These are delicate matters!

The Walloons live in Wallonia - symbol a cockerel - and spoke Walloon - like French, a Romance language - until the middle of the 20th century. Walloon is more distinct as a language than Belgian French, which differs from the French spoken in France only in some minor points of vocabulary and pronunciation.

The Flemings live in Flanders - symbol a lion - and traditionally speak Flemish. To say that Flemish is the same language as Dutch risks the same response as saying that the Scots language is the same as English. They do however share a common written language.

"This revised spelling is known as the 'Marchant Spelling', and it has been taught in all Dutch schools since 1934. However, this only became the official spelling in both the North (Netherlands) and the South (Flemish Belgium) in 1946-47. Following this, in 1954 a mixed Dutch-Flemish commission published a 'Glossary of the Dutch Language' ('Woordenlijst van de Nederlandse Taal'), often called 'de Groene Bijbel' ('the Green Bible'). Nowadays, this is still considered as the official reference book in spelling matters."

"The last decades have seen a convergence to the Dutch language, with a new level that is called "tussentaal" ("in-between-language"). Most younger people speak tussentaal and are taught to refer to their language as "Nederlands" [Dutch] while older people speak more dialect and will often refer to it as "Vlaams" [Flemish]."