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- ok, I found where to change etsy's default language
- Kinda surprised it managed to not default to French
- DarklyDragon - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
- things do that a lot to you?
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
- I'm from Belgium
- We have three official languages
- I'm from the Dutch-speaking part
- DarklyDragon - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
- oh I didnt know that one
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:25 PM
- But half the country speaks French and a small sliver near the border w Germany speaks German
- (bc we gained that sliver of land after WWI, iirc)
- DarklyDragon - Yesterday at 11:26 PM
- yay learning new things
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
- and for some reason a lot of websites default to French for Belgium (I would have no idea why /sarcasm)
- DarklyDragon - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
- I do enjoy learning about other countries
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
- yes , I do know the reason, and it's bullshit
- anyone interested in a ranty infodump on the culture of language in the history of Belgium?
- and how it made WWI go way worse than it could've
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:32 PM
- ok, this shit still has ramifications to this day btw, where the Flemish ppl(the ones living in the Dutch-speaking part) have to learn French from like 5th grade, while the French-speaking can take Dutch as an elective in high school
- and government officials in the capital plain refusing to use Dutch in conversation bc they know Flemish ppl know enough French to get by
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:34 PM
- so, I guess you prob can tell from that that up until like the 1960s or so, French was purely the language of the elite/high society, and Dutch the language of the plebs/farmers
- ofc, Flemish high society could speak Dutch, but amongst themselves they spoke French bc it's a more sophisticated (cough) language
- basically, if you wanted to ever get somewhere in the business world/higher society, you needed to know French
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
- all higher education was also in French, ofc
- and was prohitively expensive
- like how it is in the US today, kinda
- so huge class disparity in education levels, and if you weren't fluent in French, there was simply no way to get higher education
- so most ppl ended school at 12, if that
- then WWI came around, and guess who got to be officers and who common soldiers?
- and guess in what language commands were given?
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:42 PM
- ppl with money got to be officers(v often super incompetent bc they just bought their way out of being a common soldier with no qualifications to speak of)
- while all "plebs" that got recruited got drafted as common soldiers
- and of course the officers wouldn't use Dutch, now would they?
- so all commands were given in French
- leading to hilarious (/sarcam) results
- and thousands of unnecessary deaths
- so ye
- there's a huge classism problem w French vs Dutch in Belgium
- in the current political climate, it is expected of Dutch-speaking politicians to speak French fluently, but we're expected to be super grateful if a French politician utters a few words of very broken Dutch
- DarklyDragon - Yesterday at 11:46 PM
- wtf
- Jero - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
- ok, Dutch is a very hard language to learn for people growing up speaking French or English(bc we have several sounds that just don't exist in those), but still
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