French vs Flemish

I live on the Rue du Lac. I also live on Meer Straat. This is the inelegant consequence of Belgium’s language divide.

Every street in Brussels has two names. For example, Brussels’ most famous tourist centre will be signposted as both the Grand Place and also the Grote Markt.
It is confusing and looks messy. These are just two of my opinions on a schism which has fractured Belgian society since the state was founded in the 1830s. Now I’m going to roll up my trouser legs and wade knee deep into this sensitive historical problem.

Belgium only has a population of around 10 million people. More than half of these are the northern barbarians from Flanders who speak the musical gobbledegook called Flemish. There are 3.5 million French speakers in fair Wallonia. In the east there’s a small German speaking enclave, but let’s pretend they don’t exist - it’s complicated enough as it is.

Flemish is very similar to Dutch, with a few words loaned from French. Like Dutch, it has a very Anglo Saxon sound. It's not as harsh as German but is also less interesting and poetic.

In the 1830s - with the foundation of an independent Belgian state - the new nation's rulers were the upper and middle-class Francophones from Wallonia. French was the language of power and money. Wallonia was rich in coal and steel whereas the Flemish speaking area was an agricultural backwater, populated by malarial hicks.

However, after World War II things looked very different. The outdated coal and steel mines were no longer profitable and Wallonia went the way of Sheffield or the English coal-mining Midlands. Flanders on the other hand was booming and demanding parity - both linguistically and culturally.

In 1962 a line was drawn through the centre of Belgium called the Language Frontier, in a bid to ease the tensions. It was a linguistic Berlin wall with Brussels in the centre as Checkpoint Charlie. It didn’t work and 20 years later a more far-reaching policy carved the country into three distinct regions - each with authority over its own economic, cultural and political development. 

Brussels - the country's capital - must tow the party line. It's a bilingual city in theory... although you're more likely to hear English spoken than Flemish.
Often the language question spills over into nationalist, far-right politics. For example, there’s a Flemish party called Vlaams Belang who argue for the independence of Flanders. They believe the country is paralysed by disunity between the Flemings and the Walloons.

So where does all of this leave me? Well apart from having two street names, I’m high and dry. A few other observations. Flemings are more likely to speak English than French and would prefer to do so. I also think the Flemings speak better English than the Walloons... but then if my first language was Flemish I’d be more inclined to learn something else. Est-ce compris?