french language in belgium, help plzz!!?

For practical reasons I would be tempted to say french as you are indeed more likely to find a french speaking part in Flanders than to find a dutch speaking person in Wallonia. However in economical terms it is easier to find a job in the dutch speaking part since it has a stronger economy and you will be required to speak Flemish. If you do not you will have a hard time as they can be EXTREMELY rude and discriminatory towards french speakers. A lot of them will feel insulted if you speak french to them, speaking English is a safer bet. On the other hand, people in the Dutch speaking part have a much better command of English than in the French speaking part and will be more likely to speak to you in English straight away if they feel your dutch isn't up to scratch. If you are in the French speaking part, I'm afraid but English won't get you far.

I would be tempted to wait a bit longer and to be sure where exactly you are going since as I have stated there is no right or bad answer unless you know for sure where you are going.

To sum up:

French pros: -more spoken in the world

-Walloons have a bad command of English, if you end up there you will need to speak French.

French cons:-worst economy. A lot of jobs in Belgium are mainly in Flanders and speaking dutch is compulsory.

practically everyone.

Nowadays the children in primary school already learn "basic" French at the age of 6. A few years ago that was at the age of 10. And everyone gets French at school until they're 18. So yes, most of the Dutch people speak French.

That doesn't mean that everyone wants to speak French and some will act as if they can't. (it also happens the other way round, by the way. Check the politicians: the Flemish ones can speak French and most of them do, the French ones just don't speak Dutch, whether they can or not... ;) )

German is also an official language, but there's only a minority speaking that and not all students get German at school.

Good luck with the job!

To Robert43... : "Learning either French or Deutsch (Flamand)" is NOT correct! "Deutsch" is German. "Nederlands" is Dutch. Something different. Just to avoid confusion.

As others have noted you're much more likely to find a Dutch-speaking Belgian who speaks some English AND French than a French-speaking Belgian who speaks either much Dutch or English.

I would look to your future employer for advice on which of Belgium's official languages to learn (there is a third too, German, only really spoken in the Eastern Cantons). If you're also going to be doing business in The Netherlands, you could probably get by with English (the Dutch pride themselves on being multilingual). If your work will frequently take you to France, French is the better bet.

Yes, Flemish children HAVE to learn french at school. Even to the point they can no longer choose English as a second language when they get to secondary. And many of them will never speak it again other than through neccessity once they finish their education. Most of them will see you as the perfect opportunity to test their english language skills though so communication should be no problem.

But saying that I know of some older generation (55+) that refuses to speak anything other than dutch and then only if they have to, most flemish speak dialect between themselves anyway

You would be better off learning french, if you get posted in Brussels it might serve you better than English, Liege is french too. And for practical purposes you will get by in english just fine in flandres.

Its part of their education system i would imagine to learn the languages of their country so they can talk to other belgians, i would presume, most of higher education is done in english apparently. French is for Wallonia where there are less big cities but Dutch is for Flanders home to Bruges, Ostend, Antwerp and Ghent all of which are big cities, Brussels also speaks both languages, so i think that most people in belgium would know how to speak french and be able to communicate with half of their country but would recomend starting with dutch

yes... even if u come in the dutch area (north of belgium), everybody speaks french... even more... english is using everywhere in europe !!

Learning either French or Deutsch (Flamand) in six months? Good luck with either of those. Neither is simple. Flip a coin.

Yes.