Brusselian dialect

Brusselian (also known as Busseleer,^[1] Brusselair, Brusseleir, Marols or Marollien) is a near-extinct dialect native to Brussels in Belgium. It is essentially a heavily-Francisized Brabantian Dutch dialect that incorporates a sprinkle of Spanish loanwords that dates back to the rule of the Low Countries by the Habsburgs (1519-1713). Its name refers to a district of Brussels called the Marollen (Marolles), an inner-city neighborhood of Brussels, near to the Palace of Justice, which takes its name from the former abbey of the nuns Maria Colentes (Marikollen). Historically a working-class neighborhood, it has subsequently become a fashionable part of the city. Brusselian is described as "totally indecipherable to the foreigner (which covers everyone not born in the Marolles) which is probably a good thing as it is richly abusive."^[1]

The Royal Theatre Toone in Brussels puts on puppet plays in Brusselian.^[1]

What is Brusselian?[]

Sketch of the district of Marollen in 1939 by Léon van Dievoet.

There is a dispute and confusion about the meaning of Brusselian, which many consider to be a neighborhood jargon distinct from a larger Brussels Dutch dialect, while others use the term "Marols" as an overarching substitute term for that citywide dialect.^[2] According to Jeanine Treffers-Daller, “the dialect has a tremendous prestige and a lot of myths are doing the rounds.”^[2]

If you ask ten Brusselers what “Marollien” is, you get ten different answers. For some people it is French contaminated by Flemish and spoken in the neighborhood of the rue Haute and the rue Blaes, whereas for others it is Frenchified Flemish. Still others say that it is a vernacular variety of French, spoken in the whole city, etc., etc. Marollien, however, is exceptional if not unique, because it is a double language. In fact it is not between the germanic and romance languages, it is both.

— Jacques Pohl, 1953, ^[3]

The Brusselian word zwanze is commonly applied by speakers of French and Dutch to denote a sarcastic form of humour considered typical of Brussels.

Origins[]

A local version of the Brabantian dialect was originally spoken in Brussels. When the Kingdom of Belgium was established in 1830 after the Belgian Revolution, French was established as the only official language of the kingdom. French was therefore primarily used amongst nobility (however some in the historic towns of Flanders were bilingual and stayed attached to the old Flemish national literature), the middle class and a significant portion of the population whose secondary education had only been delivered in French.

French then gradually spread through the working classes, especially after the establishment of compulsory education in Belgium from 1914 for children aged between six and fourteen years. Primary school education was given in Dutch in the Flemish regions and in French in the Walloon regions. Secondary education was only given in French throughout Belgium. Drained by the personal needs of the administration, many new working class arrivals from the south of Belgium, again increased the presence of French in Brussels. Today, French is the primary language used in Brussels.

Informal language was from then on a mixture of Romance and Germanic influences, which adapted into becoming Brusselian.

Examples[]

An example of Brusselian is:

Na mooie ni paaze da'k ee da poèzeke em zitte deklameire / Allien mo vè aile t'amuzeire / Neineie... ik em aile wille demonstreire / Dat as er zain dee uile me konviksen e stuk in uilen uur drinke. / Dat da ni seulement en allien es vè te drinke.

— In Standard Dutch: Nu moet je niet denken dat ik hier dat gedichtje heb zitten voordragen / Alleen maar om jullie te vermaken / Neenee… ik heb jullie willen tonen / Dat er [mensen] zijn die met overtuiging een stuk in hun kraag drinken. / Dat dat niet louter en alleen is om te drinken.

Brusselian and The Adventures of Tintin[]

The coat-of-arms of Syldavia features a motto in Syldavian, which is based on Brusselian. It reads Eih bennek, eih blavek, in English: ("Here I am, here I stay").

For the popular comic series The Adventures of Tintin, the Belgian author Hergé modeled his fictional languages Syldavian^[4] and Bordurian on Brusselian, and modeled many other personal and place-names in his works on the dialect (e.g. the city of Khemkhâh in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Khemed comes from the Brusselian phrase for "I'm cold"). Bordurian, for example, has as one of its words the Brusselian-based "mänhir", meaning "mister" (cf. Dutch "mijnheer"). In the original French, the fictional Arumbaya language of San Theodoros is another incarnation of Brusselian.

References[]