walloon French ( French: français Wallon ), is the variety of French spoken mainly among the French Community of Belgium, alongside related Oïl languages of the region such as Walloon, Picard, Champenois, and Lorrain (Gaumais). The French language spoken in Belgium differs very ...
Many non-French-speaking observers (over)generalize Walloons as a term of convenience for all Belgian French-speakers (even those born and living in the Brussels-Capital Region). The mixing of the population over the centuries means that most families can trace ancestors on both sides of the linguistic divide.
English is the most commonly spoken foreign language in 19 out of 25 European Union countries (excluding Ireland) [11] In the EU25, working knowledge of English as a foreign language is clearly leading at 38%, followed by German and French (at 14% each), Russian and Spanish (at 6% each), and Italian (3%). [12] ".
Belgium, [A] officially the Kingdom of Belgium, [B] is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the south, and the North Sea to the west. It covers an area of 30,689 km 2 (11,849 sq mi) [4] [12] and has a population of more than 11.5 ...