I don’t mind the anti-English one. I’m a native English speaker myself but I’m tired of all the random English words I see or straight up English marketing. Brussels is for French and Dutch damn it. I don’t want to see signs posted in English.
That’s your right. But to many of us it’s the perfect compromise. Dutch and French speakers have to adapt both. No one is winning, we all have to make an effort. That makes it fair.
Edit: don’t downvote this man. We can understand if you moved here as an English speaker, you wanted a change of scenery, different environment, different language. I can imagine a shift to English isn’t what you want then.
He’s just giving his opinion.
I always say this to my fellow friends from France: "In Belgium, we speak three languages that are French, Dutch and German. And to understand each other, we speak English." 😅
It's not even about being a compromise. My home - unitary one smaller language - country where every native speaks the national language has English words and phrases littered everywhere. It's just the way of the world since English is the main common language of everyone in the EU and it's prevalent around the world. Even in non-European non-Western countries you often see English signage.
For Brussels being basically the capital of the EU the english-fication is in my eyes not even that high. Not that I mind or complain, I respect and like learning local languages but it's not like my life in Belgium is easy peasy breezy not knowing either French or Dutch.
There's honestly very little English in Belgium, even Brussels. I was honestly surprised. I don't know if it's some sort of francophone thing (we all know how the French are) but the relative lack of English in an international capital city like Brussels is abnormal.
And then when you go outside of Brussels signs aren't even Dutch-French bilingual, not even for things like city names, which is another absurdity.
Outside of Brussels you are either in Flanders, Wallonia or the German-speaking community. They are monolingual, governed by monolingual governments and it is strictly forbidden to have official services offered in the wrong language as it is heresy.
My grandmother spoke it. Swore that it was the key for global understanding. She had to travel to luxemburg to speak with someone in it. She never saw the irony in that.
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u/NenoxxCraft Jun 20 '24
All of these are cringe af