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Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/262810
FEATURES Roland Willemyns looks at the changing linguistic make-up of Belgium and its bilingual capital city With about 11 million inhabitants, Belgium is a trilingual, federal country consisting of four entities constituted on the basis of language: Dutch-speaking Flanders (58 percent of the population), French-speaking Wallonia (31.4 percent), bilingual Brussels (10 percent) and a small German-speaking community (0.6 percent). Since regional governments have legislative power, the frontiers of their jurisdiction – being language borders – are defined in the constitution. The 'language struggle', which was to dominate Belgian political life, started in 1830 after the split of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands into present-day Holland and Belgium. Although the new constitution provided for 'linguistic freedom', this freedom was only profitable to the rich and powerful – ie, the aristocracy and bourgeoisie from Wallonia and Flanders, all of whom were French speakers. Hence, despite the fact that Dutch speakers constituted the huge majority of the population, no legal means was provided for their language. A century of struggle by the Flemish Movement in favour of the promotion of Dutch finally resulted in extensive linguistic legislation, bringing about the acceptance of the 'territoriality principle', which implied that Flanders was to be governed exclusively in Dutch, and Wallonia exclusively in French. Two sets of laws in 1932 and 1963 officialised the language frontier as a domestic administrative border and made it virtually unchangeable. Revisions of the constitution in 1970 and 1980 provided for a considerable amount of self-determination for the linguistically divided parts of the country, and subsequent changes in 1988 and 1993 finally turned Belgium into the federal country it is. Thanks to the 2013 revision of the constitution, the economic and financial weight of the state governments for the first time supersedes that of the federal government. There were two notorious exceptions to the territoriality principle: the so-called 'Voerstreek' (a small territory situated between the major cities of Aachen, Maastricht and Liège), and the Brussels suburban region (Randgemeenten). Whereas the problems in and with the Voerstreek were solved some time ago, the Brussels suburban region continued to be a nuisance for consecutive Belgian governments. The 2013 revision of the constitution finally separated the Halle-Vilvoorde area from Brussels. This brings to a conclusion a process which, through extensive language planning and policy, guarantees the homogeneity of België or la Belgique? FLEMISH REGION Antwerp City Hall on the main square B E L G I U M International border Provincial border French area Dutch area French & Dutch German area 0 10 20 30 kilometres 0 10 20 30 miles