Language
As in all Flemish provinces, the official language is Dutch, but two municipalities, Herstappe and Voeren, are to a certain extent allowed to use French to communicate with their citizens. Such municipalities are called the municipalities with language facilities in Belgium.
Several variations of Limburgish are also still actively used, these being a diverse group of dialects which share features in common with both German and Dutch. Limburg mijn Vaderland is the official anthem of both Belgian and Dutch Limburg, and has versions in various dialects of Limburgish, varying from accents closer to standard Dutch in the west, to more distinctive dialects near the Maas. Outside of the two Limburgs related dialects or languages are found stretched out towards the nearby Ruhr valley region of Germany. And there are also related dialects around Aachen and in the extreme north of the province of Liège.
As in the rest of Flanders a high level of multi-lingualism is found in the population.
Limburg is close to Germany and Wallonia, and because of the natural political, cultural and economics links, French and German have long been important second languages in the area.
English has also now become a language which is widely understood and used in business and cultural activities, and is supplanting French in this regard.
Veldeke, the medieval property of the family of Hendrik van Veldeke, was near Hasselt, along the Demer river, to the west of Kuringen. He is one of the first authors known by name in both Dutch and German.
Read more about this topic: Limburg (Belgium)
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation.... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)