More on the language barriers!

Not understanding French continues to make everyday life both extremely challenging and extremely funny. Every small task is tripled (at least) in complexity because of it. Small accomplishments are celebrated as if they were birthdays or anniversaries.

To make things more complex, the country uses three languages. Flemish is used in the northern half of the country (Flanders). French is used in the southern part (Walloon) and in Brussels proper. German is spoken by a small number of people in the most southern part of the country. As a general trend we’ve noticed that the French speaking Belgians tend to not learn English where the Flemish speaking Belgians seem to more often know French and English. A government official from Flanders insulted the Walloons last week by saying that they are “intellectually incapable of learning other languages”. It has caused quite a stir and has given us some more insight into why the two groups don’t get along very well. They are quite divided and it makes it even more ironic that Belgium is head of the EU!

Our house sits on the boarder of Flanders and Walloon. If we drive three minutes to the south, the grocery store we go to has no one working there who speaks any English. If we drive three minutes to the north, the grocery store has many people who speak English. So where would you expect we shop?

Because of the two languages, many of the signs are in both Flemish and French. For the uninitiated, it can make the names of the streets appear very long. We are finally getting the idea. Here is a sign example from the forest that we hike in. Also, they do a very helpful thing in these forests- there are trails for horses, trails for bike riders and trails for people walking. They actually have easy to understand, graphical signs to denote which kind of trail each is.