The country’s language watchdog is investigating after a Dutch-speaking commuter protested a conductor’s use of “bonjour” – French for “good morning” – to welcome him onboard during a rush-hour train from Mechelen, in Flanders, to the capital, Brussels, in October.
Writing on Facebook, Ilyass Alba, the French-speaking conductor, said that on the day in question he greeted passengers entering his carriage with a resounding “goeiemorgen, bonjour”.
The use of both the Dutch and French greetings was not good enough for one Dutch-speaking passenger, who told him off, saying: “We’re not in Brussels yet, you have to use Dutch only!”
The passenger was technically right, as under Belgium’s complex language rules conductors should in theory use both languages only in Brussels and a few other bilingual regions.
Depending on the context praising Allah would be something I would accept as normal, and I’m a Christian in a mostly Christian country. You give the appropriate praise for your belief and the response is for the responders belief (if one is called for). Good morning should be in every language the conductor knows, though only one from the list in any given announcement. Ideally the conductor spends some time to learn good morning in weird languages just to mix it up (“Xin chào - that is Good morning in Vietnamese”) Such phases need to be said all the time, but there is no reason they have to be in any particular language and mixing it up help get people to listen to announcements.
Hard nope.
To consider antireligion instead of atheism