The DU Lounge

Last edited Wed Jul 2, 2014, 01:11 AM - Edit history (1)

I lived there for a while and visited family there often.

My ex also played for the junior national soccer team there, too. He is or was a forward midfielder. Now that he's older, he still plays but I think he's fallen back to defense b/c defense doesn't require running the entire field. He chose to come to the U.S. to study rather than to go for a professional soccer career. He broke his dad's heart, because his dad was a working class guy. Soccer is a working class sport in Europe - unlike America.

Anyway, Belgium is divided into two parts. The Northern half speaks Flemish, a dialect of Dutch (softer, not as gutteral). The southern half speaks French.

Both the Flemish and French speakers are majority Catholic. The reason the northern part of Belgium stayed with the southern part is because The Netherlands is protestant... at one point, when they liberated themselves from control of all the different nations that had controlled them... Belgium is considered the footpath of Europe b/c it shares borders with The Netherlands, Germany and France, and Germany and France were at war with one another more often than not until the end of WWII, in various iterations (Holy Roman whatever, etc.)

Before WWII, the southern part of Belgium was wealthy because of heavy industry. But the northern part has since gained more wealth. When the southern part (Wallonia) was wealthy, they made fun of the north. Anyone who spoke Flemish was looked down upon. Flemish was called the language of peasants and farmers.

France, of course, was a great national power for a long time, and was the language of diplomacy - it was the international language, as English is now.

If you want to piss off someone from the northern part of Belgium, claim French is the majority language.

They have govt. CRISES over language and have portioned off the nation to exactly equal language divisions. any time one part gains a language area, they have to give another one to the other side.

Before this arrangement, people in Brussels, who were born to Flemish-speaking families, would pretend they didn't know Flemish and would only speak in French because French was considered the language of those who were connected. Political life was conducted in French. Flemish speakers have derogatory names for people who do that.

When the northern Flemish-speaking population gained enough power, financially, to demand equal time for their language, the political partitioning started. Every interstate sign in major city areas, like Brussels, are in both Flemish and French. In the northern part of the country, however (this includes the major or notable cities of Ghent, Antwerp, Brugge (both major ports at different times until silt), Ostende (which is the passageway to England), Leuven (fr: Louvain - one of the oldest University towns in Europe), all the suburbs north and east of Brussels etc... all are Flemish speaking and if someone speaks French there, people often react rudely unless it's obvious you're a tourist. Universities in Brussels exist as both French and Flemish-speaking versions.

Students in the northern, Flemish region begin to learn both English and French in elementary school (in addition to Flemish, which they hear at home.) In Wallonia, because the area is more depressed now with the fall of their major industries, or, the Flemish say, because they're so rude, students generally are not required to learn Flemish, but do learn English... at least that's what the Flemish portion of the nation thinks.

The Battle of the Bulge was in Wallonia, in the Ardennes. Waterloo is a city in Wallonia. After the defeat of Napoleon, the legend was that the people there brought buckets of dirt to build a mound to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon. Whether it's true or not, you can climb up a human-made mound and view the battlefields where Napoleon was defeated.

Southern Belgium is like other industrial belts and is hurting, while Flemish-speaking northern Belgium has prospered. So, sometimes the Flemish half talks about separating from the French half.

In the corner of Flemish Belgium, where Limbourg is located, there's a German-speaking population, too. But German is a minor language there. The two major languages are Flemish and French.