Do you think Belgium’s language split makes the country more interesting or does it hold them back? Especially curious to hear from Belgians.

Fab report. Fun fact, the Belgian football team speak to each other in English so as not to create division.

Small trivia: the Dutch speaking area continued with the Roman road into France, but there too, France has been pushing their language on French Flanders, basically making the Dutch dialect gone nearly exinct.

I feel obligated to point out that the reason Flanders and Walloonia vote for their own parties is because we literally have to. Flemish parties don't appear on Walloon ballots and vice-versa. That's why both regions have their own version of parties.

Edit: Don't argue with me about this. Only the cantons along the border might get region-agnostic ballots. But I fucking promise you no Walloon parties were on my Antwerp ballots last year.

7:10 You miss one important nuance: most of the Walloons at the time didn't speak French either. They spoke Walloon, which, though related to French, is a distinct language. This means it would be difficult for a Walloon peasant to understand in court (7:40). The same goes for WW1 trenches: orders were given in French, which most Walloon soldiers from the countryside did not master. French only became the main language in Wallonia from the 1960s, when it was banned in schools in 1952, effectively putting a death sentence on the Walloon language.

Small detail but "Lekker weer, hè?" is the most Netherlandic Dutch way of phrasing that you could've chosen. To a Flemish person that would sound like "Delicious weather, ey?" They might say "Schoon weer" (Flemish or tussentaal) or "Mooi weer," (standard Dutch) using lekker as a descriptive word for anything that's not edible is a very Northern Dutch thing.

You say "the flemish people vote for flemish parties" and the other way around like that's some kind of proof of anything, but it's not possible to vote on parties that are not on the provincial voting list, which are split per region.

Fun fact, when they moved the Université Catholique de Louvain, they created a whole new town and called it Louvain la Neuve, ie the new Leuven.

Nice video, but I think it could've been nice to mention that French wasn't the language of Wallonia. Peasents spoke Wallon while the elits spoke French. But since French and Waloon are both romance languages, Walloon speakers switched to French cause their language was regarded as a low prestige dialect. This also happened in Switzerland with Arpitan

Might be small detail but the German speaking East-Cantons are not considered a region but a community. Both of which have a distinct meaning when talking about Belgium. There are three regions (Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia) and three communities (Dutch-speaking, French-speaking and German-speaking), all of which have their own parliaments and jurisdictions.

The thing about Flanders voting for Flemish parties and the Walloons voting for Walloon parties is because you CANNOT vote for the parties of the other region as they are simply not on the ballot. In Belgium, you can only vote for politicians who are from the same province as you.

As a belgian : Way too simplistic.

If you feel like you understood belgian politics, it means you got it all wrong anyway.

12:15 there is a missed joke there: "You start speaking a li(t)lle French"

A biographist of René Magritte, painter and Wallonian, remarked in his text that it was no wonder that one of the most prominent surrealists ever grew up in Belgium: the country itself was surreal :) Good point :D

You seem to imply that the divide during the dutch revolt, is language based, but it was a religion based divide (it did not match language borders, south neederlands - Generality Lands - for example were dutch speaking catholic conquered territories). In mediaval times nobody cared about language issues.
The borders of Flanders were not language based either. Brussels or Antwerpen was not part of Flanders, but the common people spoke flemish.  
It is an interesting overview, but one should not rewrite history based on post french revolution nationalist ideas.
The language question in Belgium started to matter at the end of the 18th century, before it was not a thing. The low countries had their own identity (like northern Italy), and the catholic - reformed conflict was the dividing line (not the road).

1:30 Julius Caesar didn’t speak ‘fancy Julius Caesar Latin’. He didn’t even write in it - which is why people start with his Gallic Wars in Latin class. It was pedestrian, not like Virgil’s or Ovid’s. Though yes it was still the Classical Latin period, and the Vulgar Latin of the late empire diverged a lot more. But a lot of the famous changes of Late Latin that laid the foundation for Romance hadn’t taken root even at the Vulgar Latin level yet.

As a Belgian: You did a great job of mapping out our little surreal country. New sub.

....and, you're driving South from Brussels towards France, and you keep seeing "Rijsel" popping up on road signs. You pull out your Michelin map (if you're an old fart) or your Google map. Where the hell is "Rijsel", seemingly in Wallonia, or even in France considering the distances given? Then, finally, you run into a bilingual sign: "Rijsel/Lille"...

Er zitten toch wat geschiedkundige fouten in deze uitleg.
Toen de Romeinen hier arriveerden werd hier geen Nederlands noch Frans gesproken.
De oude Belgen, zoals ze wel eens genoemd worden, waren Galliërs en spraken vermoedelijk een soort Keltisch.
De streek moet toen zeer dun bevolkt geweest zijn en het zijn pas de Franken (een Germaanse stam) die met hun komst ook hun Germaanse taal in de regio vestigden.
Ze trokken ook verder door naar het zuiden, maar werden daar geconfronteerd met Galliërs, Kelten dus, die al heel sterk geromaniseerd waren door de Romeinse invloed.
In de zuidelijke regio's heerste dus een omgangstaal die sterk afweek van het Germaans wat de Franken spraken.
Uit die tijd zijn echter weinig geschreven documenten van de gesproken talen terug te vinden, maar men gaat ervan uit dat Clovis (rond het jaar 500) beide talen min of meer beheerste, het oorspronkelijke Germaans der Franken en het sterk geromaniseerde Keltisch uit het zuiden, wat ook gesteund werd door het feit dat de geschreven omgangstaal taal meestal, ook in de kerk, Latijns was.
Het rijk der Franken, werd uiteindelijk "Frankrijk" genoemd en toen men voor een officiële taal moest kiezen werd men geconfronteerd met het feit dat ook de Zuidelijke Franken zich hadden aangepast en ook sterk geromaniseerd waren.
Uiteindelijk werd de officiële Franse taal gecreëerd, die zoals elke officiële taal een kunstmatige constructie is gebaseerd op een gulden middenweg van verschillende dialecten, waarbij het Frans zich voornamelijk richtte op wat er in het zogenoemde "Île-de-France" werd gesproken.
In de noordelijke regio's van het huidige België was er van Romeinse invloeden blijkbaar weinig te merken en spraken de mensen gewoon hun gangbare (Germaans/Frankische) dialecten.
Tijdens de middeleeuwen ontstond er bij handeldrijvende mensen toch een noodzaak om tot een min of meer gelijkvormig taalgebruik te komen in geschreven teksten, want iedereen schreef zomaar zoals hij/zij sprak zonder afgesproken regels.
Die eerste initiatieven kwamen vanuit Vlaanderen, waar er heel wat handel was en werd verder doorgezet in de Noordelijke Provincies van de noordelijke Onafhankelijke Nederlanden.
Centraal in deze ontwikkeling stond het Brabants, maar schoof later meer op naar het Hollands, omdat het grootste deel van Brabant onder Spaans/Oostenrijks bestuur bleef, waardoor ook een groot deel van het huidige Vlaanderen ervan verstoken bleef.
Eén en ander is te lezen op Wikipedia onder: "Geschiedenis van het Nederlands"
De stiefmoederlijke behandeling van, van zeg maar, de Nederlandstaligen in België hield inderdaad niet op met de onafhankelijkheid van het land.
Brussel was een stad waar een Brabants dialect werd gesproken, het Frans werd er ingevoerd en kunstmatig gepusht onder de bevolking met het argument, "zonder Frans kom je nergens", zo bepaalde de toenmalige elite.
Mijn grootmoeder werd geboren in Brussel in 1890 en sprak dus haar Brussels Brabants dialect.
Ze ging niet naar school, want er waren enkel Franstalige scholen, ik heb haar echter ook nooit Frans horen praten en ze overleed in 1961.

French wasn't the langage spoken in Wallonia after 1831. People spoke mostly Walloon, Picard, etc. All those example you laid out about court and work langage also applied to 90% of Wallonia.

In court you normally had to have an interpret to help you understand. Flemish workers who went to coals mines along walloons were not learning French, they learned Walloon as it was the langage of the workers who were also looked down upon.

French was the langage of the elite, it was a standardized langage use for social distinction. You can hear a lot of stories back from the 60's and 70's from older people who were at worst severely punished or mocked by teachers for speaking Walloon and not proper French.

Of course Walloon is also a oil langage so it's way closer to French than Flemish. This certainly helped.

13:48  We didn't magically had no government.. we just didn't have a new government taking over to put new laws into practise.. we were still governed, but not being updated..