Conjugating yes and no.

A look into Belgium's multilingual culture.

Good morning friend,

I was born in a small yet complex country. When it comes to linguistic diversity, I would dare to argue that Belgium could win the world championship if such a title existed.

This fascinating fact is rooted in Belgium's history. Once part of France (explaining the French, obviously), we later belonged to the Netherlands (hence the Dutch. Also obviously.). When we finally gained our independence in 1830, French became our official language, dominating government, education, and all things considered important. If you wanted to earn a degree, or hold a position of importance, you needed to learn how to speak, read and write French. As this was of course perceived as deeply unfair to the Flemish speaking part of the country, a Flemish movement emerged, leading to the recognition of both French and Flemish as equal languages in 1898. Despite this, French did remain the language of the elite for a very long time, while Flemish was considered a commoner’s language. After World War I, borders were redrawn as Germany had to surrender parts of their territory to neighboring countries, Belgium being one of them, and thus our transformation as three-language speaking country was complete.

That whole language situation can make Belgium as a country hard to explain. Not only do language borders exist, but they also come with a sense of division; traveling from the North to the South can feel like crossing into another country entirely. It's also because of this complex structure, that, if you ever for any odd reason would want to delve into Belgian politics, you'll find it widely complicated and confusing.

Belgium’s language borders. (Illustration by Victoria Fernandez)

And that's not all. To further complicate matters, it's important to note that the French spoken in Belgium differs from that spoken in France. Similarly, spoken Dutch in Belgium is distinct from the Dutch spoken in the Netherlands, although the written form remains the same. The Dutch spoken in Belgium is commonly referred to as Flemish, and to add yet another layer of complexity, Flemish has about five sub-dialects, depending on the province you reside in. West Flemish, the one both my husband and I spoke growing up, and still speak at home to this day is perhaps the most notorious for its difficulty in being understood by speakers from other regions. Consequently, West Flemish is the dialect that often receives Dutch subtitles on Flemish TV.

A few years ago, a highly popular TV show aired on Flemish television entirely in the West-Flemish dialect. Subtitles were provided so that the rest of Flanders could understand the dialogue.

Two years ago, I began teaching West-Flemish lessons to an American lady who was married to someone from our region. She had taken Dutch lessons for several years, but since these courses focused on formal Dutch, they were of little use to her when trying to understand her in-laws, and so she was looking for someone who could help her out with our West-Flemish dialect. As I essentially had to create a course for my student, I truly came to understand the complexity of our dialect for the first time.

Our West-Flemish dialect contains far more loanwords from both English and French than standard Dutch and its’ pronunciation is more similar to the South African language than it is to Dutch. We’ll often repeat a subject, for no particular reason, with the subject words on either side of the verb like “I have I that not done,” meaning “I have not done that” or “She has she a bachelor's degree”. I had to explain to my student that in West Flemish, we conjugate “yes” and “no”, and this is not just a quirky fact but a common practice (as in: in our dialect, it's rare to utter three sentences without having used these conjugations). In fact, I told her, if you are able to answer a question with such a conjugations, you can consider yourself as fluent in the West-Flemish dialect. Teaching West-Flemish actually made me appreciate the efficiency of that quirk in our dialect. Do you like it here? Is she wearing a dress to the party? Did it rain yesterday? Do they love hiking?… All these questions can be answered with a single word, consisting of either an abbreviated form of yes or no, glued together with an abbreviated form of the subject.

And guess what? As complicated as it sounds, it really isn't and my student picked it up like a pro. If there was one thing about giving someone lessons in our dialect, it was that we often found ourselves laughing our way through the hour.

Technically, everyone growing up in Flanders should be able to speak two, or ideally all three, of the country's languages. All these languages, along with English as an additional fourth, are part of Flanders' school curriculum. I remember being wildly enthusiastic entering fifth grade, finally getting to learn French! Unfortunately, my enthusiasm waned rather quickly. Just a few short weeks after starting to learn French I already discovered it wasn't an easy language to learn. And at that point, I still had 10 more years of French lessons ahead of me.

I was particularly troubled by how complicated French seemed due to the concept of grammatical gender. Knowing whether a noun was masculine or feminine was crucial. Translating a simple word like “the” or “a” became a challenge if you didn't know the noun's gender. The same applied to adjectives, which also required adjustments based on the noun's gender.

I can remember entire lyrics from songs I haven't heard in years, but remembering which gender fits which noun in French? My brain seemed not to be gifted in that area at all.

Partially due to my struggles with remembering noun genders, I quickly gave up on ever learning French fluently.

It wasn't until I started my first student job as a sales assistant in a butcher's shop that I truly regretted this, although I did become fluent in the names of all sorts of meats in French, a skill that proved utterly useless in most other situations. In my twenties, when I worked in the customs department for a global shipping company, I developed strong proficiency in transportation-related French. The client I had to communicate with regularly was a French gentleman who spoke English perfectly but simply refused to speak it (a stubbornness commonly found among the French population). Being good at that particular type of French, however, turned out to be another skill that became useless after I moved on from that specific job.

The problem with languages is that if you don't practice, you lose it. While I now wish I'd put more effort into mastering French during my schooling, the ability to kind of speak multiple languages still remains a major advantage of growing up in Belgium.