Imagine the nearest city to you
Now most of the time the city is going to operate in one language. So local government will talk to its people in that language
businesses will talk to its customers and its employees in that language
You get the idea. So now imagine yourself in a city where more people speak a foreign language than the native one
Welcome to Brussels. I'm Emily with Bright Trip and today I'm going to tell you about a little city in a little country
called Brussels, Belgium. Belgium has more than one official language but that's not what's
unusual here. Over 100 countries actually have more than one official language. In Belgium there
are three official languages split across four regions. So you've got French in the southern
region of Wallonia. Then you've got Dutch, which you'll sometimes hear me referring to as Flemish
That basically means the dialects of Dutch that are spoken in this northern region of Belgium
called Flanders. Then you've got German, which is spoken just in these southern communities
which became part of Belgium in 1919 as reparations for World War One. And finally
this is the capital region of Brussels. It's the only bilingual region of the country and here
French and Dutch has spoken. So here we've got a capital city operating in two languages and then
just to shake things up a little bit more let's throw in a load of European expats who have moved
to the city to work at the European Commission, European Parliament and a lot of these expats are
gonna communicate with each other in English. But what we want to understand though is how and why
does this city operate in three languages and more importantly what does it feel like to move around
the city so to do that we've got to go back and understand how Belgium came to be Belgium was
officially founded the year after the 1830 Belgian revolution so this land had been passed between
different powers and states for centuries it was part of Spain then it was under the Austrian
Habsburg monarchy it was part of France and then most recently it was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands Even though this land had been passed mainly to the same states and powers there was already a geographical linguistic divide in 1830
Generally speaking, the southern population was French-speaking, and the northern population was Flemish-speaking. But now that Belgium was its own country, it needed to lay down some
ground rules to get over this pesky linguistic divide. So they write up their constitution
It says that the use of languages current in Belgium is optional
Only the law can rule on this matter and only for acts of the public authorities and for legal matters
And this is what Belgium is going to hinge its approach to language on for the next two centuries
But what happens right off the bat is that the people in power, the ones working in the courts or running the government, don't speak Flemish
They're French speaking. so what you essentially have is a minority french-speaking population ruling over a majority
flemish-speaking population the flemish did not like that so fast forward to 1932 belgium thinks
hang on maybe let's base our language of administration off of something called the
principle of territoriality so this means that each of the four territories in belgium are going
to have their own regional governments and that government is going to be run in the language of
the territory. Finally, Flanders are going to have a taste of that sweet legal autonomy that they've
been after. So let's look for a second at this principle of territoriality. These four territories
officially became part of the constitution in 1970 and the freedom of language still held true
but now the official language of the territory had to be used for public authority and the
administration, court cases, education in institutions that are established, recognized or funded by the government, the relations between employers and their employees, and the official
documents that companies have to use. It even goes as far as that the government is not legally
obliged to communicate with you in any language other than the language of their territory
in brussels i would sometimes have to go with my boyfriend to his meetings about his residency
because the government worker that he got on the day might just decide that they didn't want to or
they weren't able to speak to him in english and i would need to translate into french this office
would have seen expats every single day a lot of them maybe not being able to speak french or flemish but this principle actually even causes a lot of controversy even between the local population This is a headline from
the 2nd of March this year. So what about English in Brussels? The European Council and Commission
started to host meetings and open offices in the city in the 50s and 60s and since then the
international presence in little old Brussels has grown. When you have one city hosting major
European institutions like the European Commission, Parliament, Council and other international ones
like NATO, then other organizations are going to want to set up a branch in that city too
And with the jobs created come foreign expats. So in 2020, 50% of Brussels residents were foreign
or were born with a nationality that wasn't Belgian. So English is regularly used as a lingua franca
If two people don't share the same native language then very often in Brussels English
will be used as the language of choice to communicate in, even at work. Actually a study
in 2006 showed more Brussels residents identifying themselves as having good to excellent levels of
English than they did Flemish. That means there are more people in the capital city that speak
a foreign language than one of the official ones. Isn't language fun? I know it's a lot to take in
but now we know about the history of language in the city, let's look at what it's like to be there
We're going to take a hypothetical stroll down the Brussels streets. We're just going to see
what it would look like to spend a day in Brussels. Taking a stroll down the Brussels streets. Maybe
I am going to drop off my hypothetical child at school. This child doesn't exist. It's a
hypothetical day. The first thing we're going to notice is that all of the street signs are bilingual
So I'm going to drop off my hypothetical child at school. What language are they going to be taught
in? Well, it could be French or it could be Flemish, but it's not going to be both
So now it's just me. I'm going to stop for a little coffee. What language do I order in
The barista could be Flemish or they could be Francophone, but we're in the centre so let's be honest, I could probably order in English
Let say that I need to hop on a train to go to Ghent in the Flemish region for the day I need to get a train So I wander into the train station looking up the train information on the board Everything going to be displayed in French and in Flemish
I make my way down to the platform. I hop on my train. Maybe I want to kill the time by doing a
little reading. Maybe I'm going to pick up the paper. Well, I'm going to have to make a choice
between a French paper or a Flemish paper because language divides people. Have we learned nothing
so far and there's an english paper too like i just showed you a headline from it
but i've got to stay alert on the train can't relax too much because the train
tannoy changes language depending on what region the train's in so as this beautiful multilingual hypothetical day draws to a close
I'm going to end the day by going to my favourite bookshop. Bookshops in Brussels are amazing
I found that most bookshops would have an international section. And even if they didn't, there are a lot of bookshops that are just marketed to the expats of the city
There's actually a branch of a British chain of bookshops in the city of Brussels
It's called Waterstones. And I swear to you, you step inside and you would not know that you're in Brussels
so how does brussels operate as a trilingual city arguably it doesn't belgium as we've seen
has this history of letting people you know do their thing we've got this principle of freedom
of language but in order to adhere to that we're going to split things up and divide them
and make them more complicated it's so confusing all in all i think that brussels is a fascinating
example of how a country's history and their recent modern history come together and they
build and they shape an attitude towards language that we can see the very real consequences of
today so thanks for watching and learning about this language story with me if you want to learn
more about traveling smarter then head over to brighttrip.com forward slash courses there are a
ton of interesting courses there on travel and skill-based courses including this one on how to
learn a foreign language i'm just realizing i never picked up my hypothetical child from school