Denuncia sostenuta contro l’ispettore del biglietto belga che ha detto “bonjour” in Fiandre

>Alba said he had greeted the carriage with “Goeiedag, bonjour” (good day in Dutch and French), as the train approached Vilvoorde (Vilvorde), near the outskirts of Brussels, which is officially bilingual.

>The commission upheld the passenger’s complaint that Alba should not have used French in the Dutch-speaking part of the country, unless approached by a passenger speaking French

Imagine having that much of a stick up your arse that you formally complain about a _bilingual_ greeting lmao. Absolute Karen behaviour.

Not to mention absolutely bizarre laws. Like, I get requiring announcements to be made in the local language, but I don’t get banning other languages.

> Belgium’s Permanent Commission for Linguistic Control

The what?

> should only use Dutch in Flanders, French in the southern-speaking Francophone region, and both languages in bilingual Brussels.

Oh, that finally explains why on the train to BRU airport French suddenly disappears from the displays a few minutes before the train arrives at the (Flanders-located) Brussels airport.

And they had to build precise tech for this. Many times I watched it with Google Maps opened on my phone, it happens exactly when the train passes the border between Brussels and Flanders.

You know, the train hasn’t stopped, no passengers exited, no new passengers boarded, but suddenly the announcements in French disappear from the monitors. So, are the announcements for passengers, or are they just for the absurd law?

Meanwhile, trans-border trains crossing the PL-DE border have announcements in Polish and German on the whole route and nobody complains. And neither German has official status in Poland, nor does Polish in Germany. And guess what, Poland and Germany still exist!

Printed timetables in Polish stations are in Polish, English and, since 2022, Ukrainian. No drama either.

Heh – The Guardian acting as a bastion of common sense language use after over a decade of screaming at us about policing our language, words are violence, silence is violence, while their owners laugh about pay per click advertising revenue and sentiment analysis cookie trackers dumped onto your browser

The last thing the Guardian did to justify its existence was Snowden, and big as it was, they still managed to fuck even that up

Is there a way to block links or posts that link to certain websites?