Passenger files complaint against ticket inspector who simply said “hello” to him in French while the train was in Flanders

Le contrôleur est rentré en disant Bonjour dans les deux langues. MAXPPP Illustration – Leyla Vidal

A simple "hello" that seemed harmless but which reawakened linguistic debates in Belgium. The country is divided between French and Dutch, and in a much smaller minority, German.

Ilyass Alba is a controller of the Belgian railway company (SNCB) and shares his daily life on social networks and in particular on Facebookwhere he has accumulated 40,000 subscribers. On December 10, he shared a post where he stated that a complaint had been filed against him. Ilyass had entered a compartment saying hello in Dutch, then in French. The traveller who filed the complaint believes that, being in Vilvoorde, a Flemish city, he should have simply done so in Dutch.

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“Please make sure to differentiate between entering a compartment and greeting all the passengers with a ‘Goeiemorgen-Bonjour’ AND making an announcement in Dutch and French.”, says Ilyass, who believes he did not break any rules.

Supported by his employer

According to statements relayed by the Belgian media 7sur7, the spokesperson for the Belgian transport company supported his employee. “We ask each train conductor to be flexible and adapt to this language legislation, so that our train conductors can continue to concentrate on their work, and that is what Alba has done.”

On the other hand, the incident is not going down well with the Dutch-speaking parties. Sammy Mahdi, chairman of the CD & V, a Dutch-speaking party, this is a “lack of respect for the Dutch language”, stating that we cannot “throw our language legislation overboard like that”, in remarks relayed by 7sur7 and which provoked a reaction from Ilyass Alba. Heated debates also took place between Belgian deputies.