This reminds me of a joke…
Day La Marseillaise became the new anthem of Belgium - Times Online
The story talks about the new Belgian Prime Minister giving the words to the French national anthem when asked if he knew the words to the Brabanconne, the Belgian national song. Ironically, he was asked because a poll showed that 75% of Belgians didn’t know the words.
Well, I had heard a joke that said that during the Second World War the Germans tried to get spies into England by pretending that they were Belgians escaping from the continent. The spies were so thoroughly trained that the British had to come up with a clever trick to find out who was really Belgian. They had the refugees sing the Brabanconne, and if they knew the words, they were German spies.
What makes the joke even funnier is that I told it to some friends when we were living in Belgium. They didn’t think it was very funny, and wondered why I thought it was. I asked if anyone there knew the words. “Well, yes, of course, um, it goes like… Yves! You know how it starts, don’t you?” Etc. Finally, one woman was found who knew the words to the song. She was the wife of one of the Belgians I was talking to, but she was Swiss!
