A Transcript of the Interview with Prof. Wim Vandenbussche
This interview explores Belgian multilingualism, primarily aiming to gain insights into the Flemish-speaking perspective on this matter, which can then be contrasted to a francophone perspective, investigated in the interview with Professor Sabine De Knop. The interview covers areas such as the history of Flemish-Walloon dynamics; the current status of Dutch, French and, unexpectedly, English, in different Belgian regions; recent developments in popularity of Belgium’s national languages; the Walloon “Teaching Excellence Pact”, its effects and the possible reasons behind Wallonia’s sudden “Flanders-friendly” school policy. An analysis revealed the great role of economics behind the political motivation of Dutch language promotion, the popularity of English as a lingua franca among Belgium’s younger generation, the big hurdle of the nationwide teacher shortage and Brussel’s increasing implementation of French and Dutch language equality.
The following interview was conducted in November 2024 with Professor Wim Vandenbussche, a linguist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Dorothea Hepp, former student of the B.A. European Studies at Paderborn University. It was initially conducted in the framework of Mrs. Hepp’s Bachelor’s thesis, but is now published as a transcipt on BelgienNet, with Professor Vandenbussche’s permission.
Sprecher: WV – Wim Vandenbussche, DH – Dorothea Hepp
DH: Thank you, Professor Vandenbussche (I hope I pronounced that right)!
WV: You do.
DH: Okay. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. Your expertise in Flanders and in language policies represent a great contribution to my work. So, I'm really eager to hear your insights on this topic. Again, for your information, I'm going to record this, just to make the most out of the content later on. Is that okay with you?
WV: Perfectly okay, no worries.
DH: Okay, so the interview is set for approximately one hour, that is still okay?
WV: That’s good, no problem.
DH: So, first, I would like to say a few words about me, so that you have a better overview. My name is Dorothea Hepp. I am. A student of a double bachelor's degree in European studies with Paderborn, Germany and Le Mans, France. My interest in Belgian studies developed while I was doing a political internship in Brussels, where I fell in love with the city and the country overall. Right now, I'm at the end of my studies, and we are now to write a Bachelor's thesis where we can choose a subject, freely. But it has to be related to one of the fields of studies in our curriculum and what I chose is linguistics. This paper is in French, so please forgive me if I don't know any specific terms, but I think I, I should know them by now because I did my research for this interview in English, but just in case.
WV: We can always switch to French if you want.
DH: Yeah, I will just say it in French, if I just know it in French.
WV: Okay, no worries.
DH: To help you understand why I'm asking you these questions, I would like to introduce my topic and my methods a little bit. So, the overall topic is learning Dutch in Wallonia, particularly after the changes introduced by the “Teaching Excellence Pact”, I'm just going to call it in English. The method I'm using is a discourse analysis divided into a qualitative analysis of three newspaper articles from Wallonia that are dealing with the teaching of Dutch in Wallonia and a quantitative analysis of about 30 articles of the same topic.
WV: Okay.
DH: And the research question that I'm using is “In the context of Belgium’s, unique, institutional and linguistic organization, how does the Walloon press assess the learning of Dutch in the French-speaking Community particularly with regard to the “Teaching Excellence Pact”?” Now I would like to say just a few sentences about yourself. As I learned, you are a professor of a Germanic languages at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, And you do research on the field of multilingualism, sociolinguistics and also language history. Yeah, so therefore your insight is really valuable to my work. First of all, I would like to ask – if you don't mind me asking – where did you grow up? Was it in Brussels? Was it in Flanders, or was it elsewhere?
WV: I grew up in Flanders. I was born in Bruges, Brugge. So, I lived there until I was 17 and came to University in Brussels, but I basically grew up in a small village, some 10 kilometers outside of Bruges. So I spent my school years, first in another small village close to Bruges, then my secondary school in Bruges itself and then when I was 17, I moved to Brussels to come to university to do study Germanic languages and I stayed here, so I never went back. That sounds quite traumatic. I mean, I stayed in Brussels to pursue a PhD, and I always worked in Brussels afterwards as well.
DH: Okay, so I assume you grew up speaking Dutch.
WV: I grew up speaking, a local dialect, the local Bruges dialect – because I'm still part of the generation that got the dialect as, let's say, the mother tongue. I also learned Standard Dutch at school as this usual in Flanders. We started to learn French at the age of 10. So, from the fifth class in Primary school onwards. From your first year in secondary school onwards, the age of 12, 13, you start learning English as well. I would say the local dialect is my mother tongue alongside Dutch. I started learning French, at the age of nine to ten. I formally started learning English at the age of 12. So I had eight years of French and six years of English, in formal instruction during primary and security education.
DH: Okay, so that means that you speak Dutch, including that local dialect, English, and I know now that you speak German as well, French, of course, and do you speak by the other languages?
WV: I learned German along the way; I never had any formal instruction in German. I mean, some small language classes at university. My research, which was on language history, on social language history, was very much connected to similar work that had been done in Germany during the 80s and 90s. And so, I had to get in touch with those professors – also with people who are now in Paderborn. I met your Vice-dean [of the Faculty of Cultural Studies] Professor Schuster when she was a researcher at the time. So, I really had to learn German in order to be able to understand the articles and I'll learn to speak it. But I never looked in any formal way. At university, we had the opportunity to learn another Germanic language in the language Institute, so I learned some Danish at the time, most of which is gone. I also learned Portuguese, much of which stayed with me.
DH: That's very interesting. I would like to continue with a statement that was made by Brussels philosopher Philippe Van Parijs. So, he said that Flemings know French better than Walloons know Dutch and that this will never change. What is your reaction to this statement?
WV: First and foremost, I know Philippe very well. He's head of the Brussels Council for multilingualism and I'm also a member of that Council. And we, I mean, we're friendly. We're good colleagues and know each other quite well. The statement he made most certainly reflected the State of Affairs in the past, let's say up until 10 years ago, where you would see that the level of French among Flemish young people would be relatively high and the level of Dutch among people at the French-speaking side of the language border would be lower. We do see a certain evolution where you see that the mastery of Dutch at the French-speaking side is increasing and at the mastery of French at the Dutch-speaking side is slowly going down. And that has many reasons, I mean, the increased importance of English is one explanation. The changing dynamics in the country are another explanation. I'm not sure whether that will never change. It’s always very difficult to make predictions about the future. For now, that still appears to be true. What we do see is that what the market needs and also what society needs in terms of language skills, basically is multilingual people. We see that it's increasingly difficult to find those people – if you define multilingualism as also containing Dutch and French, there is no problem finding bilingual young people, speaking Dutch and English at the Dutch-speaking side. There is no big problem finding young people having English in the French and the French-speaking side. But having people with a good mastery of French and Dutch becomes increasingly difficult, yeah.
DH: Would you say this has to do with the image that the respective side has of the other language or of the other people?
WV: I mean in the past it very much was linked to uh the different status of both languages in the Belgian construction, in the Belgian States. We have a history of language contact and language conflict. And you could say that up until the 1980s, French remained the language of prestige in Belgium at large. And French also remained a very prestigious language in Flanders up until the 1970s, 1980s. I mean, of course, in Flanders, Dutch was the dominant language and was the mother tongue of the large majority of the population. But French still was considered as a very prestigious language and in the Belgian context, French always took the upper hand. That changed from the 1970s onwards, also through the 1980s for various reasons. But one of the main reasons was the economy. The economical gravity point always always had been located in the French-speaking side of the country, in Wallonia: heavy industry, steel coal, etc. And all of that industry kind of collapsed from the 1970s onwards. Mines closed, steel mills went down, and new types of industry came up. And you see that from the 1970s onwards, the economic gravity point started to shift from Wallonia to Flanders. Now, we know that, if a economical gravity point shifts, the prestige of the language in the region where the new gravity point comes will slowly rise. And that's something which, actually, you've seen in Belgium. So a large part of the increased prestige of Dutch, and especially of being multilingual and bilingual, has to do with the economy. As the famous philosopher Bill Clinton once said, “It's the economy, stupid”. So, that plays a role. This does not mean in any way that the political efforts to create more equality between French and Dutch, and to raise the prestige for Dutch, should be declined or should be underappreciated. On the contrary, those political efforts also played role. But the changed dynamics between Dutch and French have to do with one, the fact that French no longer is The prestige language in Belgium at large, which was the case up until the 1970s, 1980s, but that has changed, and two, with the changed economical circumstances. The French-speaking part of the country, nowadays, clearly, is the part of the country where the economic situation is not very prosperous. Wallonia, the French-speaking Community, is in serious financial problems. The economical situation on the Dutch-speaking side of the language border in Flanders at large, is, much more prosperous. I won't say it's fantastic, but if you compare the economic figures, you clearly see that in the north of the country, the economies are in the better situation, in a better state than in the south of the country.
DH: Yeah, so this means probably that learning Dutch for French-speaking Walloons could have a lot of um economical benefits, right?
WV: I mean becoming multilingual clearly is something which puts you in a beneficial position. And in the Belgian contexts, this still means that knowing French and Dutch or knowing Dutch and French still puts you at an advantage. Now, that being said, there are many people in Flanders, many young people in Flanders nowadays, who say, “I no longer need French”. I grew up, for example, in Bruges, 100 kilometers from Brussels rather close to the coast. I grew up in Bruges. I hardly ever came into contact with French. I can have a job there and a job even involving International contacts, I hardly ever need French. Because English serves all my needs and suits all my purposes. That is true up to a certain extent. So, if you are not focused on collaborating with the other side of Belgium or collaborating in a clear Belgian context, I think you can get along without French quite well. You also see that for many youngsters French really has become a foreign language and contact with French is rather limited. This is completely different if you live close to Brussels or if you live in Brussels. We’ll come to that later on, but Brussels really is something specific, something which you should consider separate from Flanders on the one hand and Wallonia on the other. At the French-speaking side, you can also grow up not knowing Dutch and lead a perfectly normal, prosperous life – if you do not need to get into touch with the Dutch-speaking side. For example, if your business works only within Wallonia or only has international contacts and no contacts with the rest of the country, with Flanders, you can get along. But the moment you want to get somewhere in the Belgian context, you need both languages. And we see that the markets, I mean the job market, clearly asks for people who know both languages. We also see that the educational sector asks for people being proficient in one language or the other. There is a clear shortage of language teachers, both on the Dutch-speaking side and the French-speaking side in Flanders, we find it very hard to find teachers of French. In Wallonia, we find it very hard to find teachers of Dutch. So yes, knowing the other language puts you at an advantage, but you should always acknowledge – and this is something my generation is, let's say, the first also to acknowledge, and actually, I would say to embrace, but to accept – you should accept that there are young people growing up now, who do not need or who think that they do not need the other language anymore. This is completely different from previous generations where it was evident that you would at some point need the other language.
DH: So, would you say it is still a good effort that the French-speaking government has now put into place, that they want to increase the learning of Dutch and make it earlier and …
WV: … compulsory. Yeah. I think that's very important given the economical situation in Wallonia. Multilingualism is one element among many others that can help young people to get a job. In the Belgian context, knowing Dutch will help them, because that Dutch-speaking sounds of the country is more prosperous. So, if they want to do business, that’s part of the region they can actually try and approach. And also in the Belgian context at large, speaking, both French and Dutch really gets you to – I won't say it is the ticket to a better job, but it really puts you at an advantage compared to people who are, who do not have that bilingual combination. So, yes, it's a good idea and I also think it would be a good idea at the Dutch-speaking side of the border to reinforce efforts to make to make students at least trilingual Dutch-French-English.
DH: Would you say that having more bilingual, multilingual Belgian citizens on both sides can foster a better understanding between the two communities and more cohesion in Belgium?
WV: To understand each other, you should, first and foremost, be able to get in touch. You should be able to talk to each other, to speak to each other. And yes, you can do that through a bridge language which is English, which actually happens. I mean, I have a 14-year-old daughter. I see people of that age, youngsters communicate with people from Wallonia in English – and that works, it does. The moment you want to start and appreciate other aspects of culture, I mean, it is interesting to know that specific language. So yes, I mean being multilingual and in this case being bilingual, Dutch French would definitely help people to get in touch and to communicate in a more efficient way.
[Anecdote about WV’s children’s approach to Dutch and French cut out, too personal]
DH: So keeping this in mind, how would you assess that in Belgium right now you have two opposing movements, you could say. In Flanders – at least on a politics level – it’s a bit of an anti-French stance at the moment and that in Wallonia, we have now this Teaching Excellence Pact that promotes Dutch even further. How would you assess this?
WV: I mean, I mean, the fact that Wallonia now has this Teaching Excellent Pact really is a consequence of an economical situation. Because if you look at the past, you could say that there were also certain movements, certain political statements, that were not particularly friendly towards the Dutch language or towards speakers of Dutch or towards Flanders. Nowadays, people realize that in order to get out of the economical diet situation, they will need that multilingualism, and they will need knowledge of Dutch. So, it really is the economy which drives people to learning the language. At the Flemish side of the border, people think, well, we don't need French that much anymore. Although – if you speak with business leaders, if you speak with a representatives of major business associations – I mean, all of those will say, yes, of course, you need to know French if you want to work in the Belgian context. So, the cliche image, the overall image, you tend to get: Flanders steering away, politically from Wallonia, trying to embrace the language and apparently being more favorable, towards the classic Belgian bilingual combination is an is a treacherous image. It's not really what reflects reality. I mean, in Flanders as well, you have people who know that multilingualism is important. But the, the real needs, the economical needs right now are far more pressing in Wallonia.
DH: So it’s not just out of friendship, so to speak, but more so, out of economical duties.
WV: It’s the money, yeah.
DH: Okay.
WV: I mean, I won't deny the fact that certain people still like to learn other languages out of cultural interest. I mean, you have those people. But right now, learning the other language really is a ticket towards new economic possibilities.
DH: This is interesting to hear from me because what I always read in the newspaper articles was that the argument of the job market was one argument out of many. And what you say, it seems to be that it's the most important and the heaviest argument.
WV: Yeah, I mean, there is a difference, of course, between political discourse on the one hand, and political, profiling or proliferation on the one hand and the everyday reality of citizens, boots on the ground, on the other. The tensions between politicians on one side of the language border and the other are quite explicit, because you have – although recent elections actually showed similar tendencies that both sides of the language borders voted overwhelmingly center-right, also as far as economy is concerned – but that very much has to do with political profiling. When it comes to real life, I think the main factor really is that people want to get the good job, want to get a better chance in life and a better chance in society. So, money really is an economical interest, really is, I think, paramount.
DH: Yes. Okay, so, I don't know if you are fully aware of all the language policies in Brussels, especially in Primary and Secondary education, but if you do know, then I would like to ask if you see any lessons, if any, that Flanders or Wallonia could take from Brussels language policy?
WV: As I said before, Brussels is a very specific case. And societal developments in Brussels over the past 10 to 15 years are very different from what happened in either Flanders or Wallonia. Brussels got an enormous increase in population, 20 percent extra people, many of which migrated to Brussels mostly from within the European Union, also part from outside the European Union. So, the multilingual makeup of Brussels really increased over the past 10 to 15 years. Also, the population really rose in a significant way. And if you look at Brussels from a daily perspective, we have, at last count, 184 languages present in Brussels – probably much more – if you look at the latest language parameter, we make here at our university. The way young people actually deal with that multilingual situation is very different from the more monolingual-centered visions in both Flanders and Wallonia. Now that being said, if you look at the school system and the education system in Brussels, you have a Dutch-speaking educational system on the one hand, and a French-speaking educational system on the other, next to each other. The French-speaking Education system has completely opened up towards immersion education, towards education where young people can actually follow a large part of their courses in a different language. In Brussels, very often French-speaking schools offering 80 percent of the classes in Dutch and then 20 French and then gradually you go towards a 50 50. In the Dutch-speaking school system, this is not possible. I mean, the Dutch-speaking school system, governed by Flanders, only allowed for so-called Clue Education, (content language integrated learning) where you can have just a couple of subjects in another language. This is an illustration of the different economical position both regions are in. Wallonia knows that it needs to try and reinforce increased language knowledge by all means. And Wallonia really said, okay, we are going to be the forerunners in order to implement clear education – something nobody would have believed 30 years ago. But nowadays, they realize we actually need that. On the Flemish side, we do not want to do this, because Flemish politicians are afraid that immersion education would turn speakers of Dutch into speakers of French, which is of course not the case. You turn a monolingual speaker into a multilingual speaker. This also says something about the underlying conceptions for multilingualism. As if that were something, which is, I won't say to be avoided, but something which is not necessarily a good thing. I may be overexaggerating here, but for some politicians being multilingual Dutch and English, for example, that's okay. Being multilingual, Dutch, French, and getting most of your classes in French is maybe not the best idea. The motivations, the statements that are done here are, for example, “We fought against French for centuries, why would we now give in to French once again in our educational system?”, which is of course, complete silliness. I mean, it's completely absurd, but it is something which is being said by politicians who are in function right now, which is even used in arguments against, for example, introducing English in higher education. “We fought against French for so long.”, “We only have a Dutch-speaking University since 1930.”, “We’re not going to allow English to come in now and to take to take on the role French had back in the 19th century and the 20th century.” So, there is loads of ignorance or there is loads of deliberate denial of what we know about multilingualism, about the benefits of multilingualism governing especially politics on the Dutch-speaking side right now in Belgium. So, are there things to be learned? You can't just copy the Brussels model to Flanders or Wallonia because the economic situation is completely different. What you can learn is the fact that increasing language skills is a good thing. I mean, we know that it's a good thing from a cognitive point of view. We also know that it's a good thing from an economical point of view. You want your youngsters to leave school at the age of 18, with a portfolio that's as rich as possible. That gives them as many possibilities as can be, and a good language Portfolio should be part of that.
DH: Yes, I agree with that, of course. Since you already have touched upon the immersion aspect that is heavily promoted in, at least the French side of Brussels education, that leads me to my next point. Do you see any practical ways or – of course, also in education – some programs that could be set into place to increase, not only in Wallonia, the contact with Flanders, but maybe also the other way around, keeping maybe in mind immersion programs?
WV: Immersion works. I mean, we know that since the 1960s. It's one of our topics I also teach about, I also wrote a bit about the topic. We know since 1960s from Canada that it actually works under certain conditions. I have a number of big champions of immersion education here at my university who think it is the very best thing in the world and everybody should do it. We also know that for immersion to work, a number of conditions should be fulfilled. It's not to be taken lightly, you need to have parents who support it, teachers who support it and you have to have pupils to support it. And you also need to make sure that there is good extra support, language support for the teachers in schools, for the parents and for the pupils and that is not always the case. The key problem is that we do not have enough teachers who are able to do it. You need your teachers who are proficient in the other language and who get enough support in order to get the subject matter across in that other language. And the financial situation is such that we simply do not have the funds to organize that in a good way. But more importantly, we do not have enough teachers to do it. There is a huge shortage of teachers already in the regular system. We just do not have enough people to do it. And that is a huge issue. I'm also the current president of the Internationals Association for Dutch Studies, which lobbies for Dutch study programs at universities worldwide. I predict that we will import teachers of Dutch from Poland, from Hungary to Belgium in order to give classes in Dutch because we simply do not have enough language teachers as it is right now. So, yes, immersion could be one of the elements. But we're in a bit of a pickle right now when it comes to implementing that. There's other stuff you can do. I very much believe that very low entrance levels promoting multilingualism is a good thing, be it in sports organizations, be it in leisure organizations, in youth organizations. Whatever you can do to try and raise interest for learning other languages will help young people. Many of my colleagues will not agree with me. The impact of social media here and if the internet is huge when it comes to increasing knowledge of English. The idea that you do not learn another language by watching television, by looking at the Internet by now is not correct. I won't say that you will learn to explain quantum physics by watching small movies on your YouTube or on whichever news outlet on your tablet or phone. But you will get in – especially if it's visually supported – a lot of information and it will allow you to raise your language knowledge up to a certain extent.
DH: Yes, especially if it's accompanied by actual teaching of the language in school.
WV: Yeah. But even if it's not the case. I mean, my kids took in loads of English just by looking at their tablet and their cell phones, very much, the way I took in quite a lot of English by watching British television when I was a kid.
DH: Yeah, that's also how I learned the biggest portion of my English, I would say. Another aspect that a lot of news articles that I read brought forward was the so-called “cultural immersion”, so promoting the language by learning it through cultural elements like films, or like music or even doing summer courses in Flanders. So, would you agree that this is also a solution?
WV: I mean, it can help. There is no “one solution”. There's no one-size-fits-all. There will always have to be a combination of various aspects. I mean, if you spend part of your holidays in the country or in a part of a country where another language is spoken, you may pick up a number of elements, especially cultural elements. Listening to music in the other language can work, but we find that very often youngsters do not like French music or music in French very much. We find that French youngsters do not like music in Dutch very much. There are some exceptions, an artist like Stromae, for example, is very popular on the Dutch-speaking side and artists like Angèle as well. There are very few people of the Dutch-speaking who are very popular in Wallonia. We had a Brussels singer, Arno, who died about a year ago or two years ago, who was very popular, that's basically it. There you do see a divide. In Brussels, this is completely different. There you see – because of the close contact between the communities – that the crossover is far more intense. That can help. Summer courses, for example, can help. Getting to know what's going on at the other side of the language border, meeting people, especially, exchanging classes. All of those things can contribute to, at least, understanding or trying to understand each other.
DH: Yeah. Another aspect that I came across, that initially surprised me a lot was that I heard – correct me if I'm wrong or if it's not always the case – that the Dutch taught in Walloon schools is more so the standardized forms spoken in the Netherlands, as opposed to the one that's spoken in Flanders.
WV: And I do not think that's always the case. I mean, it depends on your teacher, if you have a teacher who has the northern Dutch standard as his or her language or language variety, then of course students will learn that. But very often the teachers of Dutch in Wallonia are native speakers of French who learned Dutch as a second language, so for whom Dutch also is a second language. Or, I think, people who come from Flanders or from Brussels who go and teach in Wallonia. I don't have the figures. I'm not sure how many actual speakers of Dutch go and teach in Wallonia, but I can't imagine that that figure is very high. What you do see is that the language being taught in Wallonia, the Dutch being taught in Wallonia, is standard Dutch. And it’s not the variety of Dutch, the substandard variety, which is spoken by the majority of the people in daily conversation. It’s not the dialects some older generations may still speak in daily conversation. This is something we also find in Dutch departments worldwide, not just in Wallonia. Students go and study Dutch, be it in Namur or be it in Liège, or be it in Budapest, and they learn the standard Dutch variety and then they come to Flanders, and people speak this Zwischensprache, tussentaal as we call it, and then very often students are like “okay, I don't understand this because I only speak standard Dutch and this is the substandard variety”. As you also have them in German. What you have Hochsprache and you have all the Zwischenvarietäten which come in between. These Zwischenvarietäten, a lot of people speak in daily context and very often if you find that this is very different from the standard variety. And that's a difficulty for students, for pupils, because they learned a language, they learned it well, they come to the region and then suddenly find that hardly anybody speaks that prestigious variety.
DH: But should the teaching in, especially Walloon schools, not focus more on – of course you cannot always teach all varieties, because there's a whole bunch of varieties – but shouldn't they be giving lessons where they make students aware of this and where they say, for example, this is a different word than what is used in standard Dutch.
WV: And they do. That cultural awareness is present. At least at University level I know that there's a lot of attention is being paid to that, I mean the differences between Dutch in the Netherlands and Dutch in Flanders – very much the way if we teach German, we refer students to the differences between German in Austria, and German in Germany, and German in Switzerland, or English in the UK and English in America. So especially on the level of vocabulary, that awareness is highlighted in the courses. I'm not sure to what extent this actually happens in Primary and Secondary school, but I can imagine that that there will be some attention for that as well.
DH: You have already addressed multiple times that there is a huge teacher shortage in both regions. A solution that I also read a lot of times in the news articles was that we should do a sort of “teacher exchange”. So, the teachers that teach Dutch switch and go to Wallonia and vice versa. What do you think about this initiative?
WV: Well, there are actually programs who support this. There are also official funds, I think the King Baudouin Fund or the Prince Phillippe Fund. These funds link the last institutions that still embody the national unity, especially the palace, etc. They have programs allowing classes to go to one side of the language border and the other and also teachers to switch. It's a very nice idea, but you have to be able to implement it. If a teacher living in Flanders needs to go on teach in Wallonia each and every day, that's quite a stretch. You need to get there on time. If that teacher happens to have smaller children, they need to go to a kindergarten or a crèche or to a school first and you need to be able to pick them up. It's not always as easy to bridge that distance. So that's easily said, especially, let's say in provinces which border on each other, but it’s not always as easy to implement. So, from a logistic point of view, it might be slightly more difficult. The good idea, it seems to be on paper. And then again, I think that would also not solve the issue, because even within Flanders, we have a shortage of language teachers. One of my kids didn't have any Dutch classes for half a year. Another one of my kids didn't have any French classes, and I know that at the other side of the language border, it's kind of comparable. So, we'll first need to solve that shortage and there are no easy solutions. Basically, the government did not pay attention to this for decades. And now that it's too late, all kinds of silly solutions are being brought up. Right now, there's a popular saying that each dog carrying a hat can actually become a teacher. If you are in a private firm and you have some spare time, you can be taken in as a teacher of mathematics, of economics and even of languages because they don't find any candidates who are willing to do it.
DH: Okay, so, we have not really touched upon the German-speaking community so far, but I would like to ask you, a question because – maybe the fact that we haven't spoken about it represents the place it has in the discourse of this whole topic. So, where would you place the German-speaking community in this debate? (Of course, it's part of Wallonia)
WV: Okay. I mean, the Belgium is an officially trilingual country. So, German is one of the three or few languages. The reality is that German is almost completely invisible. The only times you hear German, I think, is when the king gives an official speech. And I think he usually tries also to give a speech in Dutch, French and in German and that's basically it. Apart from that, on the national level, you never hear it in Parliament, you hardly ever hear it. It's completely absent, although officially it will always be promoted and you will have a web page in German and you will have the translations of the laws, etc. But it hardly plays a role in the everyday conversation and also in the political minds. So that's reality. In schools, you can learn German I think from fifth year in secondary education onwards, so from the age of 16 onwards, you can get two years of German. Even from the age of 15, 16, you can get three years of German, something like that. That's basically it. On the French-speaking side, it's quite similar in the regular school system for Dutch-speaking pupils or French-speaking pupils. We have that Germanophone community, of course, which is not part of Wallonia, officially speaking. I mean, they have their own community of their own, they have a parliament of their own, they have a set of ministers of their own, they have a prime minister of their own. 80 000 people, but they are a fully recognized community. The territory does belong to the Walloon region. So, as far as regional competencies railroad infrastructure, etc., is concerned, the Germanophone community, then depends on the Walloon region. That region very often projects an image of itself as the last, Belgians, the best Belgians, where multilingualism is heavily promoted, where Dutch very often spoken quite well by people. But it doesn't really play a role on the larger, overall, Belgian level. And a lot of the presence of German in the official discourse really is a token presence. We know that it should be there because it is one of the languages. Also, if you look at the number of people studying German right now at university, I think they usually are very low, both in Flanders and in Wallonia. German, also, funnily, is perceived as a very difficult language, also among my children, whereas it's actually quite close to Dutch. It's easier to learn German, I think, than it is to learn French, but still the perception is that it's very difficult. Also, the perception is, it's not a language, which is as useful, for example, as English. So, the realization that German still is an important language in politics and in business is not there.
DH: So, would you justify this low priority given by the small population? Or would you say it should be given more priority in in Belgium?
WV: It’s a matter of focus. If you look education from European level, and you realize the importance of Germany and its partners on the European level, you know that Germany is an important player, along with France and with the UK, you realize that knowing German is important. I learned German unterwegs. But I’ve drawn great benefit from being able to understand a conversation and being able to pretend that I can speak something which resembles German. But that's something which is not heavily promoted in schools, no. And within the Belgian construction within Belgian context, it's not something which is, which is top of mind. Although, if you look at the job market, many employers, especially in Brussels, assume that you have Dutch, French, and that you also have English. That trilingualism is basically assumed to be your basic rucksack you carry with you. If you have German on top of that, you're set, Bob's your uncle. You will have access to excellent jobs and you will earn a lot of money. So, employers, high profile employers will look for people who also have German. And we also have figures of that. If you look at figures of unemployment in Brussels, people having German hardly ever are unemployed.
DH: Okay, that's interesting to know. So, I have already said some things about the discourse in the press, but I would also be interested in knowing – if you know that – how the Flemish press is covering this topic. This topic of the Walloon measures of learning Dutch earlier and also the initiative of making it compulsory.
WV: I'll give an overall answer. I mean, the coverage of Wallonia in the Flemish press is not always very well informed. What do I mean by that? Usually, if you look at the journalist scene of a newspaper, you will maybe have one journalist in your team who specializes in Wallonia and who also knows well. You have a lot of political journalists, of course, who comment upon, whatever happens at the political level at a national level in Belgium. But there are very few people who actually know the region well, also among Flemish journalists. This also shows on, for example, news programs, if they want someone to comment upon something happening in Wallonia, they're usually invite a French-speaking journalist who masters Dutch well. I know for a fact that the French-speaking side, a journal like La Libre Belgique, for example, which is not a Brussels Journal like Le Soir, but really a journal that that caters for Wallonia, they have one journalist covering Flanders, Jacques Hermans, who is well-informed, who tries to follow whatever is happening in Flanders, but just one person. Many journalists are actually not very well-informed about what's going on there. People also make the mistake that if they understand what's going on in Brussels, they know what's going on in Wallonia, whereas those are worlds wpart very often, it's very different. So, the coverage of let's say, what's going on at a political level, might still be okay. The coverage of what's going on in the region itself usually is very limited and you see that very often that coverage is influenced by what I would call cliche images of the other part of the country at both sides of the language border. So, the way Wallonia is being portrayed in the Flemish press usually is, well, that region where economically things are not going well, that region where politically things were arranged in a way which are really not the way you should arrange politics, the region where political change is very difficult to accomplish where the control of the Socialist Party and let’s say, the pampering state still was very, very strong. And the consequence of that kind of political mismanagement you will find in the press – speaking between fat inverted commas now – the consequence of that, that is that you now have a region which is completely bankrupt because of that political management, because of bad policy. The coverage or the overall cliche image of Flanders is, well in Flanders, people do things better than we do Wallonia. Yes, they tend to be more right-wing. Oh, they are very nationalist and we do not like that at all, on the border of racists. But there are some things which are being done in a far better way there than they do in Wallonia. That's the overall image, the cliche image, you identify from Wallonia and neither the one nor the other is correct, of course. But you do find that kind of uninformed images controlling the overall public opinion. The opinion on Brussels from the Flemish speaking side is, Brussels is the stand where this complete chaos on the political level where political mismanagement is at its peak, where financially, things are going completely to hell and we should no longer put money into that because it’s just wasting your money and putting it in it all, which has no bottom. And that image also kind of lifts at the Walloon side, be it in a different way. And those images are up to a very large extent also not based on any reality or also are wrong. So, what you find, you asked about getting to know each other better, teacher exchange, etc. You see that the actual knowledge of the other region is fairly limited. It's very often based on cliches, not on reality.
DH: …which makes it harder to paint this picture of the other side to the region.
WV: Yeah. I mean journalists who are informed about the other side. In Flanders, we have one or two. In Wallonia, you also have one or two. They, of course, paint a completely different picture. They read, for example, Walloon newspapers instead of Le Soir, which is the Brussels newspaper. I mean, I happen to have a subscription to a Walloon newspaper, to La Libre Belgique for teaching purposes. If you read the news which is printed in that newspaper, it's completely different news from what I read in my Flemish newspaper, as if you were covering two different countries. There is a common core, but apart from that, many subjects which are being discussed in, for example, a Walloon newspaper never appear in the Flemish newspaper and vice versa, which is interesting.
DH: Yeah. It's very interesting.
WV: Yeah, yeah. In Wallonia you also see that as far as focus is concerned also in news-wise, Wallonia still is very much focused on France. Many people also watch French television and French news programs rather than Belgian news programs so that connection between Wallonia and France as far as news outlets is concerned still is very, very strong, which is no longer the case on the Dutch-speaking side. In Flanders, hardly anyone still watches television from the Netherlands.
DH: And I imagine that this pushes Flanders even further away from Wallonia, if they don't – I mean, in France, I don't know if Flanders is very often mentioned in the news.
WV: No, not very often and if it's mentioned – I mean, if Belgium is meant usually Brussels is being mentioned, and Brussels is then the umbrella term for everything to do with Europe or with NATO. Whereas if you live in Brussels, European function is very far away from your daily life. I lived in the European bubble very close to European Parliament for a couple of years. It's a completely separate bubble which has very little to do with daily life in this town.
DH: I would now like to ask you the question, in general, do you think this measure, especially the one wanting to make Dutch compulsory from third grade in Wallonia, Do you think that this measure will succeed, or will it be too difficult to implement?
WV: I mean, for a measure to succeed, you need the support from the population and from, in this case, from the schools and from the parents and the pupils. So, you will need to contextualize that you will need to try and explain why it is necessary. I think most people actually realize that it is necessary. So, I think there is good basis to make it happen. The key to the success will, of course, be will you have teachers who are able to do it? Will you have enough teachers? And will teaching be done in such a way that students actually catch on and become more successful at learning a language. But those always are the key elements. So, the decision to make it compulsory in order to increase the knowledge is a good decision, I think, but then you need to implement it. And if in the chain of implementation, something lacks or something goes wrong, your method of teaching is not good, you don't have enough teachers, there is no support from schools or from the parents, yeah, then it will be more difficult. The fact that it will be compulsory now from the third grade onwards does not mean, by default, that students will be more proficient in the language. They will have the chance to become more proficient. But the attractivity of the language, the interest of these pupils always depends up to a large extent on the way the language is being taught. I had teachers of French who did a fantastic job and then I actually liked learning French. I had teachers who did a horrible job and that I did not like learning French.
DH: Yeah, it's the same as in every other subject. Also I had math teachers where I really did not understand a thing and then other math teachers, where I did really well because I liked it so yeah.
WV: In my experience, I learned French at school for eight years when I was in Primary and Secondary school. Then I came to Brussels. I did need some French in my daily life, but I was at a Dutch-speaking University, on a Dutch-speaking campus. I didn't it need that often. Most of my French I acquired on top of that while actually working in Brussels. Before my PhD, I worked in the big multimedia shop where you could buy books, CDs, where you could buy concert tickets, etc. I worked in a multilingual team which was predominantly French-speaking. I learned a lot of French back then, in those months I worked there. After my PhD, I was a civil servant in the Brussels Administration for a year. I learned a lot of French being there. Right now, I’m one of the academic liaisons Between the Dutch-speaking University and the French-speaking University in Brussels. I've been in that job one and a half, two years now. I think that I acquired a lot of extra French basically by using language.
DH: So yeah, I think those were all of my questions and I am looking at the time. I hope you don't have an appointment just now at 10:00 a.m.
WV: I do, but that's okay. No worries.
DH: Oh, okay. But if you would like to add anything more, any perspective that hasn't been shared yet you can.
WV: Yes, I mean, it's anecdotical, but I think it's important. The attitudes towards language, and especially to French in Brussels, have changed dramatically and drastically over the past generations. My father – and this is where it becomes anecdotical – my father worked in Brussels as a civil servant from the early 1970s until the 2010s, something like that. He still was very much a speaker of Dutch, the Fleming, in a predominantly French-speaking Ministry at the time. And he always felt that he was considered as a secondary citizen. The best promotions would always go to people speaking French, French would be the default language in discussions and Dutch would always come second, which lets to huge frustrations, which led us to attitude towards the other community, in this case, the French-speaking Community, which were not very positive at all. I came to Brussels in 1990, when a lot of that dynamics was in place. I've seen those dynamics change when I became a civil servant in 2000 for a year and also in my context now with, for example, the French-speaking University, nowadays, when I meet with the French-speaking Rector, she always addresses me in Dutch when she sees me. Her chief of staff, always talks Dutch to me, even if it's actually not fantastic. So, the mutual respect and the idea that everybody can speak his or her language and it's perfectly, okay if you don't master it to a perfect extent. The idea that both languages can be considered as equal is very much part of that new Brussels reality right now. So, the conflict between speakers of French and speakers of Dutch in daily life is no longer part of life, I think. I think it still is present at the political level. Especially now with government formations in Brussels which do not work well, you once again see francophone parties and Dutch-speaking parties clashing heavily. In daily life, you hardly ever see that. This is very different from the Brussels I've known 40 years ago and 30 years ago. And that's one of the best changes I've seen, I think, happening in this town. This is also why I say that Brussels is very different in Flanders and Wallonia because the attitudes towards the other language in Flanders and in Wallonia are pretty much the same as they were, I think, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, whereas in Brussels, this has completely changed. You now have a young generation for whom French and Dutch or other languages are part of daily life. And people switch from one to the other. You also see for example, that with the Dutch-speaking school system is incredibly popular among parents who speak French at home. The Dutch-speaking school system caters for 20 to 22 percent of all pupils in Brussels, whereas, we know that only five to six percent or seven percent of households in Brussels are monolingual Dutch. So, many Parents actually who do not speak Dutch send their kids to Dutch-speaking schools in Brussels in order for their kids to become multilingual because they want their kids to get the best chances in life. In my daughter's class, she's one of the – I mean, she has, she has 25 people in her class, I think – there are four, maximum five people who only speak Dutch at home. All the others come from multilingual or even French-speaking backgrounds. That's a huge change, that's something to take along, if you want to understand the dynamics which are going on in Brussels right now, that's something you should take in and that's very different from what's going on in Flanders or Wallonia.
DH: Yeah, it would be a good change if Flanders and Wallonia would think more like Brussels, but I guess it's a bit more complicated.
WV: Yeah, but you see Flemish politicians and Walloon politicians governing schools in Brussels, because those schools are being governed by Flanders and Wallonia, saying things about Brussels without really knowing what the atmosphere in the town is and what daily life in the town is like. And that's a big issue.
DH: Um yeah, so thank you so much for your input.
WV: You’re welcome.
DH: It was very, very interesting and I think this is very valuable for my work.
WV: If you have any extra questions, feel free to contact me. I can always zoom in or send a short answer via email. If there's stuff you still want to ask or things you think of later on, feel free to contact me. I'd be most happy to try and help.
DH: Thank you for that. Okay then, I thank you so much and I might get back to you if I have more questions but this is it for the most part
WV: That's good. Have a good day.
DH: Yes, you too. Thank you. Bye!
WV: Bye!
