{"id":6741,"date":"2020-09-08T18:06:22","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T18:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/?p=6741"},"modified":"2020-09-08T18:06:22","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T18:06:22","slug":"what-do-the-belgians-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/what-do-the-belgians-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"What do the Belgians Speak?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve talked about the differences between Dutch and Flemish before<\/a>. Words and pronunciation are quite different between Dutch dialects and Flemish ones – but where does that leave us? Flemish is not a language; the official language is\u00a0Nederlands\u00a0<\/em>(Dutch). So what gives?<\/p>\n

A\u00a0tussentaal<\/em>?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Brugge, Belgium (Image by Libby Penner at Unsplash.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Vlaams\u00a0<\/em>as an official language does not exist; It is\u00a0Nederlands<\/em>. In 1980, Belgium and the Netherlands signed a\u00a0taalunieverdrag\u00a0<\/em>(language union treaty), in which they agreed to work on the Dutch language together. However, despite official Flemish institutions using Dutch practically indistinguishable from their counterparts in the Netherlands, people in Flanders speak differently.<\/p>\n

Of course, you could simply call this a\u00a0dialect<\/em> (dialect). Just like Groningen has its\u00a0Gronings\u00a0<\/em>and Twente has its\u00a0twents<\/em>, the Flemish have\u00a0Oost-Vlaams\u00a0<\/em>(Eastern Flemish), West-Vlaams <\/em>(Western Flemish)\u00a0and Antwerps<\/em>. But what unites these languages is that across these dialects, there are similarities that are different from the similarities that the dialects in the Netherlands have in common. This includes examples that we talked about in that previous post<\/a>, but goes beyond that in sentence structure, for example. Here are some more words that are different:<\/p>\n