Post 2

Belgium is a small nation in the European Union that has three official languages:  French, Flemish, and German.  Most citizens are required to take at least one language course in another language during their education.  An interesting phenomenon I have discussed with my aunt Karine, a retired professor and veteran of the Belgian education system, is that many citizens opt to take English as their foreign language.  There are stark political divides that have strong linguistic and geographic ties.  The Walloon (Francophone) are more likely to take English instead of Flemish and the Flemants (Flemish speakers) are also more likely to take English than French.  However official documents are always in Flemish, French, or have both listed.  They are rarely in English and German.  This raises the question, what language should Belgian Libraries have their information in?  Should they include all three official languages in their documents, collections, and websites so as not to marginalize a linguistic group or should they have it in English in order to provide a neutral language.  What kind of linguistic chaos would it create to have four languages offered?

Access to computers and the internet are problematic for similar reasons.  What language should the computers be in?  On the subject of usability I witnessed a French speaker, who also knows quite a bit of English, try to access the internet account with great difficulty.  The user had memorized the navigation of the website and learned the new internet jargon in French as the site had been offered in either French or Flemish.  However, without providing a tutorial or any assistance in navigation the website had changed everything to English.  Resulting in the user being completely lost on how to access his bill.  The site wasn’t consistent at all as to which language it utilized, but instead was a hodgepodge of English.  This made it near impossible for even me, an English speaker who knows French and is familiar with websites to navigate the site. 

For this paper I have plans to visit two of Mons’ public libraries and request an interview with one of their librarians to see what kind of factors they consider when making linguistic policy decisions.  The following is demographic data the UNESCO article Towards Knowledge Societies includes about Belgium:

3-5,000 internet users per 10,000 people (32)

10-30 personal computers per 10,000 people (34)

50-70% of households have a radio (35)

75+% of households with a television (36)

UNESCO. (2005). Towards Knowledge Societies. Available from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001418/141843e.pdf