Helaas, pindakaas.
What a shame, peanut butter — Dutch saying
Alsof er een engeltje op je tong pist –
As if a little angel is pissing on your tongue — Dutch saying for something which tastes good.
When I moved to Brussels in autumn 2023 to take up a full-time position as an interpreter, I was for the first time in a role which allowed me to realise my greatest professional dream — to learn more foreign languages. It was also clear that I needed to add another language to my French and German to remain competitive in my profession. As if I needed further incentive, Brussels employers offer a system of educational leave known as congé education, meaning that employees are entitled to more holiday to acquire other skills, including languages. Getting more holiday in order to learn a new language; in a profound sense, my idea of heaven.
That left me, though, with the difficult question of which language to pick. For an interpreter, it is a little bit like planning for a new addition to the family. How about Spanish? Might Italian get on better with my existing languages? Polish would be great, but does it even have vowels? Chinese would be transformational, but I might not have a spare ten years.
Yet there was an obvious choice staring me in a face, a language spoken widely both in Brussels and its environs: Dutch.
First a brief overview of Belgium’s linguistic landscape. Dutch is the native language of the Flemish, the prosperous northern half of the country and 60 per cent of the population; Wallonia, which provides most of the rest of the people, speaks French, and there’s a small German-speaking enclave of circa 80,000 in the eastern province of Liège. The only officially bilingual region is Brussels, where everything official needs to be done in both languages; Dutch is the native language of 10 per cent of Brusselaars.
To a relatively new arrival, the status of Dutch in Brussels seems relatively prestigious. There’s a lovely Dutch cultural centre, Huis van Het Nederlands, where you can get free drinks while you practice in summer, and Dutch is an advantage in the local jobs market. There are lots of opportunities for learners to practice, at everything from an annual Dutch-language festival to a Dutch-language singing evening (better than it sounds). As a friend of mine says, if people are trying to make something happen in Brussels, a city which could turn even the most misty-eyed pro-European into Nigel Farage, they’re normally doing it in Dutch.
I signed up for class. Classes are heavily subsidised; I paid 42€ for a term which covered my course books and registration, with the actual course refunded as I am a Brussels resident. In a recent controversy, indeed, prices for all foreign language courses, including such small regional languages as English and Chinese, were to be raised, while only Dutch would remain heavily subsidised. And I got my educational leave, or educatief verlof to use the Dutch, eight precious extra holiday days which I of course devoted entirely to the study of golden age Dutch literature.
The courses were brilliant. The teaching was fantastic; the students, themselves often seeing specific career motivation in learning the language, were generally committed. (Dutch spoken with a strong French accent remains a thing of wonder). There was something oddly charming about a group of people from all around the world learning a relatively minor language; Argentinians, Qataris and Walloons uniting on their common language as that of Hanseatic fisheries. One day I met a fellow student in the street and we conversed; a Portuguese man and an Englishman chatting Dutch in 2025. The 17th century was back, baby.
Over the next eighteen months, buttressed by a Dutch conversation club on Sunday nights — and, to be honest, by already knowing German — I progressed to a solid upper intermediate level. There was a healthy alignment between my desire to learn the language — and Dutch, the native language of my grandfather and cousins and aunt, has long been important in my family — and the desire of the Flemish to assert their language’s role within their country’s fractured linguistic polity. I did learn, though, that many Flemish are resistant to calling their language Flemish, which they see as a nationalist term; they speak Nederlands, literally low countries, and aside from a softer accent it is recognizably the same language as that spoken in the “bigger” neighbour to the north.
Finally, Dutch is just fun. It’s somewhat of a mongrel, with words from French (cadeau), bits of pure Latin (politicus) and then really Dutchie Dutch words like “oorlog” (war) “ui” (onion) and “balie” (counter). It’s expressive, with a big vocabulary and possessing the same ability as German to create compound words; for example the word to nitpick, “mierenneuken”, translates literally as “to fuck ants”. My favourite Dutch word is “meeuw” — seagull, by the way. I like the way the consonants rack up.
For sure, pretty much every person I’ve chatted with in Dutch over the last two years could probably have spoken English (or French) with me. Yet they humoured me, especially if I made clear at the outset that I was learning. Indeed, one fearsomely overcorrecting lady aside — I nearly cried afterwards — I had soon had more positive interactions learning this language than in any other I have tried to learn despite it being on paper the least “useful”. In the 21st century, smaller languages need to do something for themselves to survive and the Flemish are certainly doing their part, showing pride and care in their language.
I feel that by choosing the smaller language, I am striking a tiny blow against the dominance of English in every field
These days, language learning is rarely — especially for English native speakers — a question of utility. Realistically, to survive the coming century, no-one really needs to speak anything more than English, maybe un poco de españoland perhaps a smattering of Chinese. French in West Africa perhaps. For my part I could absolutely survive in Brussels speaking just Eurobubble English fine.
Yet when I’m offered the choice of speaking Dutch or French here I feel that by choosing the smaller language, I am striking a tiny blow against the dominance of English in every field. Against the degeneration of the European brain into sub-American globo-soup. Besides Dutch, spoken by 25 million people worldwide and across former Dutch colonies, isn’t even the littlest language around; my argument applies even more genuinely to tiny European languages such as Breton, Sami or Basque. If you want to strike a blow against globalisation, against the boring homogenisation of everything, learn one of those, and who better-placed to do that than those who already speak the world’s most powerful language as their native tongue?
I’ve signed up for another year of class. Of course, I already mark the irony that after two years in the country I am now an exception to most Belgians in being able to speak both main national languages to a decent degree; generally, the Flemish speak French better than the Wallonians speak Dutch, which is the cause of much of the distrust between them. Language is never separate from politics in Belgium. Well, I’ve made my choice and I’m happy with it, which is to try and speak French and Dutch.
Indeed, I encourage many more of my compatriots to learn Nederlands, not least because a sudden raft of English people who can speak Dutch would freak Dutch speakers right out. There are worse reasons to do things in this day and age.
