It's probably down to demographics more than anything. I didn't even know Luxembourg HAD its own language, and remember my German teacher mentioning something called "Switzerdeutsch" that (IIRC) is some sort of composite of French and German. If you can guarantee an audience of 50 million plus, the media will naturally pursue that market any way they can, but they have less incentive to chase, say, 10 million Belgians IN Belgian, particularly when they can reach practically that entire audience with French, German and/or English programming anyway.
... did you just use the word "Belgian" as referring to a language? I'm amused more than offended, but that is a fairly huge gaffe.
If I misunderstood you, I do apologize. In case you did mean that, I guess I'll have to give you a very short synopsis of the Belgian linguistic situation: the northern half of the country (Flanders), with the majority of the population, speaks Dutch, while the southern half (Wallonia) speaks French. In Brussels (surrounded by the Dutch-speaking territory but independent of it, and very close to the French-speaking territory anyway), the primary language is French, but the territory is officially bilingual. And then we have a tiny (about 70k) German-speaking minority in the east. There's a reason why I mentioned "Flanders" and not "Belgium" when talking about regions that speak good English; the Walloons have the dubious distinction of being the only Western-European nation to threaten the French claim to the position of "worst foreign language speakers" (not in the least because more Walloons watch French television than Belgian television...).
As for Luxembourgian and Swiss German, both are arguably dialects of German, which, as the old adage goes, are treated as languages just because they have an army (on second thought, Luxembourg doesn't have an army... but you get the point). I don't think describing Swiss German as "a mixture of French and German" makes much sense, though. It's just a German dialect that is notorious for being unintelligible for most Germans and for having a strange predilection for cute-sounding words.
The linguistic situation in Luxembourg is endlessly fascinating and rather complicated - unlike most multilingual countries, it's not so much a matter of various groups of people who each speak a different country, as it is a matter of one group of people who speak different languages (French, German and Luxembourgian) depending on what the context and subject is (to some extent, anyway; obviously most of them still have one native language that they speak better than the other two).
I'll simply have to redouble my efforts; in the common months my most commonly used phrase will probably be "Kan du snakker langsommere, vær så snill?" *sigh* I guess I'll stick with English for official business where full comprehension is important (e.g. visas ) and try to make myself use Norwegian the rest of the time.
) and try to make myself use Norwegian the rest of the time.*nods* Good plan.
Help out these researchers: test your English vocabulary
- 21/08/2011 03:07:24 PM
675 Views
When I first read that I thought you meant "nitty-gritty" was one of the words they checked.
- 21/08/2011 03:26:28 PM
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- 21/08/2011 03:26:28 PM
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Perhpas I misunderstood the instructions, because it told me my vocabulary is 1680 words. *NM*
- 21/08/2011 04:03:19 PM
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I tried to be very conservative
- 21/08/2011 04:55:08 PM
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That was my thought as well
- 21/08/2011 06:24:06 PM
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Indeed. If you read their explanation, however, there's a decent reason for that.
- 21/08/2011 06:27:34 PM
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I got 35700, but I was perhaps too generous in ticking boxes.
- 21/08/2011 07:49:24 PM
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The wife had the same reaction to "lots", "somewhat" and "not much".
- 21/08/2011 10:15:05 PM
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Yeah, she would.
- 21/08/2011 10:54:20 PM
422 Views
That makes sense.
- 22/08/2011 03:49:18 PM
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I'm going to hope I misinterpreted that, but...
- 22/08/2011 07:24:04 PM
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Neat link, It seems I'm around 25600. Made me want to get my dictinary out... *NM*
- 22/08/2011 03:43:24 PM
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Low- 22,800. *NM*
I like the rice one from years ago. Still, I so kicked ass that I won't post...
- 23/08/2011 04:57:58 AM
395 Views
37000... It's interesting how it makes you remember how you know some of the harder words
- 23/08/2011 12:16:17 PM
380 Views