Editing Walloon language (section)

== Disputed nature of Walloon ==
[[File:Plake Hesta.JPG|thumb|''{{lang|wa|Hèsta}}'', the Walloon name of the city of [[Herstal]]]]
Linguists had long classified Walloon as a [[dialect]] of French, which in turn is a ''{{lang|fr|[[langue d'oïl]]}}''. Like French, it descended from [[Vulgar Latin]].  Arguing that a French-speaking person could not understand Walloon easily, especially in its eastern forms, [[Jules Feller]] (1859–1940) insisted that Walloon had an original "superior unity", which made it a [[language]].<ref>{{cite book | author = Feller Jules | title = Notes de philologie wallonne | publisher = Vaillant Carmanne | location = Liège | year = 1912}}</ref>

The phonological divisions of regional languages of southern Belgium were studied by the contemporary linguist E.B. Atwood. He defined the precise geographical repartition of the four chief dialects of Walloon. In addition, he defined them against the dialects of [[Picard language|Picard]], [[Lorrain language|Lorrain]] and [[Champenois]].<ref>E.B. Atwood, "The phonological divisions of Belgo-Romance", in ''Orbis'', 4, 1955, pp. 367–389.</ref>

Since then, most linguists{{Citation needed|reason=Linguists not cited|date=March 2022}} (among them [[Louis Remacle]]), and gradually also Walloon politicians, regard Walloon as a regional language, the first in importance in [[Wallonia]]. It is the only one to have originated from that part of Belgium. The eleventh edition of the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' identified Walloon as the "northernmost Romance language".