It may be gathered from all this that the linguistic line of cleavage has undergone very little modification in the course of centuries.[11] It now divides the country into a northern section, the inhabitants of which consider Flemish as their vernacular, but who also generally understand French, and a southern section peopled by French-speaking inhabitants, who adhere to the use of Walloon dialects in the intimacy of their home life. To the east, the political frontier between Belgium and Germany does not divide the two countries linguistically. Within Prussian territory, Malmedy and a group of fifteen villages are inhabited by a French-speaking folk. As though to offset this intrusion of French speech on Prussian soil, a corresponding area of German speech is found in the Belgian province of Luxemburg around Arlon.[12] Altogether about 31,500 Belgians employ German as a vernacular.
The American Geographical Society of New York
Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, 1917, Pl. I
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THE FRANCO-FLEMISH LINGUISTIC BOUNDARY
The figures of the last (Dec. 31, 1910) Belgian census[13] show that the Flemish provinces are bilingual, whereas the Walloon region is altogether French. Knowledge of French as an educational and business requirement accounts for its occurrence in Flanders. The Romance language, therefore, tends to supersede the Germanic idiom as a national vernacular. The utter absence of Flemish in the Belgian Congo constitutes perhaps the strongest evidence in favor of French as Belgium’s national language.
In northwestern France, the language of the plain has, since the thirteenth century, steadily receded before the uplander’s speech. At that time Flemish was spoken as far south as the region between Boulogne and Aire.[14] The area spreading east of the Atlantic, between the present linguistic boundary and a line connecting these two cities, is now bilingual with French predominating. It might be noted here, however, that Boulogne has been a French-speaking city since Frankish days.