this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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I’m confused by Belgium. Are they saying that English and Dutch are equally popular, or that the north half learns English while the south half learns Dutch, or is the shading like a percentage?
Also lol, nobody wants to learn Italian …
The area shaded for English is the area where most people already speak Dutch as their first language anyway, so maybe that's why it's not counted as a "foreign" language there. Although I'd think that Åland wouldn't be coloured for Swedish if that was being applied consistently
If dutch counts for the southern half shouldn’t the north be colored french then?
Also i am pretty sure Belgium has a german speaking section with German being a third National language. There is a section that looks colored yellow for german… but like i think the original op was confused what “foreign” means or Belgium was just to complicated to get right.
Edit: that spot is Luxembourg, the Belgian germans arent represented.
Not necessarily. We're looking at the second-most taught foreign language, so it could be something like:
This would result in the map above even though all three are different once you look at them. I have no idea if it's actually true of course, just saying that it's possible
That's pretty much it, yes! I'm not 100% sure about the German part, because they are are part of Wallonia (which is the southern part) but do have their own language representation so I'm not actually sure which government manages their curriculum.
The German-speaking part isn't shown on the map, probably because it is too small or the map maker got confused with our amazing organization.
There's also the region of Brussels, which is separate of Flanders and Wallonia, and officially bilingual french / dutch. They sort of tried to represent it on the map, but I have no idea what they tried to do there.
It is a clusterfuck, really.
The Flemings (northern part of Belgium) are speaking Dutch, the Walloons (southern part) are speaking French.
The Fleming are learning French first, because even though the Walloon are a minority and not as developed economically its important for the unity of the country to make effort to understand each other. They are learning English in second.
The Walloon don't care about the Fleming, learning dutch for them is not a priority. They are learning a bit of English and only few very motivated Walloon are learning Dutch
I love Walloon, they are probably the friendliest people I've ever met but the love/hate with the Fleming is interesting.
A funny experience is to take a train from Liege to Brussels. Liege is is Wallonia so announcement are only in French. Then we pass through Leuven in the Flanders so now all announcement are only in Dutch even though we are still the same train. Finally we arrive in Brussels so announcement are made in 2 language.