Ciao amici, ecco un indiano curioso. Di solito, la lingua gioca un ruolo cruciale nella formazione dell’identità nazionale. È stato sorprendente quando ho scoperto che nel tuo paese si parla principalmente di olandese e francese. Due domande: 1. Cosa è alla base del patriottismo dei belgi? 2. Esiste un’altra lingua locale?
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di vignesh_kannan
9 commenti
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium There you go mate
1. There isn’t very much Belgian patriotism.
2. Yes, English, not officially, but de facto. It’s also the reason why learning Dutch for French speakers and vice versa is on the decline. Because speaking Dutch and French but no English would be a sad joke in the 21st century, a way to be bilingual yet also illiterate. And being trilingual Dutch, French and English starts to be a tall order for most people. So they rationally decide to neglect Dutch or French.
There is no real patriotism to speak of. Belgium’s identity – as far back as the Middle Ages – rests on the idea that the regions within it (Brabant, Vlaanderen, Liege,…) were always independent in some way from its larger neighbours (smaller dukedoms, principalities, city states,…).
Belgium’s modern existence is basically a bit of a complicated fluke but it’s essentially a “negative identity” in the sense that we’re **not** Dutch, French, Austrian, Spanish or German (listing some former occupiers here). Never have been. We’re *”something”* else, but that’s hard to define because there’s not one singular “thing” that “positively identifies” us / unites the regions.
These “independent” regions essentially combined during the nationalistically inspired revolutionary period of the early 19th century – the fluke – and slapped the name Belgium on that *”something”* because Caesar said so 2000 years ago lol. Those regions happened to be part Dutch-speaking, part French-speaking. The language divide wasn’t a consideration since French was the lingua franca of the time.
Hatred of local weather is what keeps us together
1. Stoofvlees/ carbonade is our patriotism
2. A year ago i got a language lesson from a walloon who spoke authentic walloon and gave the diffrences between that and french. There were some significant changes i have to say. But on simular levels to “west flemish” vs ” dutch flemish”
There are things that we all share, our love of carnival, beer and good food. The way we party and how we enjoy a sunny day (a glass of fresh beer on a sunny terrasse). But mostly we are united in not being Dutch or French and cracking jokes about our neighbouring nations.
Hi,
1. Belgians aren’t really a patriotic bunch. Belgians are more likely to define themselves with an “anti-identity” (they are *not* French, *not* Dutch, and *not* German).
2. German is the third official language of Belgium, but it only has official status federally and within the German-speaking area of Belgium.
English is not an official language of Belgium anywhere, but it *is* one of the working languages of the European Union which has many offices in Brussels.
In Flanders (Dutch-speaking), each town has its own dialect, but there is a large variation on how many people speak them.
In Wallonia (French-speaking), they don’t really have dialects – they have accents.
>Is there any other local language?
Not really but there are some very distinct dialects that differ a lot from standard Dutch and French. Some notable examples: West-Flemish (dutch), Limburgish (dutch) and Walloon (french). To some they could almost be another language.
Hatred for our neighbours and our national football team is what keeps us united.