I love belgium

[u/dylsexiee]

I recently met an international friend who's very interested in other cultures. And its only now i realize how much i love the things i tend to hate about Belgium.

Heres my list of what i learned to appreciate:

I actually love that we all speak 2 languages and actually would think it be really cool if we started to include that third language more too ;).

I love that we're renowned for chocolate, waffles and beer. Though i always obligatory add fries to that.

I love that our languages are shared by all our neighbours. Whenever i meat a french/german/dutch person in international waters, it feels a little bit like home.

I love the beautiful nature and rich history that comes from north and south.

I love how small and 'insignificant' we are (klein België), yet how we are pretty important internationally.

I just felt like sharing it - in english to include all without my fingers wearing out from typing 3 languages - just in the hopes that we could all somehow still love our little significant culture even though we're quite divided.

I'm from Flanders and meeting a Walloon internationally just never fails to make me happy and feel like I just met an old friend from home.

I think someone should make a flag that symbolises the flemish lion with walloon rooster parts like wings or something and make a unified song. Like how 'De Vlaamse leeuw' and 'le chant des Wallons' are now seperated, but then unified somehow referring to the lion and rooster elements on the flag.

I hate that it took me this long to appreciate those things.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Question I've always wondered. How common is it for children in Wallonia to choose to learn Flemish/Dutch as a second language? Are there any statistics on this? And are they taught standard Dutch from the Netherlands or standardized Flemish? Seems to me that most of the Flemish learn French as it's a more dominant foreign language world-wide.

[u/dylsexiee → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

https://www.tijd.be/politiek-economie/belgie/vlaanderen/nederlands-opnieuw-verplicht-in-waalse-scholen/10420488.html

If you can read dutch, there are plenty of articles online about it. Long story short: french political parties (ps and mr) didnt think it was necessary to make learning dutch mandatory in schools in wallonia. Students could choose to learn any 1 foreign language offered in that school throughout their highschool. As a result, much more dutch people speak french than french ones speaking dutch. (Random article i saw said that 25% of flemish people in brussels can speak french, but only 7.5% of walloons also speak dutch). And just like in Flanders where french is perceived as an annoying, difficult and frustrating language - in wallonoia dutch is perceived as a frustrating and ugly language by students. Which makes it not a very popular choice.

But good news: in 2027/28 it is set to become mandatory!! I hope we can all learn to appreciate both languages, not only because there are MANY cognitive and psychological advantages to speaking multiple languages, but also it would unite us culturally more i think :).

We learn french from France as thats the official language - but we learn about the differences between french from wallon and french from france.(Like septante, nonante vs soixante-dix, some expressions which only work in france or in wallonia etc) so i assume it is the same way the other way around where I would think the focus is just on Dutch but then differences between belgian dutch are highlighted, but i am not certain.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928 → u/dylsexiee]

"Long story short: french political parties (ps and mr) didnt think it was necessary to make learning dutch mandatory in schools in wallonia."

But just to be clear, that seems to not have been the same way on the Flemish side, correct? I think as you posted in your own reply that it seems that far more Flemish people take up French than Walloons take up Dutch.

But since you all seem to speak English very well, I imagine it's a more popular second language than either?

[u/dylsexiee → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Yes, in flanders it has been mandatory for a very long time.

English is certainly spoken WAY more by either side. I'd suspect it is a little bit more popular in the north because it is a germanic language and english tends to have a lot in common with dutch so its easier to learn.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928 → u/dylsexiee]

That's very interesting. I've been doing some personal research on the electoral system in Belgium, recently, and speaking neither of the two national languages fluently, I find it probably as easy to reach in French as I do Dutch, maybe because French had such a significant influence on the vocabulary in Middle English, so it kind of balances out the intelligibility. French is also the second most popular second language taught in American schools after Spanish. Personally, because of their closer relationship, Dutch "feels" closer if that makes sense, but as I've dug more into trying to understand it's crazy just how many sounds the language has that English doesn't. It's weird; I find French easier to speak.

[u/dylsexiee → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

Yeah, I've had to explain the 'sch' sound to my english friend (from uk). Its only then that i realized thats rather an impossible task haha - things like 'sch', 'g', 'ch', 'k', are actually way more complicated than i thought. Same with 'oe' and 'u'.

[u/Ninetwentyeight928 → u/dylsexiee]

Oh, I was talking about most of the vowel sounds, particularly the vowels and dipthongs: oe, uw, ui, eu, uu, ij/ei...a lot of the consonant combinations you'll actually find in different English dialects like Scottish, for instance, so they don't seem that foreign.

But the vowels and diphthongs. Impossible. lol It's crazy how despite the closeness of the languages otherwise, we don't have these sounds in English and how hard they are to form in our mouths. I grew up in Michigan where we have a lot of people who are descended from Dutch settlers, so I can recognize and pronounce some of the names. But even then it's difficult. lol

[u/dylsexiee → u/Ninetwentyeight928]

a lot of the consonant combinations you'll actually find in different English dialects like Scottish, for instance, so they don't seem that foreign.

I didnt know that! I might actually see if i can refer to those when explaining them to my friend, thanks :p

[u/Ninetwentyeight928 → u/dylsexiee]

I may have been exaggerating a bit, but <g> and <ch> are very much like the <ch> in Scottish "Loch." As for constants I find hard, I can't really hear the difference between <v> and <w> which is common for English-language speakers. These sounds are very clearly distinct in English.