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When it comes to the Eurovision Song Contest, only Sandra Kim, a woman from Liège, won the competition in the 80s and was actually too young to compete so that she had to lie on her age. No artist won since then, but Urban Trad went to the second place in 2003 by singing in... an imaginary language! The band was pretty "Belgian" in that it was a collection of folk artists from both Flemish and French-speaking communities (and a Galician singer). What better way to make everyone agree on a song than singing their songs "Sanomi" in a language that has actually no meaning (!) Apparently, the gestures invented for the song were meaningful (I think they meant something like "it's a small world, let's all share our differences"). Later on, Flemish folk band Ishtar tried to do the same thing with "O Julissi" but didn't get a nice score.
Urban Trad - "Sanomi"
Another interesting fact about Belgium is that it has a small territory which could have be the only place in which international auxiliary language Esperanto would have been official. Moresnet, as it is called, was a village connecting the Netherlands, Belgium (which was included in the Netherlands) and Germany (former Prussia) from 1816 to 1920, in what is now known as the "Three Country Point". An agreement was made on that Prussia would get a part of the village, the Netherlands another one and the center would become a "neutral" territory (Neutral Moresnet) administrated by both countries. In 1908, Dr. Molly gave the idea to make Esperanto the official language of the territory (that he wanted to call "Amikejo", which could be translated as "Friendland"), because it had been invented recently and got famous in whole Europe at that time. People in that place learned Esperanto and the place was elected world capital of the Esperanto community, although this idea never got official. Today, the territory is part of Belgium.
Moresnet flag
The author of comic book Tintin, Hergé, imagined two fictive Eastern European nations in conflict: Borduria and Syldavia. To make them look more realistic, he made up words in languages called Bordurian and Syldavian. On closer scrutiny of the latter language, it is clearly inspired of Marols (also called Brusseleer), a dialect spoken in Brussels, but the author chose to make them look like a Slavic language (e.g. Eih bennek, eih blavek, the national motto, seems to be close to Dutch Hier ben ik, hier blijf ik, lit. "Here I am, here I stay"). In a parallel universe, Marols could be the perfect interlanguage of Belgium, because it has features of both languages of the community. It is actually based on Brabant dialect (which seems to become a prestige form in Flanders nowadays) and includes many French words, due to the "mixed" origins of the population that used it in Marollen, a district of Brussels that is worth a visit! People in this area like to call themselves "zinneke", a word that means "mixed-breed", and compare their culture to a melting pot.
A last idea of made up language that could be used in Belgium is called Europanto. It is a mixture of languages of the European Union that was invented by Diego Marani, a translator for the Council. His idea was that instead of using English as a lingua franca in the UE (especially in Brussels headquarters), you should rather use bits and pieces of all languages spoken in there. He called his language Euro- (Europe) -panto (Greek for "all"), which resembles the word Esperanto.
Alors glaubst ti that Europa sarebbe besser así? (So do you believe that Europe would be better this way?)
Which language should be used in Belgium? Share your opinion!
