[gield]

This is a real pain in the ass in Belgium. Many websites assume I speak French while my native language is Dutch. Some websites only offer a French version of their Belgian storefront, even though Dutch accounts for ~60% of Belgians. I can't imagine what it's like for German-speaking Belgians.

This is not only an issue on websites but also on apps. For example, the Books and Podcasts apps on iOS show me both Dutch-speaking and French-speaking titles. I tried to raise this issue back when I worked at Apple but they only have 1 storefront per country and didn't feel like changing it.

[roelschroeven]

This drives me nuts.

Once upon a time French was used even in the Dutch speaking parts, in government, economy, high society. That was long before the internet got popular though. We've had a long fight to get rid of French in Flanders. Dutch is the only official language in Flanders, and it's the language people speak (except expats, or migrants who haven't learned the language yet).

So when companies still assume Belgium == French, it's not only wrong, but it comes across as very condescending. It feels like they haven't outgrown the times where Dutch was suppressed in favor of French.

And why? If a company wants to use only one language for the whole country, it's better of choosing Dutch (as we indeed account for about 60% of the population). Many of those companies do have a perfectly good Dutch translation, which they use for their site when viewed from the Netherlands. Even if they don't, I much prefer English over French.

[Orygin]

You'll be glad to hear (I guess) that the pain is shared by french speaking Belgians.

It happens all the god damn time that the websites render in Dutch (or I guess Flemish) instead of the set Accept Language I have (EN then FR). Google is regularly showing me results in Dutch, most online stores default to Dutch even if they have English and French versions available.

Just imagine, all the websites that correctly (for you) display in Dutch, are websites that we have to change to French. I would guess there are more Dutch-defaulting websites than French ones, but I can't know for sure.

Btw, our neighbor is huge and french speaking too, so I'm not surprised companies coming from there favor French on their site. The same way that NL companies operate in Flanders but less so in Wallonia have their default to Dutch.

Also I'd argue that companies operating in Belgium should default to asking the language instead of guessing, otherwise you'll always anger half of the population.

[roelschroeven]

Glad to hear how the other side of the country experiences things -- that happens not nearly enough, we (and our media) tend to focus too much on our part of the country (in my opinion).

Not glad to hear you have the same problems (only different).

I wasn't really talking about French companies though; I've seen it with large American or Korean companies. I'm gonna say companies like Nvidia or Samsung; I'm not sure about these two exactly, but I've certainly seen it with companies of that caliber.

[Guillaume86]

It's exactly the same problem on lots of websites if you're a french speaking belgian don't worry, you just don't notice it in that case.

[gield]

Oh yes, I'm sure it's the same for French-speaking Belgians! And probably 100 times worse for German-speaking Belgians.