Answer

According to Vermeylen, parliamentary action and language legislation were insufficient in order to make public life in Flanders Dutch. Not only was there growing resistance on the part of the Belgian Establishment (the King, the political elite, higher clergy,…) – which involved obstruction of new bills and sabotage of existing language legislation – but what also needed to be broken was the passiveness of the ordinary Fleming. Flemings themselves needed to be convinced of the importance and necessity of language legislation. All too often Flemings still lacked respect for their own language and culture. Dutch or, to use Vermeylen´s word, Flemish continued to be a language with a limited socio-cultural prestige in Belgium. Particularly in Brussels, Flemish continued to be labelled as an inferior language and a poor man´s language; in the capital the process of Frenchification was proceeding unabated. The last extract of Vermeylen´s article is interesting in that it shows us that there were plenty of Flemings who did not particularly approve of Dutch-language education.

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