Walloon orthography

[2][3] Early texts written in the region of Wallonia were composed in Medieval Latin, such as the 7th century Vita Sanctae Geretrudis.

One of the earliest of these documents, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia from around 880, shows regional traits of Walloon, Champenois, and Picard.

[7] Walloon toponyms and proper nouns, as well as some words for common objects could be found written in dialect, often spelled in distinctive ways, using graphemes like ⟨xh⟩ and ⟨ea⟩.

[9] From the beginning, the SLLW was interested in solving the issue that there was no unified system of spelling for the Walloon language.

His proposal balanced the principles of «phonétisme» and «analogie» - trying to faithfully represent the sound of the language while also referencing the dominant model of French orthography which most literate Walloons were familiar with.

[8] The Society adopted Feller's orthography and, in 1903, tasked three of its members with writing a comprehensive Walloon dictionary.

Jules Feller, Jean Haust, and Auguste Doutrepont [wa; fr] collected 300,000 records over the next 25 years but the envisioned Dictionnaire général de la Langue wallonne was never completed.

The table below shows letters, digraphs, and trigraphs (collectively referred to as graphemes) used by the Feller system and Common Walloon.