Wallonia in linguistic isolation

The weekly denounces a "linguistic disaster" that characterises the French-speaking community in Belgium. "How can people talk about redressing Wallonia, about technopoles and state of the art technology when most of the population only speaks one language? ... In an increasingly multi-lingual world, 57% of Walloons only speak French, according to a recent study carried out by Victor Ginsburgh (ULB/UCL) and Shlomo Weber (UCL) entitled 'The language dynamic in Belgium'. This is considerably more than the monolingual average among Europeans (44%), according to the 2006 Eurobarometre. Another example: the proportion of Walloons likely to express themselves in English does not exceed 16%. But four out of ten people from Brussels and five out of ten people from the Flanders region are able to. ... Ginsburgh and Weber are convinced that, 'on an international level, Walloons will remain seriously isolated'."

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