Re: Dutch/Japanese bilinguals?

From: robert (rverbeke_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/09/04 

Date: 9 Nov 2004 15:07:55 -0800

Michael Cash <mikecash@buggerallspammers.com> wrote in message news:<9042p056da8bf00hm9r7vepfft1kg387pt@4ax.com>...
>
> Well, with an attitude like that, no wonder everybody hates them.
>

Nononononoo, nowadays everybody hates some other country.

I can understand the situation is somewhat hard to understand... In
Belgium people speak Dutch, French and German. When Brittish people
visit Bruges (in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) they try to speak
French to the locals because they think they are doing them a favor
this way. In reality the locals would much rather have them speaking
English because English is closer to Dutch, hence easier.

The capital Brussels is in the Dutch speaking part, but the majority
of the people speaks French. When you ask directions in English there,
people will answer you in French. If you ask directions in Dutch in
many cases they will turn their back on you.

When I was doing language exchange I often received e-mails from
Japanese who wanted to learn French. The majority of people in Belgium
speak Dutch, but for some reason nobody knows this... Surprisingly, I
also received a lot of messages from people who were interested in
Dutch... In all cases this was because they confused "Doitsugo" with
"Dutch" of course... However, some of them have heard the word
"furamango"! (This is supposed to be my language I guess...) Flanders
seems to have some popularity in Japan, but only because of some anime
called "Furandas no inu". However, in Flanders nobody has ever heard
of this.

I'm still waiting for the first Japanese with an interest in
"Orandago" in Belgium...

Ah, I can't wait to get away from here...

Rob

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