IMCDb Forum
Send an answer to a topic: Check In - Belgium
Warning, this subject is old (2912 days without answer)
Subject
Bold [b]Text[/b] Italic [i]Italic[/i] Underline [u]Underline[/u] Strike Out [strike]Strike Out[/strike]
Email [email=nobody@nobody.org]Name[/email] Link [url=http://www.website.com]Text[/url] Anchor [anchor]Name[/anchor] Image [img]http://www.website.com/image.jpg[/img]
Align Left [align=left]Text[/align] Centered [align=center]Text[/align] Align Right [align=right]Text[/align] Text Justify [align=justify]Text[/text]
Color [color=#000000]Text[/color] Highlight [highlight=pascal]Text[/highlight] Widgets Smileys :code: [:code] HTML to BBCode converter Word to BBCode converter
Preview Spell Checker

Copy Paste Cut Select All
Clear Insert Date Insert Time Insert Date and Time Insert your IP
List [list=square][item]BlaBla[/item][/list] Numbered List [list=decimal][item]BlaBla[/item][/list]
Quote [quote=name]Text[/quote] Spoiler [spoiler]James is the murderer![/spoiler]
Uppercase [uppercase]Text[/uppercase] Lowercase [lowercase]Text[/lowercase] l33t [l33t]I'm a Nerd[/l33t] Sub Script [sub]Text[/sub] Super Script [sup]Text[/sup] Size of Text [size=8]Text[/size]

Options
 
 
 
 
chicomarx
That's because people hadn't experienced very much of other cultures.
At the Brussels Expo of '58 you had a Congolese village where the Belgians fed the African kids bananas.
http://www.radio1.be/hautekiet/foto-congolees-dorp-expo-58-gaat-de-wereld-rond

Also in the US. Immigrant policy favoured Northern Europeans and tried to limit the number of Southern Europeans. If it had been more specific they would have said England only.
antp
In the 50s that's the Italians who were the "bad" immigrants here :grin:
chicomarx
Italy is beautiful, you can't say it sucks.
ElSaxo
Sometimes I'm really happy to live in a country that sucks a lot also for immigrants.
Ans
A very interesting discussion going on. I must find out more about this.
chicomarx
Mr. De Wever makes a lot of statements so had to look it up. He called Germany's refugee policy an "epic failure"? That's sad as he used to be a real admirer of Merkel. I hope he's still a fan of London mayor Boris Johnson... Bart De Wever is really the shadow prime minister of Belgium, he has more influence than the actual prime minister.

Which means a big turn to the right, the immigration laws have been tightened, ending import brides and easy family reunification, but that's only in the past 3 years. Before that you had no control either. Antwerp and Molenbeek were run by socialists for too long.
ingo

I see. And indeed the complex structure of Belgium makes things difficult. And I've heard the accusations of "failed state", all coming from obviously perfect countries where everybody lives in harmony, with no unemployment or social tensions.
...


Actually there are a plenty of offended comments in German medias and on German websites about M.Bart de Wever's (Mayor of Antwerpen) statement.

Maybe it's questionable, if he had done his job all the time most properly and faultless - but he isn't totally wrong anyways. But still mainly. The most important reason for the actual problems isn't the handling of the actual refugee-crisis, it's rather the total and epic fail of the whole immigration politics of the last decades in Germany. The conservative/liberal politicians have always said "Germany is no immigration country. So we don't need any immigration laws. The forigners are guestworkers and will go home again" - epic fail. The socialdemocratic/leftwinged and especially green politicians have always said "We want to have a colurful, multicultural Germany. Integration is against the human rights"

So noone did do anything right. Actually noone did do anything.

But since the 1.1.2016 these opinions collapsed. There are some ideologic afterpains, but it seems, the most people do understand now, that the whole German immigration politics since the 50ies was a total disaster.
Gamer
...and I can confirm that it is slang for "mug" (especially when filled with coffee) up here in the north!
ingo

...
More important right now is that in Molenbeek and other towns on the Brussels edge you have descendants of mainly Moroccan guest workers from the 60s and 70s who are still not integrated for various reasons, although they have access to the social security and education system like everyone else, and who are susceptible to radicalization from abroad. Saudi Arabia sponsors radical mosques in Brussels for example.

There were many other groups of immigrants in Belgium, Turkish, Italian, Chinese, who have all integrated, but the Moroccan community for some reason does not, as is also the case in The Netherlands. That's also a country where a public debate is possible, since Theo van Gogh's murder in particular and thanks to people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but not all European countries are at that stage yet.



This is an important (but ignored by the politics and governments over decades :kiki: ) problem in Germany, too. Often with North African guys, but not that much as in francophone countries, also often with Lebanese and Turkish blokes. It's in the very most cases also the second and third generation. Of course we have several specific ethnic mafia-structures, too, but usually they are on their own and people, who didn't belong to their ethnic group, don't see anything about that, but "parallel societies" in its orign meaning is mostly applied to those people from the Maghreb and also Turkey.
But since the New Year 2016 incidents (at least all perpretrotors were Mahgreb-blokes, many with false Syrian refugee-papers) the wind has strongly changed, either by police and secret services but also by the public opinion and the medias.



...
Originally from Germany it seems (I have very distant relative there that made researches)
...


From the Northwest from Germany I think and presumably it may be based on potter/pottery maker. The word "Pott" is originally used in that area in te same meaning as "pot" and (ceramic made) jar.
http://www.dict.cc/?s=pott
antp

The second part is true but the language issue in Brussels is there for good reason, it's really a Flemish city that was lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francization_of_Brussels

Well Brussels is a Brabant city, historically Brabant and Flanders weren't really friends :tongue:
300 years ago it was not French vs Dutch/Flemish areas: the rich/influential people were often speaking French, and the regular people were speaking a lot of different regional languages.
In Belgium they tried to impose the French language to "join" the country. People speaking Romance languages switched more easily to French (those speaking Walloon, Picard, etc.), those speaking Flemish, Brabantian, Limbourgish, etc. didn't. So they later added the Dutch as second official language.
So in a way those currently speaking French are not those who tried to impose French to the others as only language, they are just those which were "converted" to French unlike the others.

Nowadays the city is officially bilingual but in the end there are not many Flemish-speaking people left living in it (a lot come working in it, though) and it seems that often Flemish people do not like the city. A few years ago the Flemish government tried to give money bonus to Flemish who came living to Brussels, but it didn't work that much it seems.

One thing that may have worked better would be to have the whole country bilingual rather than just Brussels area; ironically that was refused by Wallonia years ago, back when the fears were reversed because Wallonia was more powerful.

Also, if schools were bilingual all kids could learn both languages: that's at that age that languages are learned easily. But each community is afraid of losing things to the other, so they keep separated things that shouldn't be.


Perhaps antp's surname is a reminder of that? Not sure. :grin: (I actually haven't heard it elsewhere.)

Originally from Germany it seems (I have very distant relative there that made researches).
My parents met when they were living near Brussels, in Meise (where their parents lived), despite being native French speakers, at that time there were less linguistic problems there...

Often the French-speaking having Dutch-origin names are from when the Wallonia was richer: people moved from the (back then) poor Flanders to the more prosperous regions.
Category:  






Ada
CSS
Cobol
CPP
HTML
Fortran
Java
JavaScript
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Python
SQL
VB
XML
Anon URL
DailyMotion
eBay
Flickr
FLV
Google Video
Metacafe
MP3
SeeqPod
Veoh
Yahoo Video
YouTube
6px
8px
10px
12px
14px
16px
18px
Sign In :: Sign Up :: Lost your login or your password?
KelCommunity.be :: © 2004-2024 Akretio SPRL :: Powered by Kelare