What should you never say to a Belgian person ?

Mathias Rymenans

 · 

Follow

5y

Related

What should you never say to a Belgian person?

to keep it simple here is a list of thing you should’nt say.

• say that they are dutch, french or german. Belgium has 3 official languages that flemish (dutch dialect) welsh (french dialect) and German. saying to a flemish guy that they are dutch or assuming that they are french is like saying to a U.S. citizen that they are canadian or english . not the most offensive thing to say but some people may give you a weird look.
• that fries are french fries. also not really an offensive thing to say but it can result minor discussions.
• say that some holliday’s or festivals are racist or offensive. This is an big nono. for example the children holliday sinterklaas or saint nick has an helper called zwarte piet or black pete . or just like Aalst carnaval before your saying that it is offensive , yes it looks offensive at first but you must also understand that belgian humour is mocking humour, they like to mock with everything and everyone even with themselves so if you see things that you dislike or something then please never take stuff too serious and take everything with a pinch of salt. it is has an cultural/historical meaning behind it and you should learn the idea behind it and the history of it to understand why belgians have such kind of festivals.
• talk about how king leopold II enslave the congo. yes we know …. we had slaves and yes we did torture people but most belgians today really do not care about the past ….. do not get me wrong we still know what we did but we too were enslaved multiple times in history …. but noone bats an eye because it is something we do not care , history is history and we are living now and discussing an fingerpointing abouth stuff that happend 100 years ago it wont help you your friend or anyone.
• politics PC LGBT migration. this is also not good thing to talk about. Most belgians don’t like to talk about politics PC ect ….. because they really don’t care or it can give very heated discussions .
• i hope this gave you a small summary of things you never should say or talk about . and if you really want to know more… my advice is to deepen yourself in this culture and understand the why and how in this culture.