What language is spoken in Belgium?

Officially, Belgium has not only one official language but three: Dutch, French and German.

These are the languages of the neighbor countries Holland, France and Germany. In the areas of Belgium near the border to the Netherlands, mainly it is spoken Dutch. The same applies to the border areas to France and Germany. In Brussels, the capital of Belgium, both, Dutch and French are spoken. The remaining parts of Belgium are divided into language areas providing different rules for the language usage. These are, for example, regulations which language has to be used for public notices. In the border areas of the language areas, there are also often regulations that multiple languages must be used. The result is that you can find multilingual road signs there, for example. In the regions where only Dutch or only French is spoken, only one language is sufficient.

Most Belgians, by the way, have Dutch as their mother tongue (about 60%). The majority of the other Belgians are French native speakers (about 40%). The German proportion, on the other hand, is only a small minority (less than 1%).

Historically, Belgium initially introduced only French as an official language at the time of its independence in 1830. In 1873, Dutch was added as a second official language. After the First World War and after the Treaty of Versailles, some parts of Germany were joined to Belgium, and since then, German has become the third official language.
2017-09-29 at 21:20