Brickbat: Hello Goodbye

Belgium's Permanent Commission for Linguistic Control upheld a complaint against train conductor Ilyass Alba for using the French word bonjour alongside the Dutch goeiedag in a bilingual greeting on a train in Dutch-speaking Flanders, violating the country's stringent language laws. The incident occurred in 2024 as the train approached Vilvoorde, near Brussels, when a passenger objected to Alba's use of French. In response, the commission ruled that conductors should only use Dutch in Flanders unless a passenger initiates French conversation, but they should use both Dutch and French in bilingual Brussels. Alba received no formal sanction from his employer and has garnered public support; he is now selling mugs with the phrase "Goeiedag, Bonjour," while calling for more flexibility in Belgium's 1966 language regulations.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

...he is now selling mugs with the phrase "Goeiedag, Bonjour"

Triggering Belgium's Permanent Commission for Entrepreneurial Control.

[Chumby]

Perhaps Alba was expecting that Belgians waffle on the strict enforcement of their language laws.

[AT]

Chimay have a point there. Might want to double, or even trippel down on it.

[Incunabulum]

Having flexibility in language laws undermines the justification for having language laws.
.if you can make exceptions, people might start to thing the bureaucrats aren't infallible and start to ask what other regulations can be modified and might even dare think they could do without the regulators altogether.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

Europeans are so uncultured.

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

when a passenger objected to Alba's use of French

We need to be more like Europe.

[Chumby]

Go to Quebec. The woman at La Roi de la Poutine in Sherbrooke spoke fine English but insisted to moi that I only use French.

[Longtobefree]

As I have always said, the scary part of 1984 was Newspeak, not the damn cameras.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Do they need to Press 1 for English?

[LIBtranslator]

The whole point of leaving the Puritans, Whore of Babylon, Inquisition, monarchies, empires and minarets of the Old World was to get away from Eurotrash and their sprach nazis. So now we have speech MAGAts declaring a Government Language. Also, commie Dems regurgitating the 10th edition Newspeak dictionary conceived by Comrade Blair of the Marxist Workers' Unification Party (https://www.orwell.org/dictionary/) The 1971 Nixon looter campaign subsidies law has been exported everywhere to strangle libertarian parties in the crib so they can export this goo to the New World.