Brussels is an officially French-Dutch bilingual city, yet in reality, it is profoundly and increasingly multilingual. Earlier research on the linguistic situation in Brussels has predominantly focused on the competing dominant languages, resulting in very limited scholarly attention to smaller language communities. This paper addresses this blind spot by exploring the language repertoires, proficiencies and practices of members of the Chinese communities. Linking insights from language ecology to the study of language maintenance and shift, and informed by the questionnaire data, we discuss how the changing sociodemographic backgrounds of the participants affect the language maintenance and shift of the whole Chinese communities. Our results do not reveal a traditional pattern of shift toward the dominant majority languages, but rather hint at a community-level shift toward more complex multilingual repertoires with an increased role for English and Mandarin, in tune with Brussels’ increasingly international and multilingual context at large.

布鲁塞尔是一个正式的法荷双语城市，但实际上，它的多语言程度越来越深。早期关于布鲁塞尔语言状况的研究主要集中在相互竞争的主导语言上，导致学术界对较小语言社区的关注非常有限。本文通过探讨华人社区成员的语言曲目、熟练程度和实践来解决这个盲点。我们将语言生态学的见解与语言维持和转变的研究联系起来，并根据问卷数据，讨论参与者不断变化的社会人口背景如何影响整个华人社区的语言维持和转变。我们的结果并未揭示向主流语言转变的传统模式，