Dutch has never been less popular among Walloon school pupils than it is now. Last school year, one in three pupils in the first year of secondary school chose Dutch as their second language, the lowest figure ever. English, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly popular: 64 percent of pupils chose English. So the question is again: should Dutch be compulsory in Walloon schools?
The fact that more and more Walloon pupils choose English over Dutch is a trend that has been going on for years. About ten years ago, approximately as many pupils in first secondary education chose Dutch as English as a second language. But since then, the popularity of Dutch has been declining year by year.
Last school year, only 34 percent of Walloon pupils in first secondary education chose Dutch, the lowest figure ever. 64 percent chose English, 2 percent German.
“Dutch has always had a hard time in Wallonia, but it’s even worse now,” says Christophe Deborsu, a journalist at RTL and one of the best-known Walloons in Flanders. “Dutch is a difficult language and English is of course popular because of social media, the internet, informatics… ”
“But the breakthrough of N-VA also plays an important role,” says Deborsu. “Many Walloons are of the opinion that there is no point in learning Dutch if the country is going to split soon. I hear that all the time.”
In Flanders, French is part of the compulsory curriculum and both Dutch and French are also compulsory language subjects in the Brussels region. In Wallonia, pupils can still choose for themselves, but there, too, the plea for compulsory classes in Dutch is getting louder and louder.
“I know many people in their twenties who regret not choosing Dutch and now want Dutch to be compulsory at school,” says Deborsu. “They want this obligation because they themselves do not tend to choose Dutch, because it is a difficult language.”
“The political parties are finally starting to share that thought as well. MR president Georges-Louis Bouchez, for example, regrets not having learned a single hour of Dutch at school. The only party still hesitating is the PS, but a thought process has been set in motion.”
I honestly don’t care they don’t learn Dutch, as long as they learn English. Atleast then Flemish, Brussel and Walloon people can communicate with eachother in a common language if we don’t both speak eachothers mother language. Being able to speak English fluently allows more borders to be crossed than our own language borders.
If I had to choose between Dutch and English I would choose English every time. But the fact that it’s a choice is laughable. Only Latin and Greek were optional in my school, every pupil got Dutch, French English and German classes.
The problem i have with this is that walloon studens can choose wich language they study.
while people from flanders cannot.
Why is it even a choice? We learn both too. How can you call yourself a country when your people are not held to the same standarts.
At least, I think that the idea of making Dutch mandatory is gaining ground among politicians in Wallonia. Last Sunday Magnette said he supported it, and I think that Ecolo supports it too (Gilkinet certainly did). They only need MR on board and theoretically, it could become reality.
Of course, as Magnette pointed out when answering this question, it would also take a few years of transition, since there are not enough teachers currently to go full mandatory Dutch in all Wallonia. The best would be to have more native Flemish teachers willing to cross the linguistic border. The best teacher I ever had for my Dutch classes at school was from Ghent and came everyday to Brussels by train.
Yup. Given the choice. English is the only sane choice
Question: In Flanders the curriculum contains French, English and German, all mandatory, alltogether good for say 7-8 ‘hours’ (more like 50 mins) a week.
Walloon students get to choose a language to study and as such have either Dutch or English, or presumably a different language.
How do they fill up those extra hours? Divied up between everything else, or do they just get a lot more hours of whatever second language they select?
Hello!
I live in Wallonia.
I have been taught Dutch and English equally in Primary School. In Secondary School, I had to choose between English and Dutch as my first foreign language and I chose English. At 14 (on my third year), I had to take Dutch classes, either 2h or 4h a week. I chose the former.
One thing the translation from DeepL doesn’t say (I haven’t read the full article) is that language teaching is unfortunately very poor in Wallonia…
English is easier than Dutch and by far. I’d say it’s mainly because we are not surrounded by Dutch media that much. If we add to that the poor job most Dutch teachers I’ve seen do, we get students with 2h of English a week more capable of expressing themselves in English than in Dutch (even though they had 4h a week for 6 years).
I don’t regret choosing English over Dutch at all. When I see how my friends who chose the latter speak Dutch, I know I would have been bad at both languages (whereas I’m only poor at Dutch now). They’re truly a disaster in contrast with the amount of time they spent being taught.
Do I regret choosing only 2h of Dutch a week from year 3 to year 6? Not really because I would have had less science and maths (useful for my engineering studies). Otherwise, if I couldn’t have 8h of maths a week, I would have happily chosen 4h of Dutch.
As soon as I have more time, I’ll take extra classes of Dutch in my Uni. I even want to study in Flanders for my Masters.
However, I’m 100% sure that the choices I’ve made regarding this are the best. I don’t think it’s normal nor the best situation. But I understand students who choose English over Dutch… It’s the choice that makes the most sense (at least in my former school)
Don’t care honestly, if that choice hampers their career, too bad for them. If it doesn’t, great. The consequences of you choices and all that jazz.
I can’t blame a single Walloon teenager for choosing English over Dutch. 12 year old me would’ve picked English over French as well.
The problem is that Walloon pupils have to make choice between the two, instead of getting both by default.
“Tous ensemble”*
*Terms and conditions may vary.
I gave this answer on a previous thread: if there is no serious improvement in the training of language teachers or Dutch native speakers crossing the border, it will only satisfy a few egos.
The level of teaching in high school was terrible (“top three” HS in a large Walloon city)..
On the one hand it’s understandable as Dutch is a much less international language as English or even German so it must have very little appeal to Walloon youth.
But on the other hand not speaking Dutch closes off a very big pool of available and nearby job opportunities.
I mean speaking English is nice and all that but for everyday Belgian life it’s hardly necessary.
The more I read comments on this subject the more it becomes obvious that Flemish people are just bitter they were forced to learn french while Walloons are not forced to learn Dutch. Everything else is a facade.
If some of them could at least speak and write better in French 🙂
I’m walloon and I’m absolutely disgusted by this. Politicians need a fucking reality check
I live in Liège/Luik, I’ve had about 9 years of dutch. 2 In primary, 6 in middleschool (4h/week), 1 in university (I failed the course and given up).
I can assure you that in 2 years of english (4h/week) I’ve learned more than in those 9 years of dutch. I’m not really talented for language even french (i do have learning issues) but the dutch teachers were so bad. In primary I just didn’t learned anything.
1-2 middleschool I had a old teacher that was going to go on pension so she didn’t cared at all. (People played football on the back of the class, she ignored me when I wanted to ask a question).
In 4th middleshool the teachers just didn’t come at all during the year, but since she only gave her “illness” notice every week for the next week, the school couldn’t hire a substitute teacher. She didn’t knew my name at the oral exam.
I still tried to get a acceptable level in dutch, so I took dutch in my cursus (optional course at the university). Got a bit better but not much… The fact that we never hear/read dutch here in Liège/Luik doesn’t help.
So after 9 years of dutch, i’m unable to write this in dutch. I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed but still feel I just wasted hundreds of hours.
It is beyond me, why would someone learn Dutch. For the national pride? If you don’t feel like the part of the culture, why would you do it? It is a miniscule language group and knowing the language does not open any doors. French has very strong presence and is a very good choice for expansion once you speak English and Spanish. Belgium is really a made up state and this language terror/conflict makes it even worse. Take that from someone who actually earned Dutch and has no use for it outside of visit to gemeentehuis once every 4 years and some friends from the Netherlands who actually admire my effort.
Possibly unpopular opinion: Make both languages optional and make English the official language of the country. People can still speak Dutch or French or German, or whatever else they like, but anywhere where 2 people that grew up speaking different languages cross paths, English should be the default we can all fall back to.
Belgium is the size of a coffee stain on the map. This whole issue is a waste of everyone’s time and energy, and it has been for years. Either make English mandatory in all parts of the country and everything else optional, or if we don’t want to do that at least make the other languages mandatory everywhere else. English is simply much more useful in the wider world than either Dutch or French.
Adding extra hours of teaching in school is not going to do much if the students don’t use the language outside of school. Classes and lessons only get you so far, I did the whole Latin-modern languages thing and 10 years later English is like a second language because I use it every day, French is passable (and gets better again ifnI speak it for a few days) and my German is awful because I never use it. So you can teach Dutch all you want but if they never hear it outside the classroom it won’t really do that much.
Ongelofelijk hoe je dagelijks over meer samenwerking, centralisering en sympathie hoort maar de Walen verstaan je niet eens wanneer je tegen ze praat.
Zegt toch ook genoeg over goede wil. Of mag ik dat niet zeggen?
I’m in IT and we speak English with Walloons. In 10 years our kids will speak English with each other. Dutch AND French are irrelevant.
It is sad to read this in 2021. I see many talk about economical value of learning English over Dutch, but I feel that it misses the simple fact that we need to understand each other, not only as fellow country men but also as brothers who are in the same shit, excuse my French (pun).
Learning French for me was more than another skill for work. I was able to make friends and make love because of it, and I have seen many Walloons regret not learning more than neuken in de keuken. If it was not for all the politics people would easily exchange each other’s culture, for it is in our nature to share a beer.
And then, for example, a child later decides to study artificial intelligence… There is an excellent programme at KU Leuven… in Dutch. Of course, you can take a year to study just Dutch but that is money+time+stress…
This is sad. The only difference between us is the language. Once you understand eachother you’re just two Belgians sharing a beer
I studied dutch for 10 years at school and went to special langage schools after as well and still can’t speak it. I feel like immersion is the only technique that works for a lot of people.
Why would you want to learn a language of people who don’t want to communicate? it’s a waste of time.
Look at the politicians, they’re just a bunch money grabbers who scream at eachother. They Never listen.
As it is above so it is below or as i like to say micro is macro and macro is micro.
I’m curious as to how many people in Flanders would still learn french if it wasn’t obliged.
I would, but that’s because i like to talk to people and understand them and i was the worst at french in school.
Belgium is a funny country, loves to impose divide et impera on itself, government doesn’t even have to make an effort.
Basically Belgium / Flanders has always largely been previleged by international businesses and institutions because of the amount of people knowing well 3-4 languages. Since both French and Flemish politicians have pushed on the ‘free choice’ of language- learning from the mid seventies, working in private business/tourism and industry, later on in Brussels Federal and local Flemish administration in the Flemish-Brabant province as well as in local school boards I can ( subjectively) only state this:
-there’s always been an unwillingness from the French /Walloon and their politicians back in the 70 ies to learn Dutch.. and most of their language teachers were well known not to be up to their task
-as far as I recall it was the minister of French education who gave the first the free choice of languages in primary and secondary schools around 1970, dome years later only followed by the Flemish government.
-… But some people where clever enough to understand the consequences, do.. in the Jodoigne area based primary schools on the contrary launched already in the 80-90ies a schooling system of” total Dutch language immersion from maternity / primary schools on and made a lot ( and still do so ) of publicity about it.. and more and more primary schools in the Brabant- Walloon province engage native Dutch-speaking teachers, not only for Dutch language courses..
-maybe I’ m wrong but I unfortunately haven’t knowledge of similar initiatives at the Flemish side..
-my experience is that in a lot of private businesses meetings with native- languages mixed personnel are already lots of years held in… English……
-So far the so-called ’emancipation’.. pressed on into the Flemish universities where even ‘regular’ courses tend to be obligatory followed in… English… We’re way away from ‘Walloon out of Leuven’… nowadays with little protest while beeing ‘drowned’ into the Anglo-American culture’… on sole economic reasons..
-the knowledge and effective capacity of using French going down at the Flemish schools, we might end up seeing the real ‘leading’ top jobs become again filled in by the ‘upper class’ French educated youngsters with a better knowledge of Dutch than the Flemish having comparatively lost their active French knowledge…
All this of course just a subjective observation of someone with a multi- language and- cultural background. ..
Here’s my experience: I had 12 years of Dutch and today a few years later after graduating high school, I can barely say a word. I was a good student with grades in the 70-80s and actually tried to get better during the classes. I’ve had so few opportunities to practice it that I’ve forgotten all of it now. Also I remember having teachers that would just do their best to make you hate learning Dutch or at least make you think it’s a joke; during my third year of high school I think we saw the teacher 1 month total and in the mind of 14 year olds that really doesn’t do much good. There must be soem serious changes before making Dutch compulsory because from my experience it will not make people better at Dutch, it will just make more people worse at English.
SJonge jonge, waarom al dat gepalaver. Fokking politiekers!
Geef iedereen in school vanaf zijn 10 jaar gewoon respectievelijk 2 lesuren NL of FR, het zijn onze 2 belangrijkste landstalen. Of ze er goed of slecht in zijn en er veel of weinig mee doen moet iedereen maar voor zijn eigen uitmaken maar je hebt ze dan toch op zijn minst de kans gegeven.
Their English sucks as well, so I’m not sure this strategy is working.
My SO is French, learning dutch and can’t fathom how French speaking people completely ignore the economically dominant language.
That said there definitely is an uptick in the use of Dutch in Brussels by non native speakers.
good.
Listen as someone from Flanders we got mandatory French in class . but don’t for a moment think I remember a single sentence . so it all evens out
34 comments
Translation:
Dutch has never been less popular among Walloon school pupils than it is now. Last school year, one in three pupils in the first year of secondary school chose Dutch as their second language, the lowest figure ever. English, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly popular: 64 percent of pupils chose English. So the question is again: should Dutch be compulsory in Walloon schools?
The fact that more and more Walloon pupils choose English over Dutch is a trend that has been going on for years. About ten years ago, approximately as many pupils in first secondary education chose Dutch as English as a second language. But since then, the popularity of Dutch has been declining year by year.
Last school year, only 34 percent of Walloon pupils in first secondary education chose Dutch, the lowest figure ever. 64 percent chose English, 2 percent German.
“Dutch has always had a hard time in Wallonia, but it’s even worse now,” says Christophe Deborsu, a journalist at RTL and one of the best-known Walloons in Flanders. “Dutch is a difficult language and English is of course popular because of social media, the internet, informatics… ”
“But the breakthrough of N-VA also plays an important role,” says Deborsu. “Many Walloons are of the opinion that there is no point in learning Dutch if the country is going to split soon. I hear that all the time.”
In Flanders, French is part of the compulsory curriculum and both Dutch and French are also compulsory language subjects in the Brussels region. In Wallonia, pupils can still choose for themselves, but there, too, the plea for compulsory classes in Dutch is getting louder and louder.
“I know many people in their twenties who regret not choosing Dutch and now want Dutch to be compulsory at school,” says Deborsu. “They want this obligation because they themselves do not tend to choose Dutch, because it is a difficult language.”
“The political parties are finally starting to share that thought as well. MR president Georges-Louis Bouchez, for example, regrets not having learned a single hour of Dutch at school. The only party still hesitating is the PS, but a thought process has been set in motion.”
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
I honestly don’t care they don’t learn Dutch, as long as they learn English. Atleast then Flemish, Brussel and Walloon people can communicate with eachother in a common language if we don’t both speak eachothers mother language. Being able to speak English fluently allows more borders to be crossed than our own language borders.
If I had to choose between Dutch and English I would choose English every time. But the fact that it’s a choice is laughable. Only Latin and Greek were optional in my school, every pupil got Dutch, French English and German classes.
The problem i have with this is that walloon studens can choose wich language they study.
while people from flanders cannot.
Why is it even a choice? We learn both too. How can you call yourself a country when your people are not held to the same standarts.
At least, I think that the idea of making Dutch mandatory is gaining ground among politicians in Wallonia. Last Sunday Magnette said he supported it, and I think that Ecolo supports it too (Gilkinet certainly did). They only need MR on board and theoretically, it could become reality.
Of course, as Magnette pointed out when answering this question, it would also take a few years of transition, since there are not enough teachers currently to go full mandatory Dutch in all Wallonia. The best would be to have more native Flemish teachers willing to cross the linguistic border. The best teacher I ever had for my Dutch classes at school was from Ghent and came everyday to Brussels by train.
Yup. Given the choice. English is the only sane choice
Question: In Flanders the curriculum contains French, English and German, all mandatory, alltogether good for say 7-8 ‘hours’ (more like 50 mins) a week.
Walloon students get to choose a language to study and as such have either Dutch or English, or presumably a different language.
How do they fill up those extra hours? Divied up between everything else, or do they just get a lot more hours of whatever second language they select?
Hello!
I live in Wallonia.
I have been taught Dutch and English equally in Primary School. In Secondary School, I had to choose between English and Dutch as my first foreign language and I chose English. At 14 (on my third year), I had to take Dutch classes, either 2h or 4h a week. I chose the former.
One thing the translation from DeepL doesn’t say (I haven’t read the full article) is that language teaching is unfortunately very poor in Wallonia…
English is easier than Dutch and by far. I’d say it’s mainly because we are not surrounded by Dutch media that much. If we add to that the poor job most Dutch teachers I’ve seen do, we get students with 2h of English a week more capable of expressing themselves in English than in Dutch (even though they had 4h a week for 6 years).
I don’t regret choosing English over Dutch at all. When I see how my friends who chose the latter speak Dutch, I know I would have been bad at both languages (whereas I’m only poor at Dutch now). They’re truly a disaster in contrast with the amount of time they spent being taught.
Do I regret choosing only 2h of Dutch a week from year 3 to year 6? Not really because I would have had less science and maths (useful for my engineering studies). Otherwise, if I couldn’t have 8h of maths a week, I would have happily chosen 4h of Dutch.
As soon as I have more time, I’ll take extra classes of Dutch in my Uni. I even want to study in Flanders for my Masters.
However, I’m 100% sure that the choices I’ve made regarding this are the best. I don’t think it’s normal nor the best situation. But I understand students who choose English over Dutch… It’s the choice that makes the most sense (at least in my former school)
Don’t care honestly, if that choice hampers their career, too bad for them. If it doesn’t, great. The consequences of you choices and all that jazz.
I can’t blame a single Walloon teenager for choosing English over Dutch. 12 year old me would’ve picked English over French as well.
The problem is that Walloon pupils have to make choice between the two, instead of getting both by default.
“Tous ensemble”*
*Terms and conditions may vary.
I gave this answer on a previous thread: if there is no serious improvement in the training of language teachers or Dutch native speakers crossing the border, it will only satisfy a few egos.
The level of teaching in high school was terrible (“top three” HS in a large Walloon city)..
On the one hand it’s understandable as Dutch is a much less international language as English or even German so it must have very little appeal to Walloon youth.
But on the other hand not speaking Dutch closes off a very big pool of available and nearby job opportunities.
I mean speaking English is nice and all that but for everyday Belgian life it’s hardly necessary.
The more I read comments on this subject the more it becomes obvious that Flemish people are just bitter they were forced to learn french while Walloons are not forced to learn Dutch. Everything else is a facade.
If some of them could at least speak and write better in French 🙂
I’m walloon and I’m absolutely disgusted by this. Politicians need a fucking reality check
I live in Liège/Luik, I’ve had about 9 years of dutch. 2 In primary, 6 in middleschool (4h/week), 1 in university (I failed the course and given up).
I can assure you that in 2 years of english (4h/week) I’ve learned more than in those 9 years of dutch. I’m not really talented for language even french (i do have learning issues) but the dutch teachers were so bad. In primary I just didn’t learned anything.
1-2 middleschool I had a old teacher that was going to go on pension so she didn’t cared at all. (People played football on the back of the class, she ignored me when I wanted to ask a question).
In 4th middleshool the teachers just didn’t come at all during the year, but since she only gave her “illness” notice every week for the next week, the school couldn’t hire a substitute teacher. She didn’t knew my name at the oral exam.
I still tried to get a acceptable level in dutch, so I took dutch in my cursus (optional course at the university). Got a bit better but not much… The fact that we never hear/read dutch here in Liège/Luik doesn’t help.
So after 9 years of dutch, i’m unable to write this in dutch. I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed but still feel I just wasted hundreds of hours.
It is beyond me, why would someone learn Dutch. For the national pride? If you don’t feel like the part of the culture, why would you do it? It is a miniscule language group and knowing the language does not open any doors. French has very strong presence and is a very good choice for expansion once you speak English and Spanish. Belgium is really a made up state and this language terror/conflict makes it even worse. Take that from someone who actually earned Dutch and has no use for it outside of visit to gemeentehuis once every 4 years and some friends from the Netherlands who actually admire my effort.
Possibly unpopular opinion: Make both languages optional and make English the official language of the country. People can still speak Dutch or French or German, or whatever else they like, but anywhere where 2 people that grew up speaking different languages cross paths, English should be the default we can all fall back to.
Belgium is the size of a coffee stain on the map. This whole issue is a waste of everyone’s time and energy, and it has been for years. Either make English mandatory in all parts of the country and everything else optional, or if we don’t want to do that at least make the other languages mandatory everywhere else. English is simply much more useful in the wider world than either Dutch or French.
Adding extra hours of teaching in school is not going to do much if the students don’t use the language outside of school. Classes and lessons only get you so far, I did the whole Latin-modern languages thing and 10 years later English is like a second language because I use it every day, French is passable (and gets better again ifnI speak it for a few days) and my German is awful because I never use it. So you can teach Dutch all you want but if they never hear it outside the classroom it won’t really do that much.
Ongelofelijk hoe je dagelijks over meer samenwerking, centralisering en sympathie hoort maar de Walen verstaan je niet eens wanneer je tegen ze praat.
Zegt toch ook genoeg over goede wil. Of mag ik dat niet zeggen?
I’m in IT and we speak English with Walloons. In 10 years our kids will speak English with each other. Dutch AND French are irrelevant.
It is sad to read this in 2021. I see many talk about economical value of learning English over Dutch, but I feel that it misses the simple fact that we need to understand each other, not only as fellow country men but also as brothers who are in the same shit, excuse my French (pun).
Learning French for me was more than another skill for work. I was able to make friends and make love because of it, and I have seen many Walloons regret not learning more than neuken in de keuken. If it was not for all the politics people would easily exchange each other’s culture, for it is in our nature to share a beer.
And then, for example, a child later decides to study artificial intelligence… There is an excellent programme at KU Leuven… in Dutch. Of course, you can take a year to study just Dutch but that is money+time+stress…
This is sad. The only difference between us is the language. Once you understand eachother you’re just two Belgians sharing a beer
I studied dutch for 10 years at school and went to special langage schools after as well and still can’t speak it. I feel like immersion is the only technique that works for a lot of people.
Why would you want to learn a language of people who don’t want to communicate? it’s a waste of time.
Look at the politicians, they’re just a bunch money grabbers who scream at eachother. They Never listen.
As it is above so it is below or as i like to say micro is macro and macro is micro.
I’m curious as to how many people in Flanders would still learn french if it wasn’t obliged.
I would, but that’s because i like to talk to people and understand them and i was the worst at french in school.
Belgium is a funny country, loves to impose divide et impera on itself, government doesn’t even have to make an effort.
Basically Belgium / Flanders has always largely been previleged by international businesses and institutions because of the amount of people knowing well 3-4 languages. Since both French and Flemish politicians have pushed on the ‘free choice’ of language- learning from the mid seventies, working in private business/tourism and industry, later on in Brussels Federal and local Flemish administration in the Flemish-Brabant province as well as in local school boards I can ( subjectively) only state this:
-there’s always been an unwillingness from the French /Walloon and their politicians back in the 70 ies to learn Dutch.. and most of their language teachers were well known not to be up to their task
-as far as I recall it was the minister of French education who gave the first the free choice of languages in primary and secondary schools around 1970, dome years later only followed by the Flemish government.
-… But some people where clever enough to understand the consequences, do.. in the Jodoigne area based primary schools on the contrary launched already in the 80-90ies a schooling system of” total Dutch language immersion from maternity / primary schools on and made a lot ( and still do so ) of publicity about it.. and more and more primary schools in the Brabant- Walloon province engage native Dutch-speaking teachers, not only for Dutch language courses..
-maybe I’ m wrong but I unfortunately haven’t knowledge of similar initiatives at the Flemish side..
-my experience is that in a lot of private businesses meetings with native- languages mixed personnel are already lots of years held in… English……
-So far the so-called ’emancipation’.. pressed on into the Flemish universities where even ‘regular’ courses tend to be obligatory followed in… English… We’re way away from ‘Walloon out of Leuven’… nowadays with little protest while beeing ‘drowned’ into the Anglo-American culture’… on sole economic reasons..
-the knowledge and effective capacity of using French going down at the Flemish schools, we might end up seeing the real ‘leading’ top jobs become again filled in by the ‘upper class’ French educated youngsters with a better knowledge of Dutch than the Flemish having comparatively lost their active French knowledge…
All this of course just a subjective observation of someone with a multi- language and- cultural background. ..
Here’s my experience: I had 12 years of Dutch and today a few years later after graduating high school, I can barely say a word. I was a good student with grades in the 70-80s and actually tried to get better during the classes. I’ve had so few opportunities to practice it that I’ve forgotten all of it now. Also I remember having teachers that would just do their best to make you hate learning Dutch or at least make you think it’s a joke; during my third year of high school I think we saw the teacher 1 month total and in the mind of 14 year olds that really doesn’t do much good. There must be soem serious changes before making Dutch compulsory because from my experience it will not make people better at Dutch, it will just make more people worse at English.
SJonge jonge, waarom al dat gepalaver. Fokking politiekers!
Geef iedereen in school vanaf zijn 10 jaar gewoon respectievelijk 2 lesuren NL of FR, het zijn onze 2 belangrijkste landstalen. Of ze er goed of slecht in zijn en er veel of weinig mee doen moet iedereen maar voor zijn eigen uitmaken maar je hebt ze dan toch op zijn minst de kans gegeven.
Their English sucks as well, so I’m not sure this strategy is working.
My SO is French, learning dutch and can’t fathom how French speaking people completely ignore the economically dominant language.
That said there definitely is an uptick in the use of Dutch in Brussels by non native speakers.
good.
Listen as someone from Flanders we got mandatory French in class . but don’t for a moment think I remember a single sentence . so it all evens out