LL-L "Language politics" 2009.08.25 (01) [EN-NL]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 25 August 2011 - Volume 01
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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. roger.thijs at euro-support.be
Subject: LL-L Language politics

In the press today:    *Hardly 60% of native Dutch speaking kids in Dutch
language primary schools around Brussels*.

Maybe just a little introduction for new members in the list.

Belgium has 3 national administrative languages: Dutch, French and German.
The German speakers are a small group of about 50.000, the Dutch speakers
are roughly 6.000.000, the French speakers are roughly 4.000.000.

Outside Belgium one hardly knows there are Dutch speaking Belgians. When
taking the US Airways flight from Brussels to Philadelphia, taking off at
the airport in the Flemish Zaventem,  I get safety instructions and other
services in English and French only. For “credit card” (necessary for buying
a beer on the plane nowadays) they translate into “carte blue” which is part
of the banking system in France.

At local level there exist regional languages, variants or dialects, these
are not thaught in school, and (except for Luxembourgish) have no unified
standard grammar, though there exists several dictionaries (with grammatical
comments) at town or village level.

Major subdivisions are:

In the Dutch area: Flemish, Brabantish and Limburgish (The word “Flemish” is
also used for designing the totality of the Northern Dutch speaking
area/region)

In the French area: Picard, Walloon, Champenois-Ardennais and
Gaumais-Lorrain. (The word “Walloon” is also used for designing the totality
of the Southern, mainly French speaking area/region)

In the German area: Ripuarisch, Northern Moselle-Franconian and
Luxembourgish

Politically the regional languages are hardly supported and in court, army,
school, administration only Dutch, French and German count.

French was the official administrative language in Belgium in the
19thcentury. The Flemish movement fought for a place for Dutch,
getting stepwise
improvements, and finally leading to territorial administrative language
boundaries since 1962-1963, complemented with a progressing administrative
decentralization, along these sacred boundaries.

See maps on url:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium

Since French got a majority position in Brussels (actually a block of 19
municipalities including Brussels), this area got a bilingual French-Dutch
administrative and political structure. The Brussels region is territorial
wise an island in Flemish territory (but at its South just a few miles
distant from the Walloon region)

Some municipalities at the borderlines got protection for their language
minorities. These municipalities are generally called “municipalities with
facilities (for the language minority)”. At the borderline of Brussels, in
the Flemish region, there are six of those, where actually afterwards the
French speaking minority became a large political majority.

Due to the expansion of the Brussels population to the outskirts, schools in
Flemish territory (other than the six municipalities with facilities) have
to deal with an increasing number of not native Dutch speakers. While the
system of facilities for the “six” municipalities at the borderline allows
those to set-up a French language scholar system for primary schools, the
other Flemish municipalities have only Flemish (i.e. Dutch language)
schools.

In Belgium the scholar networks are completely funded by the government
(including the Roman Catholic network), and so it is extremely expensive to
offer education in a non-recognized system (this not being funded). So the
French immigrants have to do with Flemish schools, and the Flemish schools
have to do with large numbers of nonnative Dutch speakers.

Here is the article:

** quote (in Dutch)

*Vier op de tien leerlingen in de Rand spreken thuis geen Nederlands *

*donderdag 25 augustus 2011, 03u00*

*-Veertig procent van de leerlingen die in de Vlaamse Rand naar een Vlaamse
katholieke basisschool gaan, spreekt thuis geen Nederlands. Dat blijkt uit
een telling van het Vlaams Verbond van het Katholiek Basisonderwijs. Het
gaat vooral om Franstalige leerlingen. De koepel haalt de cijfers uit een
bevraging bij 46 basisscholen in 32 gemeenten. Bij de telling is een
onderscheid gemaakt tussen Franstalige leerlingen en leerlingen die thuis
Frans noch Nederlands praten. Uit de enquête blijkt dat er beduidend meer
leerlingen met thuistaal niet-Nederlands in de kleuterklassen en de lagere
leerjaren zitten, dan in de hogere jaren van de lagere school. Op basis
daarvan besluit het Verbond dat de instroom de laatste jaren gestegen is.*

*Het is niet duidelijk of het om leerlingen gaat die vanuit Brussel of
Wallonië naar een Vlaamse school komen of dat de randgemeenten verfransen.
Afhankelijk van het antwoord moet een gepast beleid komen, meent het Vlaams
Verbond. *

** end quote

Source: http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=J23EF4MS

Be aware that the sampling was done in the Roman Catholic network, and
included a limited number of municipalities.

Get the complete report (41 pages in Dutch in pdf format) from URL:

http://ond.vsko.be/pls/portal/url/ITEM/DD098196DB8D4C69AC4C2C975D6DEF03



Or if that does not work, click on the link:

“2011-08-24 Instroom van Frans- en anderstalige leerlingen in de Brusselse
randgemeenten”

on page:

http://ond.vsko.be/portal/page?_pageid=1514,1&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL



Regards,

Roger


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