History of Belgium on matters of religion and, in recent decades, it has faced new divisions over differences of language and unequal economic development. This ongoing antagonism has caused far-reaching reforms since the 1970s, changing the formerly unitary Belgian state into a federal state, and repeated governmental crises. It is now divided into three regions: Flanders (Dutch-speaking) in the north, Wallonia (French-speaking) in the south, and bilingual Brussels in the middle. There is also a German-speaking population along the border with Germany that was granted to Prussia in the Congress of Vienna in 1815 but added to Belgium following the 1919 Treaty of
Dutch in Belgium displaced by French as an everyday language. Belgian-Dutch is the variant of the Dutch language as used in Belgium, and differs from Standard Dutch by an accent and some typical word choices. The most spoken Dutch dialects in Belgium are West Flemish, East Flemish, Brabantian and Limburgish. Although the Brabant dialect of the Brussels working-class neighborhoods, in particular the Marolles, with their population has virtually disappeared, linguistic variants exist in a diminishing degree in which an influence of the Brabant can be discerned. The position of Dutch in Belgium has improved considerably over the past 50 years at the expense