Walloon (/wɒˈluːn/; natively walon; French: wallon [walɔ̃] ⓘ) is a Romance language that is spoken in much of Wallonia and, to a very small extent, in Brussels, Belgium; some villages near Givet, northern France; and a clutch of communities in northeastern Wisconsin, United States.

[5] Despite its rich literature, beginning anonymously in the 16th century and with well-known authors since 1756, the use of Walloon has decreased markedly since France's annexation of Wallonia in 1794.

Today it is scarcely spoken among younger people, with the vast majority of its native speakers being the elderly (aged 65 and over).

Formally recognized as a langue régionale endogène (regional indigenous language) of Belgium since 1990,[7] Walloon has also benefited from a continued corpus planning process.

Since the 1990s, a common orthography was established (the Rifondou walon [wa; fr]), which allowed large-scale publications, such as the Walloon Wikipedia officially in 2003.

Four dialects of Walloon developed in four distinct zones of Wallonia:[12] Despite local phonetic differences, there is a regional movement towards the adoption of a common spelling, called the Rifondou walon.

The written forms attempt to reconcile current phonetic uses with ancient traditions (notably the reintroduction of xh and oi that were used for writing Walloon until the late 19th century) and the language's own phonological logic.

At the same time, Walloon phonetics are singularly conservative: the language has stayed fairly close to the form it took during the High Middle Ages.

From a linguistic point of view, Louis Remacle has shown that a good number of the developments that we now consider typical of Walloon appeared between the 8th and 12th centuries.

Et de ladite ancienne langue Vualonne, ou Rommande, nous usons en nostre Gaule Belgique: Cestadire en Haynau, Cambresis, Artois, Namur, Liège, Lorraine, Ardenne et le Rommanbrabant, et est beaucoup differente du François, lequel est plus moderne, et plus gaillart.And those people [the inhabitants of Nivelles] speak the old Gallic language which we call Vualon or Rommand (...).

Somewhat later, the vernacular of these people became more clearly distinct from central French and other neighbouring langues d'oïl, prompting the abandonment of the vague term "Roman" as a linguistic, ethnic, and political designator for "Walloon".

[15] Legally, Walloon has been recognized since 1990 by the French Community of Belgium, the cultural authority of Wallonia, as an "indigenous regional language" which must be studied in schools and encouraged.

The Walloon cultural movement includes the Union Culturelle Wallonne, an organization of over 200 amateur theatre circles, writers' groups, and school councils.

[19] During the 19th-century renaissance of Walloon-language literature, several authors adapted versions of Aesop's Fables to the racy speech (and subject matter) of Liège.

[20] They included Charles Duvivier (in 1842); Joseph Lamaye (1845); and the team of Jean-Joseph Dehin (1847, 1851–1852) and François Bailleux (1851–1866), who covered books I-VI.

[23] The motive among Walloon speakers in both France and Belgium was to assert regional identity against the growing centralism and encroachment of the language of the capital, on what had until then been predominantly monoglot areas.

For instance, the writer Raymond Queneau set the publication of a Walloon Poets' anthology for Editions Gallimard.

"[24] The scholar Jean-Marie Klinkenberg writes, "[T]he dialectal culture is no more a sign of attachment to the past but a way to participate to a new synthesis".