[LINK] English in Belgium

[rfmcdonald]

nhw links to and summarizes an interesting new study (Philippe Van Parijs, "Brussels Capital of Europe: the new linguistic challenges" PDF format)that claims that English has to be considered as one of the languages of Belgium. The language map of Belgium has been traditionally divided between Netherlandophone Flanders in the north, Francophone Wallonia in the south (this region including, in turn, the German-speaking Eastern Cantons), and a nominally bilingual but actually Francophone-majority national capital of Brussels in the middle. Now, in keeping with pan-European trends of growing fluency in English as a second language and immigration to the country that houses what is effectively the capital of the European Union, "English is more widely spoken than Dutch in both Wallonia and Brussels, and almost as widely spoken as French in Flanders. The paper then gives 1999 figures, and reasonably extrapolates from them to conclude that fewer than half of Brussels residents are now native French speakers (fewer than 10% native Dutch speakers, and very few indeed native English speakers)."