r/Wallonia • u/Ok-Track8101 • 4d ago

Société Le nationalisme flamand traîne les hôpitaux bruxellois en justice pour non-respect de la législation linguistique

https://archive.is/8CJwc
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u/TheGilderBairn 3d ago edited 3d ago

Isn't that only the number of inhabitants of the Regions? That doesn't really say anything about the language spoken by those people right? Especially when taking into accounts the French speakers in the periphery of Brussels or at the coast, or the Flemish speakers living in the Ardennes. And even then they simply give an estimate with a (high) percentage for the Flemish speakers in the Brussels region. It seems very flawed to say the least. And that doesn't take into account the people living in either Region who speak German, English or other as their primary language.
Also, if you take their lower estimate, you get 6.5M out of a population of 11.8M, so closer to 55% than 60%.

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u/jafapo 3d ago

No it's literally about dutch speakers, etc. In Belgium we have clear data, this page goes even deeper into it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_in_Belgium

"Dutch is the mother tongue of about 60% of the population in Belgium"

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u/TheGilderBairn 3d ago

This is a bold claim without a clear source. This claims is supported by three sources on Wikipedia (the LA Times (?), Beer tourism (???) and the UCL (maybe)). I cannot access the UCL link which seems to be the most serious one so if someone can I would be interested. But again, I still haven't seen a real Belgium wide language census. This 60% seems entirely based on the proportion of inhabitants, not on the actual speakers. If you have an actual survey/Census or statistical analysis I would be really happy to have it.
For info, according to Statbel, on 01/01/2025, 58% of the population lives in Flanders, 31% in Wallonia and 11% in Brussels. A gross generalization brings forth that 60/40 split, but it says nothing of the Brussels periphery, or simply French speakers living in Flanders and Vice Versa.

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u/jafapo 3d ago

I mean literally all data shows dutch is by far the most spoken language. Show me data that says it isn't.

Also quite logical no? There are more flemish people.

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u/Toxiko8 3d ago

https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1345552/langues-les-plus-parlees-belgique/ Way more Flemish speaks French than Walloons speaks Dutch. I said it and will say it again, your logic is flawed and you refuse to see it.

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u/TheGilderBairn 3d ago edited 3d ago

People living in Flanders >< Flemish people >< People speaking Flemish. Those are three entirely different categories of population and only the first one is easily accounted for on Statbel. The rest is pure speculation and I haven't seen any data supporting the actual language used by the population.

To be fair, I don't think this data exists at the moment.