Languages of Belgium
In addition to the three official languages, others are spoken in Belgium, like in Wallonia, where French became dominant only relatively recently. Sometimes seen as dialects, the varieties related to French have been recognized by the French Community as separate languages ("", ‘regional native languages’) since 1990, without, however, taking any further significant measures to support those varieties.
Belgium in &quot;the long nineteenth century&quot;
At the start of the period, French was the dominant language, and was the only one approved for use in legal and government business, however Belgium become officially bilingual in 1870 and Dutch was officially recognized as an equal language to French in legal matters in 1898.