The bilingual greeting of a train ticket inspector to a Flemish passenger has sparked a political war of words — and an official complaint — in language-divided Belgium.
The European country’s language watchdog told AFP on Thursday it was investigating after a Dutch-speaking commuter protested a conductor’s use of “bonjour”, French for “good morning”, to welcome him on board.
The incident took place in October on a rush-hour train from Mechelen, in Flanders, to the nearby capital, Brussels.
Writing on Facebook, Ilyass Alba, the French-speaking conductor, said that on the day in question he greeted passengers entering his carriage with a resounding “goeiemorgen, bonjour”.
The use of both the Dutch and French greetings wasn’t good enough for a Dutch-speaking passenger who told him off saying: “We’re not in Brussels yet, you have to use Dutch only!”.
The passenger was technically right, as under Belgium’s complex language rules conductors should in theory use both languages only in Brussels and a few other bilingual regions.
“The file is under review,” the Permanent Commission for Linguistic Control said, adding it would ask national railway operator SNCB for more information on its enforcement of language policies.
The affair has caused a stir in the country, where politics largely follow a linguistic divide pitting northern Dutch-speakers against French-speaking southerners.
Transport Minister Georges Gilkinet, a French-speaking environmentalist came to Alba’s defence, saying that in a small country such as Belgium, regional borders are crossed all the time.
SNCB conductors should prioritise giving “a quality welcome” and ensuring all passengers are “properly and fully informed”, Gilkinet said after being quizzed in parliament over the issue.
“Using several languages to say hello does not shock me,” he said.
Some Dutch-speaking politicians disagreed.
“We can’t just throw our language legislation overboard like that,” said Sammy Mahdi, head of the CD&V, a party of Flemish Christian democrats.
SNCB for its part called for “more flexibility” in applying language rules.
“Saying hello in several languages is just nice, we can only thank our conductors for that,” a spokesperson told AFP.