'Kot' is just one example of a common belgicisme.

The word belgicism (known in French as a belgicisme) refers to a word, expression, or turn of phrase that is uniquely Belgian French. Even though the French spoken in Belgium is closer to the French spoken in France than the French spoken by Québécois, there are a considerable number of words and phrases that have disappeared from common usage in other Francophone nations that remain common in everyday Belgian speech. Image File history File links Kots. ... Image File history File links Kots. ... Belgian French is primarily spoken in the French Community of Belgium, highlighted in red. ... In Canadian English, a Québécois (IPA: ), or in the feminine Québécoise (IPA: ), is a francophone native or resident of the province of Quebec, Canada. ... Look up Francophone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Certain belgicisms are also found in Northern France and in Switzerland, for example chicon (endive) and septante (seventy, unlike the vingtagesimal soixante-dix, or sixty-ten, used in France.) In these cases, these words are not called belgicisms. Belgian endive Endive (Chichorium intibus) is a leaf vegetable used especially in salads. ... 70 (seventy) is the natural number following 69 and preceding 71. ...

Origins of Belgicisms

Belgium has three national official languages, and consequently, the French spoken in the French part of Belgium is considerably under the influence of the languages of the other Belgian regions, and is also enriched by vocabulary from the languages of neighbouring countries, like Dutch, German, English and Luxembourgish. An official language is a language that is given a privileged legal status in a state, or other legally-defined territory. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Luxembourgish, Luxemburgish, or Luxembourgian (Luxembourgish: Lëtzebuergesch, French: , German: , Walloon: ) is a West Germanic language spoken in Luxembourg. ...

Belgian French is also enriched by vocabulary from other regional Romance languages, such as Picard,Wallon, Lorrain and Champenois. Belgicisms directly influenced by Wallon are specifically called Wallonisms. The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... Picard is a language closely related to French, and as such is one of the larger group of Romance languages. ... The term Walloon may refer to either the Walloon language, or to the ethnic people of the same name. ... With Lorrain you may mean: Lorrain language Claude Lorrain, (Claude Gelee, ca. ... Champenois is a language spoken by a minority of people in France and in Belgium. ... The term Walloon may refer to either the Walloon language, or to the ethnic people of the same name. ...

Different types of belgicisms

One can point to:

• phonetic belgicisms, which are not differently written from standard French words, but are pronounced differently:
  • Many Belgians pronounce /ɥi/ like /wi/, unlike French speakers of French. Most French individuals notice a difference between the two sounds, but many Belgians do not. Another difference in pronunciation stems from how loan words with the letter 'w' are pronounced. Belgian Francophones tend to always pronounce w as /w/ in words like wagon /wagɔ̃/ whereas in Standard French, this would be pronounced as /vagɔ̃/, since French Francophones generally pronounced (/w/ like (/v/.
  • The distinction between the nasal vowels /ɛ̃/ and /œ̃/ is upheld, whereas in many regions of France, these two sounds have merged. Thus, although for many French people, brin (stalk) and brun (brown), are homophones, for Belgians they are not.
  • Another unusual aspect of Belgian French is the clear difference between the pronunciation of 'ai' and 'ais' at the end of a word. Belgians pronounced the first like an /e/ and the second like an /ɛ/. As a consequence, Belgians rarely confuse the future tense and conditional when writing.
  • Belgian speakers pronounce the final T in certain words that the French do not: for example, huit (eight) and vingt (twenty) are pronounced /wɪt/ and /vɛ̃t/ respectively.
• Archaic belgicisms that come from the foreign rule over Belgium in the past. Belgium has been occupied by Dutch, Flemish, English, Spanish, Austrian, French and German powers, and all of which have indubitably laid a footprint on Belgian French. Also worth mentioning is the use of 'septante' and 'nonante' for 70 and 90 respectively. Although these words are used in Switzerland and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the rest of the Francophone world, the ventigesimal 'soixante-dix' and 'quatre-vingt-dix' are used.

• Belgicisms that were manufactured by the Belgian government. Like France and Québec, Belgium too has an administration in place to prescribe language use. Belgium undertook a series of measures to combat linguistic sexism by creating feminine versions of masculine gender occupations. For example, professeur and docteur had no feminine-gender equivalent words, even though many women had these occupations. In March 1989, the Belgian administration prescribed that all jobs would have a grammatically masculine and feminine form (le docteur could be la docteuse.) This feminisation of words has no official equivalent in metropolitan France.

• Belgicisms of Germanic origin such as the word bourgmestre which comes from the Dutch Burgemeester and refers to the chief magistrate of a village.

• Belgicisms with different meanings to other variants of French. Some words have a different meaning in Belgium than they do in other Francophone countries:
  • La cassonade in Belgium is a light or dark brown sugar extracted from beets; in Québec, it is a brown cane sugar.
  • outre-Quiévrain is used to refer to Belgium by the French, and to France by the Belgians, because there are two towns either side of the border with similar names.

Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... Look up conditional in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Brown sugar typical of that bought in Western supermarkets Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. ... Quiévrain is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut. ...

Some examples

Dutch Belgicisms

The word "Belgicism" is also used to describe words in the Dutch language that are exclusively used in Belgian Dutch. Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by around 22 million people, mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium. ...

See also

• Belgian French
• Wallonism