The Walloon language has employed various alphabets over its history, most notably the Feller system (sistinme Feller) and Unified Walloon (rifondou walon or rfondou walon). The Feller system was developed to transcribe Walloon dialects by Jules Feller and was first published in 1900.[1] The same word can be spelled differently depending on dialect, so the word "fish" would be spelled <pèchon> by a speaker who pronounces the word as [pɛʃɔ̃] (with an 'sh' sound), but would be spelled <pèhon> by a speaker who pronounces the word as [pɛhɔ̃] (with an 'h' sound). In Unified Walloon, however, the same word "fish" is always spelled <pexhon>, regardless of the speakers pronunciation. The Unified Walloon alphabet, developed through the 1980s and 90s, attempts to unify spellings across dialects, and revives some older digraphs (such as <xh>) which were abandoned by Feller in favor of spellings which resembled standard French.[2][3]
| Letter | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | a | bé | cé | dé | e | effe | gé | ache | i | ji | ka | elle | emme | enne | o | pé | qu | erre | esse | té | u | vé | wé | icse | î gréc / yod | zéde |
Diacritics
Diacritics used in this language are the acute accent (´), grave accent (`), circumflex (ˆ), ring (°), and cedilla (¸). In some dialects, the umlaut (¨) is used.[5] These accents have no effect on the alphabetic order of these letters.
Grapheme Pronunciation à a â aː å aː, oː, ɔː ç s é e è ɛː ê eː e̊ (1975-1978)
ë (1978-present)ə ì ɪ î iː ô ʊː, oː, ɔ̃ ö ɔ̃ ù ʏ û yː
Digraphs
aî is only used in the Namur dialect.
Digraph Pronunciation ae a/ɛ ai eː/ɛː aî eː an ã/ɔ̃ ån ? ch ʃ dj d͡ʒ ea eː/ɛː/ja en ã/ɔ̃ én ẽ/e/ɛ̃/ĩ eu œ/ø ey ɛj/ɛːj/iːj/iː gn/ny ɲ in ɛ̃ î-n ĩ jh h, ʒ oe wɛ, ø, ɛ, œ oi wa, wɛ on ɔ̃ ou u oû uː ss s sch h, ʃ, ç, χ sh ʃ, s tch t͡ʃ, tj un œ̃ xh h, ʃ
References
- ^ "Aprinde le wallon liegeois" (PDF). Centre de Recherche et d'Information du Wallon à l'École. Centre de Recherche et d'Information du Wallon à l'École. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
- ^ "Les betchfessîs scrijhas". Li Ranteule. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
- ^ Saratxaga, Pablo. "Introduction". Grammaire wallonne en ligne. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
- ^ http://www.omniglot.com/writing/walloon.htm2014 January 11 Archived 2013-11-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ http://users.skynet.be/lorint/croejh/node18.html2014 January 11 Archived 2012-08-25 at the Wayback Machine
This page was last edited on 30 May 2023, at 18:13