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WHAT IS THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF BELGIUM?
The population of Belgium is divided into three linguistic communities. In the north the Flemings, who constitute more than half of Belgium's population, speak Netherlandic. English speakers usually call the Netherlandic spoken in Belgium “Flemish” and that spoken in The Netherlands “Dutch,” but in standardized form they are basically the same language
In the south the French-speaking Walloons make up about one-third of the country's population. About one-tenth of the people are completely bilingual, but a majority have some knowledge of both French and Flemish. The German-language region in eastern Liège province, containing a small fraction of the Belgian population, consists of several communes around Eupen and Saint-Vith (Sankt-Vith) (see Eupen-et-Malmédy). The city of Brussels comprises a number of officially bilingual communes, although the metropolitan area extends far into the surrounding Flemish and Walloon communes. The French-speaking population is by far the larger in the capital region. Bruxellois, a regionally distinct dialect influenced by both French and Flemish is also spoken by a small segment of the city's inhabitants.


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