If I may ask, what is the story behind your name? For example, is one of your parents francophone and the other one Dutch? Do you speak both languages natively?

Very few people in Belgium speak both French and Flemish natively. It's one or the other, depending on which side of the language border you live on. In Flanders you have compulsory French classes while in Wallonia you don't have compulsory Flemish classes, but the compulsory classes don't get you anywhere near native proficiency. His last name doesn't sound very Flemish so his ancestors probably moved to Wallonia at least a few generations back. To me it even sounds like a Flemish version of a French name. The parent should correct me if I'm mistaken of course, deducting where someone is from based on their last or first name can be quite tricky in my experience.

Potferdoume! So much interest in Belgium! 216 comments and counting..

Having said that.. In an attempt to get me to learn Flemish, my parents placed me in a Flemish-speaking school. Most Flemish kids spoke decent French. The other way isn’t so true. Too many French-speaking Belgians don’t bother to learn Flemish.

I don't agree. My French is good enough for talking to French canadians ( native dutch).

And even french have trouble understanding the Quebec language.

Some that learned it never use it, so they forget it though. But they don't need it professionally.

Good enough is not even close to native though. He was wondering about native.

Well, he was saying:

> but the compulsory classes don't get you anywhere near native proficiency.

And my proficiency is good enough work related and when I meet people. With no issues.

What more would i need?

That's what I wrote. The original comment received a question "Do you speak both languages natively?". While not aimed at me, I addressed it for the general case. People aren't brought up with both languages and will not have a native understanding of both. 6 years of at most 3 to 5 hours a week of French in high school don't get you to native level. I don't doubt at all that it's sufficient for your needs, but the bar for native is much higher than communicating without issues when dealing with work or meeting people. Even if you were at native level, it still wouldn't mean that this is the general case.

I hope the original poster replies as well, it would be interesting to know if he knows the history behind his last name.

I just said that i don't have any issues while working or meeting people.

If that's the bar, then i reached it. No?

Let me try and rephrase it. Is your command of French as good as your command of Dutch? If yes then you have reached the native level bar, if not then you haven't.

Let me rephrase it.

Being native doesn't matter. Plenty of people here learned English by classes, tv and online while not being a native English speaker and you wouldn't even notice it ( eg. me)

Some are noticable, like people from the netherlands have a certain accent while speaking and you still understand them perfectly.

Here's my point again: A native speaker has no single advantage over a non-native speaker, if they are at a certain level.

You're moving the goal posts, that was not the question.

Just replace English by French in my example, it's the exact same thing but applied to here.

> compulsory classes don't get you anywhere near native proficiency.

It gets you good enough to explain yourself and speaking. You don't need native proficiency.

What you need is to practise it afterwards, if multiple years go by. Even native dutch speakers that went abroad don't speak dutch anymore well by lack of repetition over ( a lot of) years.

PS. My original reply was not on a question. But on the statement quoted above.