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Belgium and language
For BarCamp, I am mailing with some people from the 'French side' of Belgium.
It happens in English. Which is due to the fact that I think their English is better than their Dutch, my English is certainly better than my French (especially written) and my keyboard is 'qwerty', which isn't helpful on the accents...
Now it is kind of funny to write in English to each other when one understands the other one's language perfectly fine.
It is something I happened to notice in Israel too: Palestinians and Israeli often speak or Hebrew too each other, but very often they prefer to speak English, for neutrality.
The perfect coexistence on the other hand is when each one just speaks its own language or everyone mingles.
When going to meetings at the Chancery, I found myself smiling very often.
The meeting starts in one language, people answer in another, and somehow everyone seems to understand everything in these 'Babelesc' meetings.
First it seems funny, as if you are looking to these StarWar Episodes where suddenly they seem to understand any language.
But then suddenly it is just normal.
We live in a bi-langual country. We are supposed to speak both languages, and understand them perfectly well.
So let's just speak our own, the other one will understand.
(I remember Tamar coming over to Belgium, hearing me speak in French to a guy, while he was answering in Dutch.
She didn't understand it: I thought you have a language war over here.
Oh, did we?)
Posted on May 10, 2006
in Living in Belgium
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Comments (1)
Comments
Those language wars are so '80s. I guess it's just easier using the new lingua franca in conversation. If I had to choose between French or English, my choice is pretty clear already. I don't think it's laziness that keeps us from using French (in this case), but the fact if you feel confident about how good you speak the language in question.
Posted by stijn v. | May 10, 2006 7:04 PM