Judith Lea wrote:
In article , Janet Tweedy
writes

In article , Judith Lea
writes

We spent last Friday night in a lovely old hotel on the French border
in Northern France and heard Walloon French, Wow, different to
anything I have heard before - mind you the food and wine were superb
so I didn't have to speak too much!


My dad was fluent in that, in the war. We thought he was joking when
he used to tell us he could speak Walloon, when we were young.
Apparently some sort of dialect?


Janet


It is a dialect but also much more, there are some words that do not
exist in French - I loved the intonation, it was a bit like the Welsh.


In fact, it is several dialects, and people from different regions don't
necessarily understand each other! For example, the "walloon" spoken by
my father near the Luxembourg border is drastically different from one
spoken where my mother is from (La Louviere, near french border). I love
these languages and it's really a shame that they disappear so quickly.
I know just only a few words...

Philippe