Belgium has several official communities or "gemeenschap" in Flemish:
- Flanders, or the Dutch-speaking community (Vlaanderen)
- capital: Brussels
- largest city: Antwerp (naturally or natuurlijk)
- flag: black lion on a yellow background
- Wallonia, or the French-speaking community
- capital: Namur
- largest city: Charleroi (has an airport for cheap flights around Europe...)
- flag: a rooster (a la Francaise...)
- the German-speaking community in Eastern Belgium (Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft Belgiens)
- capital: Eupen
- Annual day of celebration: 15 November
- flag: red lion surrounded by blue flowers
Each community has its own language, prime minister or leader of some sort (not all follow the same form of government), legislature, and flag. Each also has a not-always-quiet history of animosity between its community members and the members of the other communities, not to mention inter-city rivalries. Just suggest moving to Ghent to someone in Antwerp and watch them shiver. Worse, propose moving to Brussels! Even Antwerpians (Antwerpens?) who work in Brussels every day refuse to spend more time than absolutely necessary in that substandard city...
The rivalry with the most well-known acrimony is between the Flemish, the Dutch-speaking community, and the Walloons, the French-speaking community. It was nice to see this irritation dissipate in the wake of the Belgians doing so well in the 2018 World Cup.
Historically this rivalry comes from Wallonia's linguistic domination of the rest of the country. Apparently 100 years or so ago, Belgian French speakers were less than kind to their Flemish-speaking fellow citizens. At the time, the French-speaking part of Belgium was richer than the Dutch-speaking part because Wallonia hosted all the valuable mines.
Now, tables have turned.
The Dutch-speaking part of Belgium hosts a richer and more richly educated portion of the country, and more than a little of this wealth stems from the fact the Dutch-speaking Belgians are more likely than French-speaking Belgians to speak additional languages. The Flemish speak Dutch (well, Flemish, which is essentially a softer Dutch), at least some French, and fluent English in addition to one or two other languages that any one individual Flemish may have just decided to learn.
Flemish TV plays a lot of foreign (predominantly American and British) TV and they do so without dubbing, so the Flemish get used to listening to other languages and tend to easily pick up these languages. That, combined with a stellar and well-funded public education system starting in pre-school and going up through (very inexpensive and) prestigious universities means that Flanders now boasts a very capable and in-demand source of human capital for industries from pharmaceuticals to tech to urban planning and museum studies.
No comments:
Post a Comment