must say I'm curious to see what would happen if the country did break up. I believe in small regional representative government co-operating within the framework of continental organizations like the European Union, so the idea doesn't pose huge difficulties for me. Except in that I live in Brussels and no one is quite sure what's going to happen to an 85% French city floating in a sea of Flem. There are lots of French towns around Brussels too, little islands of romance language.
I don't see how the Flemish can seperate peacefully without maintaining official bilinguality. Even with all the nonsense, impractical talk about Brussels becoming a city-state and Wallonia joining up with France - a bad, bad idea for all concerned, trying to incorporate a seriously economically depressed province that's been defining itself in opposition to France for more than a hundred years into one of the most ridiculously centralized national administrations in the 'free' world - though apparently the French French love the idea, despite making the Belgians the butt of their stupid jokes since the birth of Belgium - why don't they concentrate on fixing it so that the Corsicans, Bretagnes and Basques stop wanting to seperate before taking on more territory that will want to seperate - where was I?
Right: honestly, I'm concerned about violence if the Flemish don't maintain bilinguality for the sake of all the French living in Flemland, in Brussels and out of it. Do you know how many French people speak Flemish, even the ones marooned in their townships up in Flemland away from Wallonia? Almost none. Stupid, but true. And if you take away their linguistic status, basically force them to fuck off back to Wallonia, which could be France at that point and who wants to fuck off to the bits of France that aren't on the Mediterranean, I bet at least a few nut jobs would start blowing shit up. After all, this is Europe, and the tradition of making a bad situation worse by blowing shit up has an ancient pedigree here.
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But there's gotta be some sort of EU deal with minority languages, rite?? Meaning there gotta be euro laws protecting bilinguality??
Dear me, no! France would never have consented to such blanket legislation in view of its relationship with its own linguistic minorities.
There are laws in that, for example, you can't refuse to sell someone something on the basis of his mother tongue.
But certainly no laws about having to provide public education or administration (signage, et cetera) in a minority language. No no no no no! Or should I say 'non'?
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