“Dames en heren, we komen aan in het station Brussels Airport Zaventem“. This announcement usually comes in Dutch, and eventually also in French, English and German: you know this if you have already taken the train to the national airport of Belgium. As you can see in the video below, a train attendant from railway operator SNCB/NMBS decided to have fun by reciting his announcement in no less than … 13 languages!
If you have not managed to recognise the 13 idioms, here they are in the order: Dutch, French, German, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Romanian, Lingala, Japanese and finally Esperanto.
The employer of the train attendant welcomed the initiative: “It is a personal initiative that demonstrates what the SNCB/NMBS staff is ready to do for the well-being of the passengers“.
The hero of this short video of 2 and a half minutes speaks no less than seven languages! He is a Belgian of Spanish origin, born in Kinshasa, practising capoeira, and he has a particular gift for languages. Moreover, when he works on trains to tourist cities, he takes pleasure in spotting the different languages practised among the travellers in order to personalise the greetings in the destination station.
Initially, this video was not intended to be published on social networks. The multilingual train attendant filmed and shared his performance with his colleagues via a Whatsapp group. How did it end up on Facebook? For now, no one has the answer. What is certain is that he did not expect such enthusiasm from Internet users: encouragement, applause, thanks and even requests to SNCB to grant him a financial bonus.
According to the regulations, when a train arrives at the Brussels airport station, the train attendant must first pronounce the announcement in Dutch (since we are in the Flemish region). If he wants to speak French, then he must add English and German as well to complete his announcement.
Source: RTBF
