West Flemish

West Flemish is the Low Franconian variety spoken in the Belgian province of West Flanders, in French Flanders around Dunkirk, Cassel and Hazebrouck, and in the western part of Zeelandic Flanders. Its best-known trait is the complete loss of the velar fricatives /x, ɣ/, which merge with glottal /h/, so that goed 'good' is [hut] and speakers have no sound corresponding to Dutch g — with frequent hypercorrection in the other direction. It also preserves the pre-diphthongal vowels of Middle Dutch (Dutch huis, ijs, vuur appear as uus, ys, vier), forms plurals in -s more freely than Dutch, and has subject-pronoun doubling ('k èn ik 'I have') plus person-inflected yes and no (joak, nink). There is an active written tradition — the West Flemish Wikipedia even maintains its own house orthography, Standoardvlams — but Dutch alone is used in schooling and administration, and UNESCO classifies West Flemish as vulnerable.