I met a young Brusselair speaker last night
Wikipedia refers to Brussels dialect Brusselair as no longer spoken, though I met a young (almost) native speaker last night. He described himself as a Fleming who had grown up in a Brussels suburb, and who had been taught the dialect by his grandparents, all four of whom were fluent Brusselair speakers.
My obvious first question was: "Are you alone?" No, he told me, there are still young Brusselair speakers out there (he must have been around 30) though he did not know of anywhere where they got together to chat (sounds like they're in need of a pub night: Ed).
Unlike other near-extinct city dialects (such as Romanaccio in Rome), Brusselair must be unique in that - of course - it is itself a victim of the French/ Dutch divide that is the bane of this country. There is evidently a French-language-based Brusselair and a Dutch-language-based Brusselair, which is both slightly ridiculous and a little sad in that the dialect is already a mixture of the two languages.
The version he spoke was grammatically Germanic, and while fairly close to Dutch was nevertheless unintelligible to Flemings. Much of the vocab is based on Dutch renditions of French words, he said.
For how much longer can Brusselair survive? Does it need a government-funded revival? Someone should at least spend time with the remaining native speakers and codify it now, for posterity, if this hasn't already been done?