In Ninove, einer von Vlaams Belang geführten Stadt, werden Händler aufgefordert, vor Kunden kein Französisch mehr zu sprechen.

Terecht.

Et alors?

Dutch speakers do understand that this sort of thing only makes people less willing to learn Dutch, right? Forcing people to learn a language doesn’t work. That‘s why very few people successfully learn foreign languages at school. People need to feel a genuine desire and a passion for a language. It’s hard to do that when the culture surrounding it is so… hostile.

Dutch is already a tough sell considering the poor effort to reward ratio and difficulty to access effective learning resources. You learn a Language like Spanish, you can suddenly talk to half a billion people with an immensely rich and diverse cultural heritage. You learn Dutch, you can speak to 20-30 million people, most of whom are pretty much fluent in english and don’t even care whether you learn Dutch or not. You go to the Netherlands, they won’t even speak Dutch with you. It’s only really a few million people in Belgium who care. Last time I tried to find Dutch speaking content creators, I couldn’t even find any good ones, because most of them make content in English. Even when you want to try to work in your Dutch, the whole universe is working against you.

That’s the problem with Dutch. It just has really terrible PR. It’s political and feels forced. The desire to learn is not organic. People learn it because they have to. For school, for work, because people will refuse to talk to them in any other language. That‘s why it will always be a failure, and this sort of unhinged behavior will be one of the major reasons why.