Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium

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3 The linguistic situation in Belgium

-	the origins of bilingualism in Belgium
-	the Flemish Movement
-	the situation today
-	the differences between Noord- and Zuidnederlands

In the Kingdom of Belgium there is a friction between the two main language groups, the Flemish and the Walloons, which is scarcely to be matched anywhere else in Europe. As the Dutch language and the status of its speakers are at the heart of this controversy, the issue deserves treatment here. What follows is a matter about which emotions often run high.

It is impossible to understand the situation as it is in the 1980's without a knowledge of the history of which it is a direct product. Although there are several excellent books in English on Belgian history (see bibliography), and thus also on the linguistic situation that is Belgium, the emphasis here will be on those historical events which are of direct relevance to the position of Dutch in that country. The situation is a very complex but also a very important one; after all, one in every four native-speakers of Dutch in the world today is a Belgian, or, as they prefer to call themselves, a Fleming.

The various connotations of the word Vlaams (Flemish), and thus of the word Vlaming (Fleming), were explained on p. 6. The name of the French-speaking Walen (Walloons) is derived from that of a Celtic tribe, the Volcae, which inhabited various parts of Europe at the beginning of the Christian era. The Germanic peoples adopted the name Waals[ch] (German: Welsch <* Wallisc) originally to designate Celts and later, after the romanisation of Gaul, as a name for the Romance peoples. In linguistic terms Waals was that which one could not understand i.e. French - compare German Kauderwelsch and Dutch koeterwaals i.e. Double Dutch, nonsense; also in German Rotwelsch is the word for the secret language of the underworld, usually called Bargoens in Dutch, which itself is possibly a corruption of Boergondisch (Burgundian) i.e. also French, the ununderstandable.

In Britain the newly arrived Anglo-Saxons also came into contact with a romanised Celtic people, as the Franks did in Gaul, whom they called the Welsh, there being a certain parallel at the time between Welsh and English on the one hand and Waals and Vlaams on the other. Various cognate forms of the word Walloon have thus been in circulation for centuries, but the name Wallonia, as a designation for southern, French-speaking Belgium, has only been current since the 1840's. In the word Belgium too lies the name of a Celtic tribe which the Romans found inhabiting the southern Netherlands i.e. the Belgae. The word had been used

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during the humanist period for the whole of the Netherlands but was revived in 1830 when a name had to be found for the newly formed kingdom that was created out of the Dutch and French-speaking provinces of the southern Netherlands.

This is a convenient point to look at how the Netherlands (i.e. both north and south) originally emerged as a separate entity in feudal Europe and thus how French and Dutch speakers ended up within the borders of one country. For the origins of the language border see chapter nine. Not long after the death of Charlemagne, during whose reign (768-814) the finishing touches had been put on a united western Europe stretching form the north of Germany to Rome and the Pyrenees, a three-way split occurred in this empire. By the Treaty of Verdun in 843 the sons of Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, each took a share. Basically the three parts were France in the west under Charles the Bald, Germany in the east under Louis the German and the so-called middle kingdom under Lothar, a strip of territory starting in the Netherlands in the north and running south through Luxemburg, Alsace-Lorraine (Lorraine in Dutch and German is Lotharingen < Lothar) and Burgundy to northern Italy. In the tenth century this three-way division became a two-way one with Germany, then called the Holy Roman Empire, taking the Dutch and French-speaking Low Countries, and France taking the rest, including the county of Flanders which then stretched from the river Scheldt to Normandy (see map 6). The county of Flanders was predominantly Dutch-speaking and thus the national border between the kingdom of France and the southern Netherlands divided Dutch speakers, as it did French speakers. Flanders, however, remained economically and culturally part of the Netherlands, although the count of Flanders was a vassal of the king of France; all other nobles in the Netherlands owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor. The relative isolation of the Netherlands from the maelstrom of feudal Europe in the post-Carolingian period led to the reinforcement of the idea in that region that they were a separate entity within a greater whole. Their proximity to the sea and their position at the mouth of the major waterways of Europe was a common denominator in their economic development which was, and still is, the source of their wealth.

The county of Flanders played a leading role in the economy and culture of the region at this time. The prosperity that resulted from the flourishing economy of mediaeval Flanders, based heavily on the cloth industry of Bruges^1. and Ghent, meant that the beginnings of the Dutch written word were also here. This aspect is dealt with on p. 95. But Flanders, situated as it was on the language border and owing allegiance to the king of France, was also an area where Dutch and French met head-on and where the nobility and many of the up-and-coming middle class were undoubtedly bilingual. Here then were already the beginnings of a situation where, as a result of the later cultural and economic dominance of France and thus a belief that French was socially more acceptable and worthy of mimicry, many

1. It is indicative of the important role that French has played in the region, that Dutch-speaking towns such as Bruges, Louvain and Malines (Dutch: Brugge, Leuven and Mechelen) are known in English by their French equivalents where the French names are now regarded as English too; I have used them here but for lesser known places I have given preference to the Dutch name with the French equivalent in brackets.

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Map 6: The Burgundian Netherlands (± 1500) showing language areas, the episcopal principality of Liège (a separate state till the 1790's) and the Rhine/Meuse/Scheldt delta as it was before reclamation was begun in earnest - compare maps 4 and 9.

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Flemings would feel inclined to abandon Dutch in favour of French. Bruges reached the zenith of its economic development in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The first open revolt by Flemings against French rule occurred in 1302 at the Battle of the Golden Spurs (de Giddensporenslag) which is still regarded as a red-letter day in the history of the Flemish people.

In 1384 there was a union of Flanders, and by 1430 all the other Netherlands provinces, with Burgundy, whose prince was thus both a vassal of the French king and of the Holy Roman Emperor. The Burgundian period, which lasted till 1477, although economically and culturally speaking one of the greatest periods in Dutch-Belgian history, brought with it certain dangers for the future prosperity of the Dutch language in the south. The seat of the French-speaking Burgundian rulers in the Netherlands became Brussels and thus the court and the circles that surrounded it were French-speaking, but Brussels lay well within the Dutch-speaking part of the duchy of Brabant. The ramifications of this are still with us today and are the bane of Belgian political life, as we shall see later.

During the period in question the economic centre of the southern Netherlands, which was in fact the economic hub of the entire Netherlands at the time, shifted to Antwerp, particularly as Bruges' access to the sea, the Zwin, had silted up. The important role that Antwerp plays in the cultural life of Flanders today is ultimately the result of this shift of economic activity from Flanders to Brabant; but, as we shall see, Antwerp's fortunes were to oscillate greatly before it would become the cultural capital of Flanders it is today.

By inheritance, the Burgundian Netherlands passed to the House of Habsburg in 1477 and thus ultimately became part of the great European empire of Charles V.^2. Although Charles was in fact born in Ghent and educated in Malines and was leader of the German-speaking Holy Roman Empire, this did little to dislodge the position of French in Brussels, the city in which he was both sworn in as Lord of the Netherlands and later abdicated. His court too was French-speaking, as were many royal courts at the time, and it is he who is reputed to have said ‘I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse’; the word German could at the time, and undoubtedly did in this case, refer equally to Dutch and German. Thus we see that in the region where Dutch and French confronted each other, the southern Netherlands, different social connotations began to be allotted to each very early in history.

In 1555 Charles V abdicated, dividing his possessions between his brother Ferdinand, who received the Holy Roman Empire, and his son, Philip II, who received Spain and the Netherlands. Charles regarded Spain as the real source of wealth in his empire because by this time Spain and Portugal were spearheading the discovery of the New World and bringing back fabulous riches from the Americas. The Netherlands were given to Philip as a useful military outpost against the Habsburgs' arch-enemy, the king of France. They were also conveniently situated in case of war with England. In this way the Netherlands were separated in the east for ever from Germany and also clearly demarcated in the south by the border with

2. It should be noted that the important French-speaking episcopal principality of Liège remained as a separate independent entity within the southern Netherlands until 1794 when it was incorporated into the new state (see map 6).

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France. However, the language border still ran through the middle of them and a situation which favoured French had already been set in motion.

In 1568, after a period of growing discontent among the Netherlanders against Spanish rule, the Eighty Years' War broke out. It would be this war which would cause a split in the Netherlands which would remain forever. The split was not, however, on the basis of language, but rather of geography. At this point the histories of Holland and Belgium part ways and the linguistic situations in both countries follow different paths too. After the break with the north, the place that Dutch had as cultuurtaal in Holland, was occupied by French in the south. The Dutch language in the south was left as a disunited array of dialects, with no one dialect managing to rise up over the others to form the basis of a standard language as happened in the north. Particularly in Brussels, French still stands above the dialect as the cultuurtaal for some Flemings. Supporters of Dutch language and culture can only lament that this break between north and south ever occurred, but the resulting separate developments are as interesting as they are complex, above all in the south. There are many good works in English on the Eighty Years' War, also known in English as the Dutch Revolt (see bibliography). Every student of Dutch should read at least one account of this all important split in the destinies and fortunes of the northern and southern Netherlands. More than anything else it is the reason for the many striking differences between Dutch-speaking Belgium and Holland today, not the least of which is the language. In fact, when George Bernard Shaw said ‘England and America are two countries separated by the same language’, he could just as easily have been talking of Holland and Belgium.

The Treaty of Münster (1648) concluded the Eighty Years' War and left an area corresponding approximately to present-day Belgium in Spanish hands, whence the name the Spanish Netherlands. The War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13) saw the territory pass to the Austrian Habsburgs and thoughout the eighteenth century the southern Netherlands were consequently known as the Austrian Netherlands. The whole period saw further consolidation of French as the more socially acceptable tongue, as the language of the aristocracy and more and more also of the wealthy middle class who tried, as elsewhere in Europe, to mimic their betters. In fact a knowledge of French became a necessity as it was the official language. It must also be remembered that this was the zenith of the ancien régime in France and that all Europe was aping French manners and speech; even Holland was subjected to considerable French influence at the time, but the circumstances in the Austrian Netherlands made the country even more susceptible to the influence of its powerful southern neighbour.

The revolutionary period and subsequent Napoleonic occupation that brought an end to Austrian rule at the end of the eighteenth century, only did more to consolidate the position of French in the southern Netherlands. Holland did not escape the effects of the end of the ancien régime in France either, and even there discriminatory steps against the Dutch language were taken by the French occupiers. But legislation in favour of French and to the detriment of Dutch in government, the law and education for example, was simply more practical in the bilingual southern provinces than in monolingual Holland. One should not forget, however, that the lower classes, of which the majority were Flemings, were not bilingual. The fact that the lower classes were never in a position to abandon Dutch

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for French was to be the ultimate salvation of the language in Belgium when more enlightened times dawned.

There is a certain poetic justice in the fact that the Congress of Vienna, which met in 1813 to sort out the borders of post-Napoleonic Europe, should decide to reunite the northern and southern Netherlands under a Dutch king, William I. The union was short-lived, however, but it was important for the future development of Dutch in Belgium after the two split again in 1831, because it awakened the flame of what is now called the Flemish Movement (de Vlaamse Beweging). William was an enlightened despot who believed that his new unitary state should have one overriding national language - Dutch. After all, 75% of the population of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands was Dutch-speaking. Immediately on assuming control of the south in 1814, William reversed all previous legislation favouring French. He then set about compiling his language decrees (de Taalbesluiten) which were announced in September 1819 but were not to be enforced until January 1823 - there simply were not enough Dutch-speaking bureaucrats and the like to make the transition immediate. Meanwhile French continued to enjoy a privileged position in administration, law and education, but at least the frenchification of the Flemish provinces was brought to an abrupt halt. The decrees demanded that all official affairs in Flanders were to be conducted in Dutch and of course Dutch became the language of all national issues where the north was also involved. William also founded the State University of Ghent for the Flemish people, as well as a university in Liège for the Walloons. The introduction of Dutch language instruction in Ghent was slow, however, due to the position of firstly Latin and secondly French in the world of scholarly learning.

Williams I's taalpolitiek, coming as it did after a long period of heavy French domination, did not have any long lasting effect. On the foundation of the Kingdom of Belgium in 1831, the Dutch language there consisted chiefly of a conglomeration of local patois, with all affairs of substance once again being conducted in French. It should once again be stated, however, that if a Fleming wrote his native tongue, he wrote Dutch, as Flemish did not and does not exist as a written alternative to Dutch. The new constitution made no special commitment to French, but in effect it was the only language used in the government, law, army and higher education for the first forty years of the new nation.

To relate the fate of Dutch and the status of its speakers in Belgium after 1831, is to relate the story of nineteenth and twentieth century Belgian politics, and it is a story that as yet has no end. Much has been written on the topic, even in English, and interested readers are referred to the bibliography at the end of the chapter for further reading. Here we can but look briefly at the main events of the period which were of immediate importance to the position of the language in the new Belgian state.

The early leaders of the Flemish Movement, those that gave birth to the concept, were men of letters^3.: Hendrik Conscience (1812-83) - his book, De Leeuw van

3. In 1788 J.B.C. Verlooy, a politician, published an essay entitled Verhandeling op d'onacht der moederlijke taal in de Nederlanden (Treatise on the neglect of the mother-tongue in the Netherlands). This was an appeal to his compatriots in the Austrian Netherlands to take note of the linguistic injustice and to rectify it. That such feelings could be interpreted as treason by the Austrian authorities is evidenced by the fact that the essay was written anonymously and ostensibly published in Maastricht, outside the Austrian Netherlands, although in fact it was printed in Brussels. For this reason Verlooy is often regarded as the father of the Flemish Movement and the first true flamingant (Flemish chauvinist).

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Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders, 1838) reminded Flemings of their glorious victory against French domination in 1302 at the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Jan Frans Willems (1793-1846) was a philologist and ardent supporter of the equality of Dutch in Belgium; he was an advocate of the Grootnederlandse Gedachte (greater Netherlands idea) which favoured (also linguistic) unity with Holland. On the other hand, Guido Gezelle (1830-99), a poet-priest from Bruges was one of the earliest Flemish particularists who favoured following a separate line in linguistic issues from Holland.

Only later did the movement gradually become politically and socially oriented and it was not until World War I with the emergence of Frontism and Activism, that it assumed a more aggressive face. It is the present-day successor of that movement, the political party known as the Volksunie, which forced the government to introduce the language laws of 1962 (i.e. those that fixed the language border) and legislation dating from the late 1960's to turn Belgium into a federal state.

The Flemings are and always have been in the majority, but the rapid industrialisation which Belgium underwent in the nineteenth century developed chiefly in Wallonia and Flanders declined. Flemings flocked south to work and were gallicised. Belgium was also quick to exploit the potential of the newest form of land transport, the railway, and soon an extensive railway system was taking Flemish commuters back and forth from the Dutch-speaking country-side to the French-speaking cities to work. In towns such as Brussels and Liège the Flemish worker was under great social pressure to conform linguistically. In the case of Brussels this is still a problem today, but in the nineteenth century the Fleming had no political power or social status behind him to resist. Nowadays, however, it is the industry of Flanders with its natural harbour in Antwerp that is developing at a faster rate than in Wallonia whose prosperity in the nineteenth century was based largely on the proximity of coal mines. Antwerp, in addition to regaining much of its former economic importance, especially since World War II, is at the same time also assuming more and more the role of cultural capital of Flanders, Brussels being unsuitable and unworthy. For too long the Flemings had been left without a clear cultural centre.

One of the problems the Flemish language cause had to face in the late nineteenth century was a division between the particularists, who favoured a separate written tradition from Holland based on Flemish usage, and the unitarians who had no objection to following protestant Holland in linguistic issues, and who saw all the more hope for their cause by so doing; after all, the Walloons had the backing of France. It is fortunate for a ‘small’ language like Dutch that the latter course of action won out in the end. Although there is still hesitation in the minds of some Flemings to be guided completely by northern usage, this trend is not to be reversed and it is remarkable how much standardisation, in favour of northern speech, has been achieved in the relatively short time that has elapsed. One can now say that the Flemings of Belgium truly do speak Dutch. This has recently been

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reflected in the abolition of the word Vlaams from all official titles e.g. de Koninklijke Vlaamse Akademie voor Taal- en Letterkunde in Ghent, an important cultural and literary body, is now called de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie voor Taal- en Letterkunde (changed in 1972); het Ministerie van Vlaamse Cultuur has also been renamed: het Ministerie van Nederlandse Cultuur.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, more and more concessions were made to Dutch in the civil service, the law courts and the schools. Not till 1878 did all administrative decrees and laws have to be published in both languages, however. But a true quality was to be long in coming and in some senses one can say that it has still not been completely achieved. During World War I, the injustices that still existed led to two movements which were to completely change the tone of the Flemish Movement - Frontism and Activism. Frontism is the name given to a mood of rebellion among Flemish troops fighting on the Front, who, while being commanded by French-speaking officers, were being asked to die for a country in which they were considered second-class citizens; the ‘law of equality’ of 1898 was not being enforced. Activism, on the other hand, was a movement which was supported by a considerable number of Flemings during World War I who saw the German occupation as an opportunity to further their own interests in achieving equality for themselves and their language. In 1916, for example, the State University of Ghent, which King William I had founded for the Flemings in 1816, was made Dutch-speaking by the Germans, only to revert to French after the war.^4.

The ‘collaboration’ was to prove to be a temporary setback for the Flemish Movement after the war, but the true feelings of the Flemish people had been heard and there was now to be no turning back. In the period between the wars the flaminganten began to organise themselves politically and in time their ‘sins’ of the war years were forgotten. In 1930 the University of Ghent became Dutch-speaking and was to stay so. The language laws of 1932 also marked the beginning of an official policy of unilingualism whereby civil servants needed to be proficient in only one of the two national languages. This was thus the beginning of a ‘linguistic federalism’, a concept which now in the 1980's is in the process of being applied to all aspects of Belgian society.

When Belgium fell to Nazi Germany in 1940, once again certain Flemish factions, now politically organised, fell in with the Germans. It is true that there were certain Fascist sympathies among some of them, but, as was the case in the First World War, it was more because there was still a gross inequality of opportunity for Flemings and thus collaboration was one means of rectifying this. The defeat of Germany in this war had a similar effect on the Flemish Movement as the same circumstances had had at the end of the other, although the socialist flaminganten had felt that the language issue should be shelved for the duration of the war. The movement took a decade to recover after the war. Its ideals were, however, kept alive by various small nationalist groups which began to reorganise themselves politically and finally amalgamated in 1954 to form the Volksunie, a party which was to become quite influential from the 1960's on.

There were pressing social problems to be solved in the immediate post-war

4. In the 1960's the vervlaamsing (=vernederlandsing) of the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven), situated also well within the language border, would also become a burning issue.

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period, such as reconstruction, the ‘royal question’^5., and the ‘schools' struggle’^6., plus the fact that the movement had to keep a low profile until its activities of the war years were forgotten. But in the 1960's the troubles started again. The increasing gallicisation of the capital, not helped by the adoption of Brussels as headquarters of Nato and the E.E.C., as well as the continuing lack of equality of Flemings and Walloons in business, the army and the diplomatic corps⁷, were issues which still had to be solved. The 1960's also witnessed the economic revival of Flanders and subsequent decline of Wallonia, thus encouraging the Flemings all the more in their demands.

A cure for the evergrowing cancer known as Brussels (de Brusselse agglomeratie), situated as it was in the belly of Flanders, was to become the final and most difficult task the Flemish Movement had to deal with. Erecting a barrier against further expansion of Brussels, fixing the language border across the country and the subsequent creation of a truly federal state became the express aims of the Flemish Movement in the 60's, 70's and 80's.

Bilingualism in Belgium was to be understood as follows: the two national languages were to be equal but the jurisdiction of each would be limited to that part of the country where it is the mother-tongue of the majority, except for bilingual Brussels where either could be used. The language laws of 1962-3 fixed the border between Flanders and Wallonia but there were certain difficulties in so doing. For example, the area known as Komen-Moeskroen (Comines-Mouscron, population 75,000), which is predominantly French-speaking but not contiguous with a French-speaking province of Belgium (see map 7) was transferred for administrative purposes to Hainaut, although it is geographically part of West Flanders; the language rights of the Dutch-speaking minority in the area were to be preserved, however. In return for this obvious concession to the Walloons, the Voerstreek (Fourons, but also called Land van Overmaas, population 4,400), situated south of the Dutch Limburg border, was handed over to the Belgian province of Limburg; here Flemings are in the majority, although the region is not contiguous with a Dutch-speaking province but is geographically part of the province of Liège. As in the case of Komen-Moeskroen, the linguistic rights of the minority, in this case the Walloons, are preserved. There is, however, continual friction between the two factions due to the economic dependence of the Flemings in the area on the French cities to the south.

It should be pointed out that strictly speaking Belgium is a trilingual country with a sizeable German-speaking minority (60,000) concentrated along its eastern

5. The koningskwestie is the name given to the controversy which arose as a result of many people feeling that the king, Leopold III, had handed the country over to the Germans too easily and by residing in comfort in Germany for the duration of the war, he too was felt to have been guilty of collaboration. Conservative Catholic Flanders demanded the return of the king from Germany after the war, but progressive Wallonia opposed it. The Flemish vote outnumbered the Walloon vote and yet the king was forced to abdicate in 1952 in favour of his son, Baudouin (Boudewijn), the present king.

6. The schoolstrijd was the fight to retain government subsidies for Catholic schools, a Flemish cause, while at the same time building more non-religious state schools, a Walloon cause. A solution was found in 1958.

7 The Flemings were demanding only a 50/50 share of posts in the foreign service and of federal expenditure, which, considering the population splits 60/40 in their favour, seems a very reasonable demand.

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Map 7: (a) The language border in the west as it is and is believed to have been in former times. Taken from the Winkler Prins Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1978 (volume 1, p. 81). (b) The language border and the various linguistic communities in the present-day Kingdom of Belgium. (c) The language border in the east featuring the Voerstreek (i.e. the area of the Fourons, a small river).

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border in the so-called East Cantons. Belgium already possessed German-speaking territory prior to World War I but this increased in size after that war as a result of a decision of the Treaty of Versailles to reward Belgium and punish Germany. This so-called Eupen-Malmédy area belongs to French-speaking Liège, but the language rights of the German-speaking minority are guaranteed by the constitution. The whole north-eastern corner of Belgium is a region where in the course of time French has made considerable gains at the cost of Germanic speech, whether it be Dutch or German.

When the language border was fixed in 1962-3, the metropolitan area of Brussels was also restricted to 19 communes. In addition 6 peripheral communes (see map 8) got taalfaciliteiten for their French-speaking minority; this means, for example, that French-speaking children, although living in Vlaamstalig Brabant, as it is often called, can go to French language schools. This is not possible in the rest of Flanders, nor is the reverse the case in Wallonia. 80% of Brusselaars (Bruxellois) are French-speaking but many people commute from the towns and villages of Flanders to work there, switching to French on arrival in their work environment.

Thus the language laws of 1962 were the beginning of the political break-up of the unitary state of Belgium. This break-up was a direct result of the Flemish pressure of decades and federalism was and is seen as the only means of preserving any form of state at all. Central to the whole issue, although not the exclusive cause, had been the Dutch language in Belgium. Protests over the inequality of the two languages were numerous in the 1960's after the language border had been fixed. The seaside resorts along the Flemish coast were (and are) heavily Frenchified in the summer, due not only to Walloon holiday-makers but also due to many tourists from France. This coast was thus one of the scenes of protest against the dominance of French. At the same time there were also repeated demonstrations against the occasional use of French in some of the churches in the cities of Flanders. The conservative Catholic church had been one of the bastions of the French language in Flanders that had to be combatted from the beginning of the Flemish Movement.

The late 1960's witnessed the controversy about the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven), the oldest university in the Low Countries dating from 1425. The language border, as it was drawn in 1962, passed 15 kilometres south of Louvain and yet the university, due to the Catholic church which manages it, had been allowed to continue instruction in French. The student discontent, which much of Western Europe witnessed at this time, found expression in Belgium among nationalist Flemings in the fight for the vervlaamsing (now vernederlandsing) of Louvain university - Leuven Vlaams was the slogan of the day. Finally in 1969 the French-speaking faculties were removed to Wavre near Ottignies, south of the language border. Feelings ran very high at the time and the split led, for example, to such bizarre situations as the possessions of the historic university library being split down the middle on the basis of odd and even catalogue numbers.^8.

8. This ancient library had been world-famous until World War I when it was destroyed. During World War II many of its possessions were once again lost due to bombardment. This division of the library's holdings in the late 1960's was regarded by many as the third destruction of the university library.

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The Belgian dilemma has thus been that it is an artificially created country, founded a mere 150 years ago but divided in two by a linguistic frontier which has existed for over 1000 years. Union of the Flemish and Walloon provinces with their northern and southern neighbours respectively was neither practical nor desirable, nor was independence from each other. Thus union was the only practical alternative but that brought inevitable problems with it, which, it is now felt, can only be solved if the country is organised along federal lines with recognition of three separate regions - Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels - and three languages: Dutch, French and German. In the 1980's we are witnessing the application of this solution to the Belgian predicament, often labelled the communautaire probleem.

The problems of this three-way division of the federal state have caused every government since 1968 to fall, the main cause usually being Brussels and the complications its growth is causing. The Flemings, at the head of whose protest stands the Volksunie^9., are trying to prevent so-called bilingual Brussels from assuming a status equal to that of Flanders or Wallonia, in which case they feel their equality would be lost - there would then be two French-speaking regions to one Dutch-speaking region, although population-wise the division is 3 to 2 in their favour. In addition the Brusselaars want complete language rights for all French-speakers living on the outkirts of Brussels. Since 1978 there has been an impasse between Flemings and Walloons on the status which Brussels is to have in the new federal state. Meanwhile the administrative and cultural autonomy of Flanders and Wallonia is being put into practice, but the Flemings are not prepared to let go of Brussels which stands well within their territory.

Map 8 shows that any further concessions to the Walloons in the south of Brussels could very soon led to the city joining up geographically with Wallonia. A good Dutch sounding place name like Waterloo, situated south of the language border twenty kilometres from the capital shows, for example, that Dutch has already lost ground to French in this area in the past.^10.

For the full implementation of a federal state, compromises will have to be found. It seems that Belgium will remain a united country but linguistic friction will probably also always be a fact of Belgian life. Although both Flemings and Walloons have always learnt the other's language at school, in practice it was usually the case that the Fleming spoke better French than the Walloon spoke Dutch - the result of social and economic pressure - and thus the need and desire of the Walloon to learn Dutch properly was minimal. Nowadays, although it is compulsory to study both languages at school, it is very common for many young people to choose English as their second language instead of the language of their compatriots. In addition, English already enjoys a privileged position in Brussels as the main language of the Nato and E.E.C. This situation is thus leading very

9. It is interesting to note that the success of the stand which the Volksunie took on the issue of language caused the previously united national parties to split into Flemish and Walloon branches.

10. When the Flemings reformed the spelling of Dutch in 1946 (see p. 42), they also applied the new rules to place-names, unlike Holland where it remained optional. Thus Waterloo became Waterlo and Schaerbeek became Schaarbeek. But these areas had become French-speaking and the Walloons had nothing to gain by recognising a Dutch spelling reform; thus the Walloons retained the spelling Waterloo and Schaerbeek while the Flemings write these and other such names according to the new spelling.

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Map 8: The growth of Brussels.

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gradually to a situation where in the future Flemings and Walloons may well find it easier and preferable to converse with each other in English. But this remains speculation at this stage. There is a long way to go before such a solution becomes fact.

One final hurdle some Flemings have yet to overcome in their struggle for complete linguistic equality is a psychological one. Although numbers are on their side, and although legislation now protects monolingual Flemings inside Flanders, there is still a lingering feeling among many people that a knowledge of French is necessary for full social acceptance. And it is indeed a fact that a monolingual Fleming who is forced to seek work in his capital city would find life difficult.

In addition many Flemings (although an ever decreasing number) are still reared in a dialect environment and thoughout their schooling, and even their university education for example, they are continually unsure of the correctness and acceptability of their Dutch. This insecurity is not aided at all by the attitude of the Dutch to Belgian language usage. Although Flanders has now clearly opted to follow northern practice, and thus in time to break down the existing differences between north and south, the average Dutchman is not at all interested in the Fleming's plight and regards him, his country and particularly his language as ‘quaint’, to put it mildly.

In the hope of reuniting Flanders and Holland on at least a cultural level, and thus also on a linguistic one, the Nederlandse Taalunie was founded in September 1980; its objectives are the integration of Holland and the Dutch-speaking community in Belgium in the field of language and literature. In May 1981 the Vlaams Cultureel Centrum was also opened in Amsterdam for cultural exchange between the two countries.

Nowadays the relationship of the various forms of Flemish to Dutch does not really differ greatly from that of all other Dutch dialects to standard Dutch. The cultuurtaal of the majority of Flemings in the church, science, education, literature and journalism is Dutch, and whatever position French may have in Belgium today, it does not alter this relationship at all.

But what are some of the characteristics of Belgian Dutch, commonly called Flemish? In pronunciation it is particularly the soft g, the (often) bilabial w, the common dropping of h and the pure long vowels and diphtongs that typify it. Only a minority of people attempt to adopt a northern pronunciation but a certain regional colour in accent is no impediment to standardisation.

The enormous and inevitable influence of French is evidenced in several ways:

1	Gallicisms in the grammar e.g. telefoneren naar - téléfoner à (in N. Dutch simply telefoneren).
2	There are many French loanwords that are not used in the north, where words of French origin are also not uncommon e.g. contacteren (N. Dutch: contact opnemen met), de lavabo (N. Dutch: de wastafel - wash basin), de chauffage (N. Dutch: de verwarming - heating), konfijt (N. Dutch: jam, an English loanword).
3	There is often an avoidance of French loanwords which are commonly used in Holland e.g. stortbad - douche (shower), aanvaarden - accepteren (to accept), dagblad - krant (< courant, newspaper). Such purism is common to many languages that are in competition with others or where it is seen as integral to the preservation of separate identity e.g. Afrikaans, Hebrew, Icelandic.

[p. 34]

4	French loanwords that are considered indispensable are dutchified to some extent e.g. statie < station, bureel < bureau, energie (with a Dutch, not a French g), okkazie < occasion.

The last example is an interesting illustration of the difference in orientation between Flanders and Holland. The source of most loanwords in Northern Dutch today is English, whereas in Belgium it is still either French or English which often reaches Flanders via French. The word occasion (a special offer in a shop) is a loanword of quite long standing. In Flanders they are only too aware that it is French and thus attempt to dutchify it. In Holland, however, they assume it is from English and thus write and pronounce it as an English word. So too the English loanwords flat and tram are pronounced with an [a] in Belgium, as in French, while in Holland they are pronounced with an [ε], an attempt to pronounce them as in English (see p. 48). English words like service and plastic are also pronounced more or less as in English in Holland, with the stress on the first syllable, whereas in Belgium the stress is on the last syllable, as in French.

The Dutch of the administration, particularly in Brussels, is often a language of translation with all the mistakes that this implies. Because dialect speech is still so prevalent in Belgium, there is a tendency among Flemings to regard the written word as the prototype of the spoken word, with the result that Belgian Dutch can sound bookish and unnatural e.g. gehuwd for getrouwd (married), u zijt for u bent (you are), bekomen for krijgen (to get), zegde for zei (past tense of zeggen, to say).

Many Dutch words in everyday use in Belgium sound archiac to the Dutchman e.g. gans (heel-whole), gij(jij-you), gaarne(graag-gladly) (see p. 103). Many also sound humorous to the northerner because of the differences in meaning that often exist e.g. kuisen (B. to clean, H. to chasten), schoon (B. pretty, H. clean), tas (B. cup, H. bag), kleed (B. dress, H. rug), merkwaardig (B. remarkable, H. peculiar).

The Belgian, like the southern Dutchman, still knows three genders of the noun: the historical difference between masculine and feminine nouns, which died out in the north, was preserved in the south. This has implications for pronominal use e.g. de vloer > hij, de deur > zij, but in Holland both are referred to as hij (i.e. it). (See p. 61).

Belgian word order can also differ from the northern norm, particularly the order of verbs at the end of a clause e.g. Hij weet dat het nu moet gedaan worden (he knows that it must now be done), whereas in Holland the auxiliary verbs are preferably kept together: Hij weet dat het nu gedaan moet worden/moet worden gedaan. There is also, for example, an avoidance of tangconstructies (see p. 72) with separable verbs e.g. Ik heb het hem proberen duidelijk maken but in Holland: Ik heb het hem duidelijk proberen te maken/Ik heb het hem proberen duidelijk te maken (I tried to make it clear to him).

In conclusion it should be mentioned that whereas Holland's colonial past led to the plantation of the Dutch language in areas outside Europe, where it still exists today, Belgium's colonial activity, although of course not as long-lasting or as wide-spread as that of its northern neighbour, did nothing at all for the spread of Dutch language and culture. Belgium had control of the Congo, now Zaïre, from the 1880's to 1960. It is somehow indicative of the situation in Belgium itself during that period that although the vast majority of colonial administrators in the Congo were Flemings, there was no place for Dutch in that administration and consequently Zaïre belongs to francophone Africa.

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Bibliography

IRVING, R.E.M. The Flemings and Walloons of Belgium. Minority Rights Group Report 46, London, 1980. An excellent, succinct and up to date account of the Belgian problem.

RUYS, M. The Flemings. Lannoo, Tielt & Utrecht, 1973. Probably the best account of the Belgian problem available in English. It is also available in Dutch, German and French.

HUGGETT, F.E. Modern Belgium. Pall Mall Press, London, 1969. A good general history of Belgium.

CARSON, P. The fair face of Flanders. E. Story-Scientia, Ghent, 1969. A very readable, sympathetic account of Belgian history.

CLERCK, W. DE, Zuidnederlands woordenboek. Martinus Nijhoff. The Hague, 1981. A very detailed work on word usage in Belgium, including many words and expressions that are commonly used in Holland south of the rivers.

DELEU, G. ed. and others Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse beweging, volumes 1 & 2. Lannoo, Tielt & Utrecht, 1973. Absolutely the definitive work on the Flemish Movement (ca. 3000 pages).