French language

Wallonia (/wɒˈloʊniə/ wol-OH-nee-ə; French: Wallonie [walɔni] ; German: Wallonien [vaˈloːni̯ən] or Wallonie [valoˈniː] ), officially the Walloon Region (French: Région wallonne [ʁeʒjɔ̃ walɔn]; German: Wallonische Region [vaˈloːnɪʃə ʁeˈɡi̯oːn]), is one of the three regions of Belgium—along with Flanders and Brussels. Covering the southern portion of the country, Wallonia is primarily French-speaking. It accounts for 55% of Belgium's territory, but only 31% of its population. The Walloon Region and the French Community of Belgium, which is the political entity responsible for matters related mainly to culture and education, are independent concepts, because the French Community of Belgium encompasses both Wallonia and the bilingual Brussels-Capital Region but not the German-speaking Community of Belgium, which administers nine municipalities in Eastern Wallonia.

During the Industrial Revolution, Wallonia was second only to the United Kingdom in industrialization, capitalizing on its extensive deposits of coal and iron. This brought the region wealth, and from the beginning of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century, Wallonia was the more prosperous half of Belgium. Since World War II, the importance of heavy industry has greatly diminished, and the Flemish Region has exceeded Wallonia in wealth as Wallonia has declined economically. Wallonia now suffers from high unemployment and has a significantly lower GDP per capita than Flanders. The economic inequalities and linguistic divide between the two are major sources of political conflicts in Belgium and a major factor in Flemish separatism.

The Senne (French, pronounced [sɛn] ) or Zenne (Dutch, pronounced [ˈzɛnə]) is a small river that flows through Brussels, Belgium. Its source is in the village of Naast near the municipality of Soignies. It is an indirect tributary of the Scheldt, through the Dyle and the Rupel. It joins the Dyle at Zennegat in Battel, north of the municipality of Mechelen, only a few hundred metres before the Dyle itself joins the Rupel.

In total, the Senne is 103 km (64 mi) long. The Woluwe and the Maelbeek are some of its tributaries.

Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (French: Nomenclature des unités territoriales statistiques; NUTS) is a geocode standard for referencing the administrative divisions of countries for statistical purposes. The standard, adopted in 2003, is developed and regulated by the European Union, and thus only covers the EU member states in detail. The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics is instrumental in the European Union's Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund delivery mechanisms and for locating the area where goods and services subject to European public procurement legislation are to be delivered.

For each EU member country, a hierarchy of three NUTS levels is established by Eurostat in agreement with each member state; the subdivisions in some levels do not necessarily correspond to administrative divisions within the country. A NUTS code begins with a two-letter code referencing the country, as abbreviated in the European Union's Interinstitutional Style Guide. The subdivision of the country is then referred to with one number. A second or third subdivision level is referred to with another number each. Each numbering starts with 1, as 0 is used for the upper level. Where the subdivision has more than nine entities, capital letters are used to continue the numbering. Below the three NUTS levels are local administrative units (LAUs). A similar statistical system is defined for the candidate countries and members of the European Free Trade Association, but they are not part of NUTS governed by the regulations.

The Central African Republic (CAR) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest, and Cameroon to the west. Bangui is the country's capital and largest city, bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Central African Republic covers a land area of about 620,000 square kilometres (240,000 sq mi). As of 2024, it has a population of 5,357,744, consisting of about 80 ethnic groups, and is in the scene of a civil war, which has been ongoing since 2012. Having been a French colony under the name Ubangi-Shari, French is the official language, with Sango, a Ngbandi-based creole language, as the national and co-official language.

The Central African Republic mainly consists of Sudano-Guinean savanna, but the country also includes a Sahelo-Sudanian zone in the north and an equatorial forest zone in the south. Two-thirds of the country is within the Ubangi River basin (which flows into the Congo), while the remaining third lies in the basin of the Chari, which flows into Lake Chad.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are elected by the population of the member states of the European Union (EU). The European Electoral Act 2002 allows member states the choice to allocate electoral subdivisions or constituencies (French: circonscriptions électorales; German: Wahlkreise; Italian: circoscrizioni elettorali; Swedish: valkretsar) for the European Parliament elections in several different ways.

Most EU countries operate a single national constituency which elects MEPs for the whole country. Belgium and Ireland are each subdivided into constituencies, with electoral results calculated separately in each constituency. Germany, Italy and Poland are each subdivided into electoral districts, with the number of representatives determined at the national level after each election in proportion to the votes cast in each district.

A reservoir (/ˈrɛzərvwɑːr/; from French réservoir [ʁezɛʁvwaʁ]) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation.

Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of water, interrupting a watercourse to form an embayment within it, excavating, or building any number of retaining walls or levees to enclose any area to store water.

Piedmontese (English: /ˌpiːdmɒnˈtiːz/ PEED-mon-TEEZ; autonym: piemontèis [pjemʊŋˈtɛjz] or lenga piemontèisa; Italian: piemontese) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in Piedmont, a region of Northwest Italy. Although considered by most linguists a separate language, in Italy it is often mistakenly regarded as an Italian dialect. It is linguistically part of the Gallo-Italic languages group from Northern Italy (with Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian and Romagnol), making it part of the wider western group of Romance languages, which also includes French, Arpitan, Occitan, and Catalan. It is spoken in the core of Piedmont, in northwestern Liguria (near Savona), and in Lombardy (some municipalities in the westernmost part of Lomellina near Pavia).

It has some support from the Piedmont regional government but is considered a dialect rather than a separate language by the Italian central government.

The Susa Valley (Arpitan: Vâl Susa; Piedmontese: Valsusa; Occitan: Val d'Ors; Italian: Val di Susa; French: Val de Suse) is a valley in the Metropolitan City of Turin, Piedmont region of northern Italy, located between the Graian Alps in the north and the Cottian Alps in the south. It is one of the longest valleys of the Italian Alps. It extends over 50 kilometres (31 mi) in an east-west direction from the French border to the outskirts of Turin. The valley takes its name from the city of Susa which lies in the valley. The Dora Riparia river, a tributary of the Po, flows through the valley.

A motorway runs through the valley from Turin to Chambéry in France through the Fréjus tunnel or by crossing the Col du Mont Cenis (2083m), and to Briançon, also in France, over the Col de Montgenèvre.

The Basques (/bɑːsks/ BAHSKS or /bæsks/ BASKS; Basque: euskaldunak [eus̺kaldunak]; Spanish: vascos [ˈbaskos]; French: basques [bask] ) are a Southwestern European ethnic group, characterised by the Basque language, a common culture, shared genetic ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians, and are considered among the last remaining direct descendants of Neolithic Europeans populations in Europe. Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, an area traditionally known as the Basque Country (Basque: Euskal Herria)—a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.

The Arabic chat alphabet, also known as Arabizi, Arabeezi, Arabish, Franco-Arabic or simply Franco (from French: franco-arabe) refer to the romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Western Arabic numerals. These informal chat alphabets were originally used primarily by youth in the Arab world in very informal settings—especially for communicating over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones—though use is not necessarily restricted by age anymore and these chat alphabets have been used in other media such as advertising.

These chat alphabets differ from more formal and academic Arabic transliteration systems, in that they use numerals and multigraphs instead of diacritics for letters such as ṭāʾ (ط) or ḍād (ض) that do not exist in the basic Latin script (ASCII), and in that what is being transcribed is an informal dialect and not Standard Arabic. These Arabic chat alphabets also differ from each other, as each is influenced by the particular phonology of the Arabic dialect being transcribed and the orthography of the dominant European language in the area—typically the language of the former colonists, and typically either French or English.