Hugh Laurie on Belgians 

Eden Zak same here (belgian too)

+Eden Zak I think being able to laugh at yourself shows some kind of maturity and humbleness. Moreover, how can you criticize someone that is already making fun of himself? Love belgian surrealism & f*** nationalism

zelfspot moet kunnen

No, it's because their dumb, and traitors to the Dutch Empire.

they're :)

And usually we speak and understand English well enough to understand an American or British show without subtitles.

Or they're simply made in Flanders! :D

I believe it actually works the other way around ; you're able to read, listen and watch in multiple languages because if you want to watch a show/movie or just the TV, you're going to have to listen to it in English since there are so few movies dubbed in Dutch. On the other hand, French is a more popular language, and almost every movies are dubbed in French, so french speaking people don't bother. There's a reason why French are so bad at speaking English.

Actually, these days the ability is there to dub everything without much delay or issue, a lot of kids shows are dubbed. Mature audiences however prefer subs, it both aids in learning and maintaining languages and preserves the integrity of the media you are watching. Everyone knows about how horrible French, German, Russian and other dubs are and we prefer the originals.

Silke De Coninck jep also its because we know that half of the actors performance, lies within the intonation and the sound of his or her voice.

True story

Anna P. And we can handle it when people make fun of us

That's really funny you should say that, because Belgians think Dutch people are dumb, greedy loud and obnoxious. It's the other way around here :D

+Red Oh but the loud (obnoxious, agressive, assertive, extraverted) and rude part is defineately true. I'm just saying the slow/timid/vague/naive/(dumb) stereotypes are usually reserved for the Belgians.

My father here in Flanders when selling a swimming pool has to talk about how to keep it clean and obviously there are many options. One of them he's very much against but he still has to bring it up so the people have the choice. It's using salt. He always sais it comes from the Netherlands because it was cheaper.

yeah but i never judge a people on their idiots, everyone has their idiots.

+lebell79 less nationalism always makes people nicer to outsiders^^ (brusselaar hier)

lol, no i really am dutch.

Belgians and Dutch people are very different and can definitely learn from each other. I am Belgian, and I love learning to be more open and honest from my Dutch friends. :-)

ok and in return we will keep philip geubbels. :P

sabari nath Hey! India is Pretty Nice too. You used to be struggling, you still are a bit But You’re are slowly climbing up and up.

As a Belgian that left.... More like fled the country, thats not how i remember it, but if i may ask in which years were you stationed in germany?

@@mutimateco I doubt a person who spent maybe ten days there as a tourist like myself has a very realistic impression, I defer to your experience of course. I was there in the mid-eighties.

Maaaaaaaaaan

Like the Swiss! Huh!

Well said!!

Thank you !

My pleasure friend! I'm sipping on a beer out of the Westmalle glass I brought home with me right now. I've already made plans to visit next Spring. I'm almost out of chocolate, I must return!!

thank you for that kind of positivity! A lot of people are being quite rude or jealous, who knows. Just reminds me of insecure, unhappy, jealous bullies. People should be kinder to each other so kudos! :)

I’ll just be right here

You are welcome here ;)

Yup that's us Belgians

How nice that you remember me! :)

I know this is late but Brussels isn't worth it, Manneken Pis is tiny, and the waffles with giant piles of toppings that they sell in the streets adjacent to Manneken Pis and the Grand Place are tourist waffles. We Belgians eat waffles with fresh fruit OR hot cherries OR just a bit of powdered sugar and maybe a splash of whipped cream. Bruges is great for cuberdons and overpriced chocolate, and the historical center is pretty in that medieval way, but if I had to recommend cities to visit I'd go for Mechelen, Antwerp, Ghent and Leuven. Bonus for Antwerp and Mechelen: when you land in Brussels, you take a train, half an hour to get to Mechelen, another half hour to get to Antwerp - the two of them lie in a straight line. Take no more than a day for Mechelen, it's not that big but it's cozy and has the same medieval charm as Bruges. It also, just like Bruges, has a beer factory where you can get a tour. Ghent is my personal favorite and has a lot to see. Leuven has the most ostentatious town hall I've ever seen basically because its main purpose was to be more ostentatious than the Brussels one, and good food at student prices.

I dunno if still off use butwe throw around the stereotypes because we don't have enough space left to store all the waffles and beer in! so we need tourists to come and try them!

cosmopolitan, you mean the cocktail? jk, we're very multiracial indeed, after being stepped on by the germans twice, we know how to act nice (we're also a neutral country)

True! ;)

@@doeme80 We... don't?

??? I sincerely cannot understand you... I'd never 'sod anyone off' becvause he speaks his mind out... it's tastes, lad... I just can't get all this anger...

I adore Belgium, but I also adore flat lands, I have to be honest, I'm partial on this. I also love the rain, which is not very 'Scottish'... You know, once you have to bump into mountains... mountains... mountains... lakes... lakes... roundabouts... mountains again... and so on, well, you DO need open spaces. I'm from the Lowlands, Ayr, right on the west-coast seafront, and I always have a wee walk by the seaside (we don't have beaches though), and I love staring at the sea... it's my own open space... and mind you, I'm not a highlander, I don't live in any valley or whatever sounds 'so Scottish'... The people? Many believe that the Belgians are dull. My point of view is totally different. First of all, there's Flemish and there's Walloons and then there's also Brusselaars... the three of them make the Belgians. No, you're not dull at all: you've been raped by the ones around you, you suffered bombings and sorts, and these populations around you often feel they have some right to speak over you. I hate this thing. I hate French snobbery. I hate German ruling, I hate Dutch rudeness and let me tell you: I hate English (not much British) colonialism. Now we'll have Brexit, probably, and this is all the English's fault... they're voting us Scots and Welsh OUT, and the Welsh seem to follow, thus they're calling themselves out of Britain right now... we Scots will probably do the same soon, and I don't like that, I'm a unionist. But it's all the English's fault, they do think they rule Britain and want everyone else out. They've come to Belgium along with the Yanks to 'defend you', yet they put their amount of raping as well... The Belgians 'gained' some sort of self-deprecation tendency out of that, but if you set this aside, you'll find you're 100 times more human and sincere compared to them. That's why the Scots love you. We're proud, aye, but we also prefer human bonds to any sort of pseudo-superiority. I used to like the Dutch once, then I found out how really rude and greedy they tend to be. And some of them also spoke badly of you Belgians. Maybe not as badly as the French do, but they did. And I couldn't understand that. You're an honest people, you're hard workers, but you also have a deep sense of beauty, art, you have good taste, you RESPECT other people and never try and mock them. You may have a wee bit of a problem with racism in Flanders, and down south people might be clinging to Belgium in order not to fall into drama once they might be left alone, but all this compared to the rest of Europe is GOLD. The Scandinavians also tend to be very respectful, but I've never really understood whether they simply pretend or they're true. You're true indeed, instead.

Well as a Belgian, thank you for your kind words :)

And this is what makes me happy, because I can feel 'the people' in you, and mind you: I'm a Scottish unionist, so I believe there's a people behind us Scots as well as behind us Brits... I always feel you're all Belgians, no matter if you're Flemish or Walloon, though a language barrier can be hard to break. Thanks, Annelien. ;-)

Looks like days on acid was working great for you :) Thanks a lot though: this cheered me up, made me even want to make some more trips throughout Belgium. Coming from a Belgian who likes to laugh with Belgium and is kind of used to being laughed about because of Belgium. ;)

@Rico Ten Uh ? You claim to have seen every single tv intervention of Stephen Fry ? Or did you criticize without properly reading what I said 4 years ago.

@Rico Ten Precisely ! I didn't say "interview", you did !

Yep, n Mechelse herder. K heb nog nooit gehoord van n Engelse herder hahaha

mine too! And rather complex also 🥰

I've seen the show in english and translated, the problem isn't the wordy part but the heavy play on words and jokes. Most of them can't be translated at all or they just don't make sense. A lot of references to well known US people from the present or the past are also a hell to translate. Just imagine any dialogue mentioning US politicians or (just an example) Shirley Temple .. we don't even know these people !

We weren't mocked. We may be little, but our products are worldknown!!!

***** Yes, but ask any 20-30 years old of today in Belgium, they might have no idea.

I was still smiling ^^

Wifi Bee I'm 18 and I know though xd

So true! ( I'm also from belgium btw ;D )

ThePrayerx no we don't

Dirk Paulussen I'm English and Dutch. I like Belgians right back. Us Europeans like to make fun of each other but let us not forget our similarities.

Or they would have sued him :)

some americans, most just wouldn't care, I think that is more a larger population so also larger buthurt population thing

Sadly, the Dutch only do it for childrens programs nowadays. We used to not do that. But series like House we don't translate.

You thought that in The Netherlands we dub adult shows? Thank God that doesn't happen, it's bad enough they do it for kid shows! Everything else just gets subtitled, as it should be!

Actually, there is a lot of french dubbed that are made in belgium because the studios and the actors are cheaper ^^

Yeah, if he does that, I'll give him permission to insult the Netherlands as well, just for an extra episode.

It's been 2 years Laurie, where's that episode?

Yep, bring lord Percy back hahaha

@@Widdekuu91 And France too. And bring back Not The Nine O'clock News too.

Ah the good old sentence: "We leven in een apenland"

It's right that we don't dub (only for the children we do), but we do use subtitels :)

Come to the south part of the country if you want to meet the joyfull and warm people :)

if you think belgians aren't warm and joyfull, you haven't met the right people yet, bc they're there, on either side of the country

Well, I actually live close to the Callebaut chocolate factory and sometimes the smell is so intense it feels like you're actually inhaling chocolate.

Els Verwilgen I WANNA GO THERE

@@Leiake2604 Here we smell the chocolate factore of Herentals when the wind is in the right direction.. It smells oddly well. Not to pure.

The Dutch have weed, we have chocolate.

Yeah we're also in every 'top 10 most boring countries' list, and make it to higher than 9 though...

+Elias hahahaha true :')

Yeah have you seen British football players speak? Harry Kane, raheem Stirling et al. They sound so thick

+a1b2c3e4 one of Homer Simpson best quotes :)

Indeed. And that's why Hugh didn't need a translator or subtitles when he was a guest in Belgium. It's a good way to learn the language.

most*

XD no, i smell like fries

Some bears smell like Belgians. What?

Grins while drinking a beer :D We get high on our own supply :p

I love the smell of Fish and Chips, the taste even more so!

that made me laugh so f*cking hard

Don't take it too seriously.

CGSU Belgium amerika staat boven belgie, en belgie staat gedoemd te mislukken. Hoe sneller je dat aanvaard en je inbind met de Nederlandstalige kant des te beter je leven wordt... Spijtig dat ik zoveel zielige mensen rondom mij zie en elke dag medelijden krijg met iedereen in Vlaanderen. Ik word niet goed van mensen zoals jij die Belgie proberen goed te praten terwijl het indruist tegen alle redelijkheid.

Anthony G zeker nen ollander

Anthony G ja sws nen ollander, wtFUCK bedoel je met Amerika staat boven België, ze werken samen in zowel alles wat leger betreft + de Belgische geschiedenis is veeeeeel beter en mooier dan die van de Amerikanen. Julius caesar zij dat het Belgische volk de sterkste en dapperste volk was dat hij ooit tegen gevochten had. Ik ik weet niet wat je bedoeld met mislukkingen België is toch een rijk en goed land om in te leven !

Anthony G Nederland heeft natte dromen dat het rijke Vlaanderen ooit terug gaat aanhechten aan Nederland. Zodat ze ons terug kunnen leegzuigen dit is een van de redenen waarom we met de Walen gevochten hebben tegen jullie en oja ook gewonnen hebben. Vlaanderen heeft twee keuzes alleen voort gaan of lekker gezellig samen blijven met de Walen. Want Nederland is geen optie !

I wouldn't be so sure of the French 'fluency' skills of many Flemish youngsters these days... The smartest ones, yes of course... But it all depends on the walk of life and place of living.. Ranging from basic conversations to doing politics in both languages at the federal level. Also, many have a functional but sub-optimal French (e.g. as reported by a native Francopohone about other common friends' French skills): a) great accent, but weird sense of grammar ; or b) strong West-Vlaams accent, good spoken French and vocabulary, but spelling is an absolute disaster while texting, etc. As we know, having a perfect French is super time-consuming endeavour. And nowadays young people invest more time in absorbing most of the international material in English. And the Francophones in Belgium are surely lagging behind in the Nederlands deparment. So it's all a bit relative and very different... Like ALL of Belgium to be honest. So different from place to place.