Society | Don't Think Too Much.

The Self-Identification of the Other: How Flanders came to be the Name of the Region Today

Harold Tor-Daenens — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 18:58:00 +0000

Today, Flanders refers to the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. But what about the provinces of East and West Flanders? Why is it that the region took on the name of a County that existed on the western end of the country? To any historian, the name ‘Flemish Brabant’ sounds like an oxymoron, because Brabant was […]

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The Art of Saying ‘No’: ‘Naying’ Among the British, the Belgians and the Chinese

Harold Tor-Daenens — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 03:48:00 +0000

Having lived in Belgium for more than a decade, I have come to notice the *Northern Belgians’ penchant for anything British: British TV, British comedians, British humour, British soaps… I guess it comes from the steady diet of BBC television and the often undubbed telecast of BBC programmes on Belgian channels, the country being such […]

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The Search for a Standard National Language: The Case of Flanders

Harold Tor-Daenens — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:28:00 +0000

There has been a lot of talk about the Dutch language in Flanders in the past month. It happened when Dutch linguist Marc van Oostendorp made a sensational claim that, looking at the “growing differences” between the Dutch spoken in Flanders and that spoken in the Netherlands, the Flemish will speak a sort of language […]

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Multiculturalism in European nation-states: an oxymoron?

Harold Tor-Daenens — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:32:00 +0000

Immigration is a big issue in Europe these days. Europeans have to fight between the post-Nazi guilt about racial discrimination and the practical social issues of racial integration. Discourse is divided between the so-called extreme right groups which call for the expulsion of foreigners and the opposite which calls for the free influx of refugees […]

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Why some Chinese have English names?

Harold Tor-Daenens — Thu, 31 May 2012 21:11:00 +0000

China is fast becoming the place in the world to do business, and the only place now in the world where growth figures are still in the positive. Old superpowers such as western Europe can only mire in their EU bureaucracy while the euro sinks further in value. When you switch on the television, there […]

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