Belgium Expat Forum

alepa
Joined 2010
Posts: 1

13 years ago

Moving to Belgium without dutch knowledge. Bad Idea?

13 years ago

Hello,

I'm planning to move to Belgium, with my family (2 children).
I know good English, and some basic French, but it will be easy for me to master french once I get into a francophone environment.
My wife knows some english, and good French (she has a degree, allowing her to teach french language here in Greece).
I work as a software developer.

But I am concerned about the language split vs. the jobs opportunities there.
The logical thing for us to do would be to move to Wallonia.
My wife could find a job there, and we would send our children to a french speaking school.
but many people say unemployment in Wallonia is way too high, and there are not many jobs for english speaking in the IT sector.
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Next possibility would be to move to Brussels. Lots of jobs in IT there, lots of french schools.
but, I'm not sure if this city is a good place to raise children. Is it?
Could my wife find something to do without the need of Dutch?

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Then I look at the BE job listings, and I see lots of jobs offered in the Flanders area. Economic conditions there seem so much better than Wallonia, and the cities there (eg. Antwerp, Lueven) seem so much better for a family than Brussels.
But we, the 2 parents, do not have a clue on Dutch language.
For my children it may not be a big problem, they are very young, they will learn flemish on school.
I'm afraid i wont be good to communicate with the teachers, the neighbours, even with my coleauges (if I even manage to get a job in the first place).

Then I thought, .. the main reason for considering Belgium, is the French language.
If I knew some Dutch, I could as well move to The Netherlands.

Any advice?
thank you very much.

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