Today is _International Talk Like a Pirate Day_ , which is no fun whatsoever in “a city”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol where all the locals talk like pirates all year round. The most likely outcome if any outsider tried to speak like a pirate would therefore be a smack in the mouth from an offended resident. But all is not lost, here’s a helpful guide to “talking like a German pirate”:http://www.talklikeapirate.com/howtogerman.html .
Finally, here is the promised post on Belgium – delayed not only by personal circumstances, but even more by the time it took me to talk to a dozen of people more knowledge on the Belgian situation. Writing this post made it very clear that one should never trust one single source when he or she is talking about Belgium – chances are very high that only a partial (and thereby biased) analysis is offered. So I talked to people from both sides of the language border, spent hours on websites from both Flemish and French Belgian newspapers and other media, and tested my draft ideas on Belgians from all persuasions.
Below the fold my list of the main ingredients of the Belgian cocktail (warning: very long post!). [click to continue…]