Aaah I was going to post that :D!
It stars one of my favorite comedic actors, Benoît Poelvoorde who is belgian. I'd encourage anyone with a taste for foreign films to check out "C'est arrivé près de chez vous" (Man Bites Dog in english) another great movie of his (features lots of violence and serious themes, not a family movie).
It looks like a very French first name and a very Dutch last name. Is that common in Belgium? Is there a significant overlap between the linguistic communities of Belgium?
I initially started writing half an encyclopedia here, but I scrapped that. Some random bits:
- There's rather limited contact between the linguistic communities of Belgium.
- Knowledge of nl is generally extremely limited in Wallonia. I have a feeling it's improving a bit, even if nl is not obligatory in education there.
- Knowledge of fr is clearly worsening with the youngest generation in Flanders, even if fr is obligatory in education there.
- Mixed nl/fr work environments used to be fr.
- Friends from outside Belgium often tell me they notice absurd humor as a common trait.
- Lots of interesting things to say about language community history too. Long story short, the language border hardly moved the last few hundred years, except for Brussels turning majority nl-> fr in the last ~100 years [0].
- Did you know Belgium has large ar, ber, de (official language!), it, ku, ln and tr communities too?
In a prior life (i.e. 25 years or so ago), I was in Brussels for a work event where there were various speeches. The way it worked is that you either spoke English or you spoke alternating French/Flemish.
20 years or so ago, I went to the movies in Brussels. A movie in English with subtitles. Both in French and Flemish at the same time, and in many cases the subtitles were taking close to half the height, it was ridiculous.
I might misremember given that with covid I haven't seen a movie in ages, but iirc same in switzerland with de/fr. (Or maybe it's only for the trailers, not the movie?)
I have a very good friend from Flanders. His partner is from wallonia. He told me that the word 'poopen' is nl slang in one community for 'to have sex with' and 'to defecate' in the other. This caused much hilarity.
I’ve noticed a lot of “oddities” between languages of neighbouring countries.
I theorise that neighbouring countries, especially those that fought a lot in the past evolve these odd language-language meaning issues. Some folks just start using a word from the neighbour country’s language, but use it in their language with a totally different meaning, often chosen to be hilariously different. Then if it turns into a sort of meme, eventually it ends up in the language.
Save for a few adjustments, the linguistic border in that region has been basically fixed since the 8th c. Unsurprisingly enough, a lot of the work of the dynamics of the Romance-Germanic linguistic border comes from Belgium.
Jean-Claude Van Varenberg (the real name of Jean-Claude Van Damme). It is incredibly common. I've got many several french speaking belgian friends, with a french name but a dutch family name.
> Is there a significant overlap between the linguistic communities of Belgium?
I would say not anywhere near what the name / family names may suggest. The north/south separation in Belgium is quite clear and although mixed french/flemish couples are by not means rare, I'd say the overlap is still not huge. Even in Brussels native flemish speaking people are only 6% of the population.
Sometimes it’s collectively referred to as Benelux, so a name that would fit in the Netherlands does not surprise me.
It does throw me when some documentary interviews a Frenchman with a very German last name. Until I find out he lives in Alsace. That area traded hands so many times. There are some French names on the other side of the border too, I’m told.
And isn’t “Austria” just a mistranslation of the German for “The outer lands”? But we don’t talk about that any more. Not since The War.
During the second world war, Austria was called "Ostmark", not österreich.
And yes, "we do not talk about that" since the war ended, the Myth that we were the "First Victim of the Nazis" still perpetuates, at least in the Generation of my Grandmother (who is 94).
The only austrian resistance when the nazis entered in 1938 was a Group of International Brigades that had returned from the spanish Civil War and they all got slaughtered.
You likely will not find that in a lot of history books either, somehow the ~80.000 international Volunteers of the Civil War in Spain are rarely mentioned anywhere.
Yes, specifically it's more common that way around than the other due to the large influx of Flemish workers who moved to the coal and iron regions in Wallonia during the industrial revolution.
Most people with FR first name and Dutch last name are Walloons who probably do not speak Flemish.
When Flanders was poor a lot of Flemings moved to Wallonia, at the time it was the wealthy part of Belgium, to find work. They stayed and their kids grew up learning French and then their kids did as well, only their last names reminding them of where their ancestors came from.
If I may ask, what is the story behind your name? For example, is one of your parents francophone and the other one Dutch? Do you speak both languages natively?
Very few people in Belgium speak both French and Flemish natively. It's one or the other, depending on which side of the language border you live on. In Flanders you have compulsory French classes while in Wallonia you don't have compulsory Flemish classes, but the compulsory classes don't get you anywhere near native proficiency. His last name doesn't sound very Flemish so his ancestors probably moved to Wallonia at least a few generations back. To me it even sounds like a Flemish version of a French name. The parent should correct me if I'm mistaken of course, deducting where someone is from based on their last or first name can be quite tricky in my experience.
Potferdoume! So much interest in Belgium! 216 comments and counting..
Having said that.. In an attempt to get me to learn Flemish, my parents placed me in a Flemish-speaking school. Most Flemish kids spoke decent French. The other way isn’t so true. Too many French-speaking Belgians don’t bother to learn Flemish.
That's what I wrote.
The original comment received a question "Do you speak both languages natively?". While not aimed at me, I addressed it for the general case. People aren't brought up with both languages and will not have a native understanding of both. 6 years of at most 3 to 5 hours a week of French in high school don't get you to native level. I don't doubt at all that it's sufficient for your needs, but the bar for native is much higher than communicating without issues when dealing with work or meeting people. Even if you were at native level, it still wouldn't mean that this is the general case.
I hope the original poster replies as well, it would be interesting to know if he knows the history behind his last name.
Let me try and rephrase it. Is your command of French as good as your command of Dutch? If yes then you have reached the native level bar, if not then you haven't.
Being native doesn't matter. Plenty of people here learned English by classes, tv and online while not being a native English speaker and you wouldn't even notice it ( eg. me)
Some are noticable, like people from the netherlands have a certain accent while speaking and you still understand them perfectly.
Here's my point again: A native speaker has no single advantage over a non-native speaker, if they are at a certain level.
Just replace English by French in my example, it's the exact same thing but applied to here.
> compulsory classes don't get you anywhere near native proficiency.
It gets you good enough to explain yourself and speaking. You don't need native proficiency.
What you need is to practise it afterwards, if multiple years go by. Even native dutch speakers that went abroad don't speak dutch anymore well by lack of repetition over ( a lot of) years.
PS. My original reply was not on a question. But on the statement quoted above.
A lot of Flemish folks migrated to French speaking areas back in the days because of the mines. Belgian mines powered the industrial revolution, which explains a lot of the British involvement and Belgium's historically awkward international status.
There's a significant overlap in naming and there's a lot of professional language contact. But culturally and politically, the linguistic communities are divided.
It depends on what you mean. There is no significant linguistic overlap. There are some exceptions such as if you live near the language border. But last names ending up in the other side of the country is not that uncommon, people move around and some end up getting kids there.
talking about dutch-belgian-french, I recently got into Dick Annegarn
His first album "Sacre Geranium" is a strange kind of masterpiece. Naive, comical, poetic, and strangely complex musically at the same time (all that mostly as a solo acoustic guitar voice act)
Maybe I was the only one confused but "C'est arrivé près de chez vous" means 'It Happened Near Your Home'. The movie was released in English as "Man Bites Dog"
> Man Bites Dog is an intensely disturbing movie that, despite having frequent moments of dark humor, is shockingly violent and very difficult to watch.
With 74% on RT, which is pretty good. I already have conflicting emotions from this. The descriptions evoke the spirit of Bret Easton Ellis' stuff.
What I've seen of French film violence tends to be cinematic in an off-putting way, but perhaps that's only post-2000s explosion of movie tricks.
The quote is overstating it IMO. Maybe for its time it was shocking but if you compare it to game of thrones for example, which has rape scenes, torture and murder it's nothing to write home about in its depiction of those.
I watched it as a teen with my family and it didn't shock me in the least. It's serious but not traumatizing.
I certainly noticed that fatherhood brought an emotional exploit that various stories like to push in different ways. Sometimes well, sometimes poorly, as with all stories.
Knowing that my friends, one after another, have hormones telling them to defend the newly-expanded family, I will sure try to dump a movie like ‘Funny Games’ on them in the most sneaky manner.
Ellis' ‘Glamorama’ actually has a film crew following the protagonist. However that book is difficult to comprehend (sorta in the 70s/80s transgression-surrealism way), so I'm still not sure what the crew actually does, if anything.
Wikipedia says that they removed the woman rape and the kid murder scenes on the American version, 30 years ago. I don't know if people would appreciate such a movie today.
> I don't know if people would appreciate such a movie today
I'm fairly certain most people outside of the north-american-cancel bubble know how to separate fantasy from reality, so while maybe hard to watch, there won't be any uproar.
Edit: judging by the downvotes, HN is not outside that bubble, my mistake
Alternatively perhaps people on HN are simply aware that the most popular TV show in the last decade was a fantasy show with similar themes produced in North America, which renders your criticism somewhat nonsensical.
True. It doesn't feel the same though. Maybe because it's a fake documentary where the filming crew participates in the rape / murders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx8MHwRLkMc
