LL-L "Language politics" 2009.05.09 (08) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 09 May 2009 - Volume 08
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
===========================================

From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2009.05.09 (06) [EN]

> From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
> Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2009.05.09 (02) [E]
> The Flemish are on the loosing side and don't have the time the French
have. That's what makes them more angry.

I think we easely throw the stone to politicians, and do not look enough
into our society.

A couple of weeks ago the Flemish minister of education praised himself
about the good results Flemish kids had for French when leaving primary
school.
In the place I live Steenokkerzeel, at the backside of Brussels airport, I
see all shopkeepers are bilingual and serve French speaking customers in
French.

For communication between 2 language groups *one needs only one lingua
franca*, not two.

Since (*many) Flemish people* speak both Dutch *and French* (+ eventually
local varieties),
there is no incentive for French people to speak Dutch. Why should they? For
fairness? *Who does such an effort just for fairness?*

Flemish people have a 60 percent majority in the country..
If they stop letting their kids learn French the settlement of the issue
would be easier in a political way.
Eventually a third language could become a *neutral lingua franca* (as it
does already in business and for some programs at universities)

Similarely if people of Spanish origin in the US would stop systematically
letting their kids learn any English,
at least some state governments would have to deal seriously with a kind of
language apartheid and solve the issue of communication.

If kids in Niedersachsen would get education in Low German only, and get
English as second language, Danish as third, and no German, the federal
government of Germany would have to find out how to deal with this.

But that is theory. *Only people of a strong language can behave that way*:
just speaking their own language and let others find out how to communicate.
Flemish people, as e.g. shop keepers, are *too commercial* for not willing
to understand French-speaking customers. I see some Wallon people do efforts
for giving some service in Dutch in area's which are popular for tourists
from the Netherlands. Here they have customers which generally do not speak
French, ad here they are aware that they have to do efforts for keeping them
coming.

After all, that is the *freedom of individuals* in a Western country.

And politicians?
I think the best tool politicians have is *the school system*. All
recognized schools are strongly subsidized by the regional/cultural
authorities in their territory. As a result we do not have (much) expensive
private school (except for some international schools). It is costly for
individuals to have their kids traveling daily to a school in an other
language area.
So immigrants send their kids to the primary school in their municipality.
The good thing is that these kids are learning Dutch in Flemish
municipalities, and, when grown up, most will normally speak the language of
the municipality in the municipality.
The bad thing is that in some suburbs only 10 percent of the kids are
initially Dutch-speaking, with gives a burden on teachers and makes it
diffucult to get a reasonably decent quality level.

Regards,
Roger

•

==============================END===================================

 * Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.

 * Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.

 * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.

 * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")

   are to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at

   http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.

*********************************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20090509/5781de87/attachment.htm>