The country’s language watchdog is investigating after a Dutch-speaking commuter protested a conductor’s use of “bonjour” – French for “good morning” – to welcome him onboard during a rush-hour train from Mechelen, in Flanders, to the capital, Brussels, in October.
Writing on Facebook, Ilyass Alba, the French-speaking conductor, said that on the day in question he greeted passengers entering his carriage with a resounding “goeiemorgen, bonjour”.
The use of both the Dutch and French greetings was not good enough for one Dutch-speaking passenger, who told him off, saying: “We’re not in Brussels yet, you have to use Dutch only!”
The passenger was technically right, as under Belgium’s complex language rules conductors should in theory use both languages only in Brussels and a few other bilingual regions.
That seems ridiculous, if that’s got legal backing the law should be changed. Multilingual announcements on public transport are commonplace across the world anywhere you can expect people to travel speaking several languages
I’m sure it would not be unusual for a french speaking person to use the train?
Taking the train in Belgium is ridiculous because of that. If you take the train from Liege to Brussels you have all the announcements in French only at the start, when it switches to Dutch only sound Leuven, finally you have it in both languages when you arrive around Brussels.
How sad one’s inner monologue must be to take issue with “good morning”. If the conductor started praising Jesus or Allah he’d have a strong case, but “good morning”? Wow.
It’s pretty pathetic for that passenger to complain about it. It’s one thing to be refused service in Dutch when buying a ticket or some longer interaction, but this is just sad.
Depending on the context praising Allah would be something I would accept as normal, and I’m a Christian in a mostly Christian country. You give the appropriate praise for your belief and the response is for the responders belief (if one is called for). Good morning should be in every language the conductor knows, though only one from the list in any given announcement. Ideally the conductor spends some time to learn good morning in weird languages just to mix it up (“Xin chào - that is Good morning in Vietnamese”) Such phases need to be said all the time, but there is no reason they have to be in any particular language and mixing it up help get people to listen to announcements.
Depending on the context praising Allah would be something I would accept as normal, and I’m a Christian in a mostly Christian country.
Hard nope.
To consider antireligion instead of atheism
“The harm of religion is historically evident whereas the presence or absence of gods is not. Ultimately, the continued existence of religion is predicated on the indoctrination of children and suppression of rational thought. Therefore I am against religion but not necessarily against the idea of gods. For all we know gods are computer scientists and we are in their video game.” —https://www.arscyni.cc/file/antireligion.html
In Belgium I knew there are quite a few French people that are very particular about using French there. I should have supposed there was the same type of person but in Dutch.
That sounds pretty racist.
The history of the Flemish and Walloon conflict is pretty impressive. Some people hold onto those generational prejudices.
I see. Thanks for sharing.
French isn’t a race, it’s an ailment.
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I’ve had two Belgian French teachers in my life and they both said very demeaning things about the Dutch speakers casually when talking about their home towns. Small sample size but fits with the weirdness of this story.
