Just curious

Ive been wondering something: Whats the lenguage most spoken in Belgium? I always thought Belgium was something like a part of French Influence, so there was spoken the French, but now that i know a bit more i realize that is not this way. Well, thats the question: is it more spoken the French or the Netherlanden? Now that you are the capital of the EU, there must be some more languages, huh?

 

Most of the population speaks Dutch, a pretty big part speaks French and some speak German.

 

I thought this is english ?? A well i'm not a belg anyway...

 

Yup. It's 50-50 over here.

?Flanders? (the part next to the Netherlands) speaks Dutch, but not quite the same as the Netherlands, it's often called "Flemish". You could compare it with American & G-Britain English. Their second language is French.

?Wallonia? (the part next to France) speaks French. Their second language is Dutch.

And we also have a small part, that Belgium gained after the first World War, that speaks German.

Finally, we also learn the English language.

Here in Flanders, our mother language is Dutch. In primary school, we learn French (2nd last years). In high school, we learn English (from the 2nd year) and German (from the 4th year).

So, we talk around 4 languages in Belgium: Dutch ? French ? English & German.

4 languages for such a small country.

Do you know how many governments this country has?? Only 6!
- Federal government (=Belgium as a whole)
- government of the Dutch region
- government of the French region
- government of the German region
- government of Brussels (= Two languages: Dutch & French)
- government of the whole French speaking community (= Wallonia and the French speaking part of Brussels)

We still have a monarchy, with little real power. Our prime minister of the Federal Government, Guy Verhofstadt, member of the liberal party is the most important man of all these governments.

I?m gonna finish my babbling about my country. Anyway, it?s a really nice and very interesting country we live in!

 

Wow, even I didn't knew all of that

 

Really interesting, very very thanks . Here in Spain we have too a King with no real power though he is the Chief of State. The man who governs this is the infamous (these days of war i mean) Jose María Aznar. And well, our country is bigger so we need more governments than you : 1 national, 17 communities, 50 provinces and all the local stuff. Some day i'll visit your little and interesting country .