Thursday, May 11, 2006

William Lloyd Stearman's May 3 letter on immigration and bilingualism caused me to scratch my head. "Just look at Belgium," he wrote, "for a disturbing example of bilingualism's effect on national unity." As someone who has lived in Belgium and speaks all three of its national languages, I am hard-pressed to know what he means.

Belgium is one of the most stable and prosperous countries in the world. If the different language groups grouse and make jokes about one another, that is no more divisive than the North Dakotan jokes that I as a native Montanan grew up telling.

Belgians will tell you that threats to national unity along language lines came only during the period when one language was considered inferior, when there was no higher education in Flemish and when the national laws were promulgated only in French.

Perhaps that's the "disturbing example" we should look to: the days before Belgium acknowledged itself as a land of many languages.

NICK OLCOTT

Takoma Park