Apropos of my post yesterday urging lack of sentimentality regarding the extinction of languages check out this article about Flemish separatism in Belgium. The salient bits:
But Leterme proved anything but a unifying figure. He created a political uproar when he told the French newspaper Liberation that Belgium was "an accident of history." And he criticized the king for not speaking Dutch well enough....
The French-speakers of Wallonia, a name some translate as land of valleys, dominated both politics and the economy in Belgium for decades. The south's coal reserves and steel industries fueled national prosperity while the Flemish region in the north remained largely agricultural.
In recent years, the regions' fortunes have been reversed. The Flemish are in the majority with about 58 percent of the population, and their economy has exploded with high-tech companies and international trade, while the south is languishing with obsolete factories, high unemployment and an expensive welfare state.
Particular details are important here, the French speaking population produced the elite of Belgium until World War II (the monarch has traditionally spoken French). At one point when I dug into the literature I found reports of Flemish farmers being asked to speak French in courts in the heart of Flanders when they knew no French. But with the economic decline of Wallonia and the rise of Flanders after World War II this situation was no longer tenable, and a new modus vivendi arose where Flemish was given greater parity in national life, at least notionally. Nevertheless history still remains on the scene as a ghost, from what I have read it seems that Flemings are more likely to be bilingual, while Walloons still manifest sentiments which seem to derive from the assumption that they remain the stewards of Belgian high culture. From wiki:
This issue of Regards économiques is devoted to the demand for knowledge of languages in Belgium and in its three regions (Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia). The surveys show that Flanders is clearly more multilingual, but the difference is considerable : whereas 59% and 53% of the Flemings know French or English respectively, only 19% and 17% of the Walloons know Dutch or English. The measures advocated by the Marshall Plan go towards the proper direction, but are without doubt very insufficient to fully overcome the lag." (This particular 2006-2009 'Marshall Plan' was deviced in 2004 and published in 2005 to uplift the Walloon economy.[60]) Within the report, professors in economics Ginsburgh and Weber further show that of the Brussels' residents, 95% declared they can speak French, 59% Dutch, and 41% know the non-local English. Economically significant for a further globalizing future, among people under the age of forty, in Flanders 59%, in Wallonia 10%, and in Brussels 28% can speak all three forementioned languages....
Granted, English and Flemish are close cousins, but I don't think that accounts for all the difference. It seems that present socioeconomic circumstances and past preconceptions operate and cross-purposes, to the point where the nation is being torn apart.
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There was a story in the Economist a short while back which talked of the rift, and asked that the country of Belgium cease to exist.
It would be interesting to know if there are regional differences in IQ.
Averages Dutch (Amsterdam) 109.4, French (Paris) 96.1, Belgium (Brussels) 99.7.
Might indicate a trend.
As a weird side-effect of the economic stagnation of the north of France and Wallonia, we're seeing an increase in the number of French coming to live in Flanders and sending their children to schools where they learn Dutch, English and French, to give them better chances economically later on.
It's a very small effect, of course, but it does speak volumes about the shift in attitudes of the normally chauvinistically inclined French.
As with everything, especially in Belgium, the story is much more complicated than what the articles hint at. Internally, there are also movements within the Walloon region to return to France. Just the other week, a poll in the Netherlands found that a significant number of Dutch people would like for Flanders to join up with the Netherlands, but the very idea of this is laughed away by the Flemmish. Belgium became indepedent from the Netherlands, and since then Belgians have been derisive towards the Dutch. Another obstacle to this would be that although the official Dutch we hear on the news is very much like the version they use in the Netherlands, the language spoken in the street is getting further and further apart. Every one has stories of difficult conversations between the Flemish and the Dutch. For instance, I once took a plane from Amsterdam to Seattle. Before boarding, we had to answer some questions (this was just after 9/11). The only way we could understand the officer was to speak English.
But on the other hand, the international reporting on the issue is somewhat overstating everything. Sure, there are talks about more autonomy for the different regions, but there's a lot of talk in Belgium, and little action. Everybody is still seeking solutions within a Belgian state. Actually breaking up the country is still a long way off. By the way, the record for a government to form is somewhere around 160 days, and we're still about 2 months of talks away from that mark. As has always happened, it will be a typically belgian compromise, that satisfies all parties, with some governmental dadaism thrown in for good measure.
I think that my understanding of this on the other thread is right: the small states of the world have become irrelevant. Even 50 years ago Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg had to band together ("Benelux") to play a role in the Common Market, and by now the EU is dominated by Germany, France, and England to the point that all the small nations put together have to sit and watch. And it's not certain that the EU will maintain itself against the US, though so far they've done well.
Ernest Gellner recently speculated about a new world order in which all important decisions are made by international experts working for something like the EU, in which the individual national states would deal only with sentimental, esthetic, and cultural functions. Gellner and his parents experienced the breakup of Austria-Hungary -- they were Jewish German Czechs who would have been willing to be Czech patriots after WWI, but found that Germans and Jews weren't allowed to do that. He died an Englishman. (Historically, many German-speakers in Bohemia would have preferred not to be ruled by Austria.)
In the Belgian case, neither language is endangered. Both are languages of highly developed, literate peoples, but French is a world language and Dutch/Flemish is not. To me the separatist issue makes sense only in the context of the obsolescence of the nation-state; the actual issues raised by the Flemish nationalists seem smallish, and the intensity of their feeling of grievance seems incredibly stupid. The Basques, by contrast lived under military occupation for decades while their language was given no recognition at all.
Flemmings
Heh! Did you spell it with two 'm' just to get an excuse to make this pun?
Granted, English and Flemmish are close cousins, but I don't think that accounts for all the difference.
Also, French speakers dub Anglo movies and TV, while Flemish speakers see them with subtitles. "De Familie Backeljau" notwithstanding, less programming is available for a smaller language, and the gap is usually filled with American shows. This does not mean that people automatically learn English, but I think it does create an atmosphere where learning English is seen as a matter of course (like in the Nordic countries).
Dubbed stuff is always lousy anyway, so that could be a fair indication.
You have 100% of my sympathy about the gap filling. The only reason for owning a TV now is to watch tennis, and I'd still rather watch that live given the chance. Including Belgian players, naturally :)
There are some parallels between the belgian situation and that in Switzerland. In both cases, the french minority linguistically looks down upon the germanic speaking majority. In my experience the french swiss don't care about german at all. If they do, they care a little about hochdeutsch ( the "official" german ) but won't have anything to do with swiss german . The german speaking swiss seemed to me much more likely to speak french than the reverse. One important difference with Belgium is that the french swiss are not at all weak economically . They definitely seem to pull their own weight in Switzerland.
One french swiss told me that the federation was definitely a marriage of convenience, not one of love . I don't know exactly how representative his point of view was, but it was consistent with everything else I had seen at that point.
Typical Flemish girl displays a unique talent.
Hello John, the Basques (am one of them) have today way more autonomy than Flanders/ Wallonia, or any region in Europe for that matter: own tax system, education, health care, police...
Breaking a country like Belgium seems a bit extreme, they probably can agree on a federation with most powers decentralized at the regional level.
At Crooked Timber there's a long piece about Belgium. What's come out in the comments is that a.) the Flemish are the majority and recently have become the more prosperous group, b.) the Walloons have traditionally been dominant, and retain certain advantages, and c.) Belgium is a rather artificial buffer state with a weak national tradition (though apparently the Flemings do distinguish themselves from the Dutch).
Language is the nub. Effectively the Flemings have to learn French, whereas the Walloons seldom learn Flemish. Partly this might be because French is a world language whereas Flemish is very local (supposedly it has become significantly different than Dutch).
It all strikes me that these problems would be normally settled with a messy compromise, but as I've said, maybe there's no reason for Belgium to exist any more.
John - rare but not unique; this typical Serb does it too :)
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/43011000/jpg/_43011047_jankovic_s…