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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (340765)	6/19/2007 3:48:27 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1571809

Re: ...to compare the US to Belgium is ridiculous. The influx of Spanish speakers in large numbers is relatively new in American history and they are scattered throughout the US and not in one particular section of the country. You mean that US cities bearing Spanish names is a "relatively new" phenomenon?!? Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando, San Diego, etc, are all Anglo cities that were rechristened to gratify Hispanics?!? The names of American cities reflect our diversity. However, the US did not bring together two disparate cultures, giving each of them equal status.......but Belgium did. Re: Belgium has been independent since 1830. At the time of its independence, the country was split between two main languages: Dutch and French. I don't think so.... 1830 is a long time ago, it's 15 years after the Congress of Vienna that basically settled the shaping of Europe after France's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815... For a short span (1792-1814), Belgium was ruled by the French: en.wikipedia.org At the time, Belgium had much more than two languages --it had French, the lingua franca of the time, spoken by Europe's elites from Sint-Petersburg to London to Rome, and a motley of patois --Dutch patois and French patois spoken by farmers and the cities' lower classes. Only bourgeois and aristrocrats used to converse, write and read in French proper.... Hence French was not, could not, be viewed as the language of half of Belgium's population, French was more a "class" feature than an ethnic one --pretty much like English is today as the lingua franca of corporate elites and expats.... I presume that the citizens of Wallonia were the primary speakers of the French patois, and the Flemish the Dutch patois. Is that not right? And if it is, my original premise stands.