ELL: Flemish vs. French in Brussels

[Niels Wijnen]

> 2. During nation building, the Romance dialects where "connected" to
> Standard French, which was declared to be the only official language.

At the end of the middle-ages the Flemish cities (Gent, Brugge) lost their
economical and cultural leadership (mainly because of wars and problems with
the French and Spanish kings). But Antwerp and Brussels (Brabant) came up that
time. Then their was the French Revolution and Napoleon invased Belgium. French
was already that time the language of the upper class. After Napoleon, Europe
decided to unite the Netherlands with Flanders, Brabant and what is now known
as Walloon as a bufferstate. The Dutch King, Willem van Oranje, started to make
Flanders again a monolingual region (Dutch). But about 10 years later Belgium
got independent and the rulers of the fresh new Belgium (of course upper class
and French-speaking) decided to make Belgium monolingual French, this as partly
a reaction against the Netherlands, and in particular against the politics of
Willem van Oranje.

> such, Brussels was already French-speaking. The process of
> "Romanization" was considered irreversible in Brussels, but not in other
> Flemish cities, where only a minority spoke French at that time.

Brussels was (and is) the capital of Belgium, it is not more than normal that
the capital is bilingual (certainly if you came from a monolingual state). But
it is indeed true that even íf they wanted, they surely couldn't make Brussels
monolingual Dutch anymore. But it is never be a wish of the Flemish leaders to
make Brussels monolingual.


Niels,
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