page_title: Picard language
section_title: Use
hierarchical_section_title: Picard language / Use
caption_attribution_description: enseigne de café en picard, Cayeux-sur-mer (Somme)
context_page_description: Picard is a langue d'oïl dialect of the Romance language family spoken in the northernmost part of France and southern Belgium. Administratively, this area is divided between the French Hauts-de-France region and the Belgian Wallonia along the border between both countries due to its traditional core being the districts of Tournai and Mons.
  Picard is referred to by different names as residents of Picardy simply call it Picard, but it is more commonly known as chti or chtimi in the more populated Nord-Pas-de-Calais. It is also named Rouchi around Valenciennes, Roubaignot around Roubaix, or simply patois in general.
  As of 2008, Picard native speakers amount to 700,000 individuals, the vast majority of which are elderly people. Since its daily use had drastically declined, Picard was declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization a "seriously endangered language".
context_section_description: Picard is not taught in French schools (apart from a few one-off and isolated courses) and is generally only spoken among friends or family members. It has nevertheless been the object of scholarly research at universities in Lille and Amiens, as well as at Indiana University. Since people are now able to move around France more easily than in past centuries, the different varieties of Picard are converging and becoming more similar. In its daily use, Picard is tending to lose its distinctive features and may be confused with regional French. At the same time, even though most Northerners can understand Picard today, fewer and fewer are able to speak it, and people who speak Picard as their first language are increasingly rare, particularly under 50.
  The 2008 film Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, starring comedian Dany Boon, deals with Ch'ti language and culture and the perceptions of the region by outsiders.
caption: Picard language signage in Cayeux-sur-Mer
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