The Low Countries. Jaargang 2

The Low Countries. Jaargang 2 bron The Low Countries. Jaargang 2. Stichting Ons Erfdeel, Rekkem 1994-1995 Zie voor verantwoording: https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001199401_01/colofon.php Let op: werken die korter dan 140 jaar geleden verschenen zijn, kunnen auteursrechtelijk beschermd zijn. i.s.m. 10 Brussels, City of the Coming Century Hidden bilingualism Foreigners who come to live in Belgium soon realise that they have arrived in a bilingual country. Many of them, those who work for the European institutions and the private companies which cluster around them, live either in the centre of the capital city, Brussels, or else very nearby. I am constantly amazed by the fact that these people see Brussels as an exclusively Frenchspeaking city. Even Dutch people, who speak the same language as Flemings, are able to miss the bilingualism of this city, which is so obvious to me. Worse still, a great many Flemings, themselves Belgians, assume without any further consideration that Brussels is French-speaking, even though Brussels is the capital of their own Flemish Community. Can these people not see? Can they not hear? All the street name plates and road signs are bilingual, with combinations which are sometimes very original, such as ‘Schae/arbeek’ or ‘centre/um’, and sometimes almost surrealistic, such as ‘Treurenberg/Treurenberg’. Every notice in every town hall and post office is bilingual, and the counter staff have to be able to speak both languages. The metro and tram systems are completely bilingual, although some employees still obstinately refuse to understand simple phrases like ‘one tram card please’ or ‘how much does this cost?’ if they are said in Dutch. In the bars and on the streets I hear not only French, Turkish, Arabic, Portuguese, English and a dozen other languages every day, but also Dutch, and what is more - thank goodness - the Brabant dialect of Brussels, which is Dutch to the core. The confusion of tongues in Brussels is like the Tower of Babel, and yet foreigners still say again and again: Yes, of course Brussels is French-speaking. What else would it be? Eight centuries of Dutch, two centuries of Frenchification This city is just over a thousand years old. It is said that Bruocsella, a combination of old Dutch words which means ‘settlement in the marsh’, was founded in 979. The Brussels Region, in existence since 1988, includes the The Low Countries. Jaargang 2 11 Bilingual poster for the historical procession on the occasion of the 1930 centenary. city itself and eighteen other municipalities. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, all but one of these (Elsene/Ixelles) were mainly Dutch-speaking, though, as far as road signs and public notices were concerned, just as French as the Walloon cities of Liège or Charleroi. At the moment the vast majority of the population of the Brussels Region is French-speaking, and the street scene is more bilingual than ever. In everyday life it is sometimes difficult to draw the dividing line between Dutch-speakers and French-speakers; there is still a very large number of bilingual people, even though the population of what is now the Brussels Region has certainly been Frenchified on a massive scale during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This does not mean that Brussels is now mainly a Walloon (and hence French-speaking) city. The geographical language border between Flanders and Wallonia runs to the south of the Brussels Region, where it has been for centuries. Much more important was the social language border, which divided the higher classes in Flanders and Brussels, who spoke French, from the lower classes who spoke Dutch dialects. After the Netherlands was split into a northern and southern part, as a disastrous consequence of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Dutch language blossomed in the North, while in the Southern part, which was occupied by the armies of Spain, the same language disintegrated into a number of The Low Countries. Jaargang 2 ineffectual dialects, which soon came to be deeply despised by the elite. During the eighteenth century, the French language enjoyed a high degree of respect throughout Europe, and even more so in Flanders and Brussels, because there was nothing which looked like a cultural language to set against it. Nevertheless, the courts and local authorities continued to work almost exclusively in Dutch, as they had The Low Countries. Jaargang 2 12 been doing for centuries. This was to change drastically at the end of the eighteenth century, as the southern Netherlands became part of revolutionary France. The fatherland of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ deprived all languages except French of their freedom, by treating them with appalling inequality. All official documents, for example birth certificates or deeds drawn up by a notary, had to be drawn up in French. Citizens were no longer tried in their own language, as they had been for centuries - another clear step backwards compared with the Ancien Régime. The sole language of the justice system was now French, whether the accused understood a word of it or not. At this time, remember, virtually no one in Flanders, and at the most fifteen percent of the population in Brussels, spoke French. Not long before, Voltaire had written: ‘Il n'y a à Bruxelles que les Flamands.’ A quarter of a century of French occupation (1790-1815) had very serious consequences for the Dutch language in Brussels: ordinary people became firmly convinced that their everyday language, the Brabant dialect, was common and low, and that it was undesirable or even dangerous to use that language in public life. The period of reunification with the Northern Netherlands from 1815 to 1830, and the well-meaning but clumsy and ineffective attempts by the Dutch King William I to restore the national language to its rightful position, could not erase the Flemish people's deep-rooted contempt for their own language. In 1830, after a series of proletarian food riots got out of hand, the independent Kingdom of Belgium came into being. Like many other European countries, Belgium was governed by a small elite of no more than two percent of its citizens. This elite spoke French, and French was the only official language of this young, self-confident and in fact very liberal country, although the majority of the population could not speak it. Not even in the capital, Brussels; in 1830 only about one-quarter of the population of the city were more or less able to speak French. In Brussels, the Frenchification of the civil service and the educational system was carried out in an extremely brutal fashion. Frenchification was not a spontaneous process: pressure was relentlessly and consistently applied over a long period, from the early nineteenth century until well into the 1970s. The consequences of this for the ordinary people of Brussels were disastrous. In the nineteenth century, Charles Buls, an alderman in charge of education who later became Mayor, observed during a schools inspection how a certain teacher, who of course spoke French, gave a half-hour lesson about a locomotive. The pupils spoke so little French that they thought the teacher was talking about a tree. From 1879 onwards Buls, who was French-speaking but had a keen awareness of the sufferings of the common people, diffidently attempted to introduce a little Dutch into primary schools in Brussels. He was shamelessly boycotted, and his well-meaning efforts came to nothing. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that the Dutch language really began to make headway in Brussels. For more than a century, French-speakers in Brussels worked to Frenchify the city by means of social control, depriving Dutch speakers of their livelihood, by slander and outright breach of the law and, if all else failed, by neatly circumventing the laws of Belgium. Officials behind Town The Low Countries. Jaargang 2 13 The Palace of Justice, designed by Joseph Poelaert and built between 1866-1883. Hall counters shamelessly insulted or even threatened citizens. Identity cards are unknown in Anglo-Saxon countries, but in Belgium everybody has to carry one. Twenty years ago, anyone in Brussels who wanted to obtain a card in Dutch needed to have an argumentative disposition and nerves of steel. You had almost to assault some officials to claim your rights; for as a Fleming you did have a perfect right to a card in your own language. Most people, however, are relatively peaceable, so the majority of Flemings carried French-language identity cards. They were consequently considered to be French-speaking, and received all their official papers in French. Moreover, a great many Flemings who settled in Brussels were quick to send their children to French-speaking schools. Until recently, French was the elite language in Belgium and Brussels. The French-speaking school was the preferred way to social advancement. Despite all this, Brussels remained a bilingual city. That bilingualism is established by law, and this law is being implemented more and more effectively. For some years The Low Countries. Jaargang 2 now the prestige of the Dutch language in Belgium, and hence also in Brussels, has been rising. This is related to the economic decline of Wallonia and the growth in the economy of the Flemish part of the country. The old climate of contempt for anyone who speaks Dutch has given way to a great deal of goodwill and good sense. Even the process of Frenchification through the educational system has been reversed. During the last few years, more and more pupils from French-speaking or mixedlanguage families have been firmly opting for Dutch-speaking schools.

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