It seems to me I heard somewhere that robert wrote in article
<3e185525.0411091507.1144578e@posting.google.com>:

>Michael Cash <mikecash@buggerallspammers.com> wrote in message news:<9042p056da8bf00hm9r7vepfft1kg387pt@4ax.com>...

>> Well, with an attitude like that, no wonder everybody hates them.

>Nononononoo, nowadays everybody hates some other country. 

>I can understand the situation is somewhat hard to understand... In
>Belgium people speak Dutch, French and German. When Brittish people
>visit Bruges (in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) they try to speak
>French to the locals because they think they are doing them a favor
>this way. In reality the locals would much rather have them speaking
>English because English is closer to Dutch, hence easier.

>The capital Brussels is in the Dutch speaking part, but the majority
>of the people speaks French. When you ask directions in English there,
>people will answer you in French. If you ask directions in Dutch in
>many cases they will turn their back on you.

>When I was doing language exchange I often received e-mails from
>Japanese who wanted to learn French. The majority of people in Belgium
>speak Dutch, but for some reason nobody knows this... Surprisingly, I
>also received a lot of messages from people who were interested in
>Dutch... In all cases this was because they confused "Doitsugo" with
>"Dutch" of course... However, some of them have heard the word
>"furamango"! (This is supposed to be my language I guess...) Flanders
>seems to have some popularity in Japan, but only because of some anime
>called "Furandas no inu". However, in Flanders nobody has ever heard
>of this.

"A Dog of Flanders" is an old English story. 

A Dog of Flanders, and Other Stories
by Ouida 
293 p.
Chapman and Hall    London  1872

It looks like there was a Japanese animation in 1975, and there was an
American film version in 1999.  The story is available on line at
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/ouida/dog.html

>I'm still waiting for the first Japanese with an interest in
>"Orandago" in Belgium...

How often do you get asked about Brussels sprouts?  :-)

>Ah, I can't wait to get away from here...
-- 
Don
Old age is when you start saying "I wish I knew now what I knew then."