Montreal: Anglophones and Francophones (how much, home, living)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by k-sol

This is the first positive thing I have heard about Montreal's economy.

Well, I am not saying that things are perfect. It’s just that I am a bit leery when people insinuate that we’d all be rich if it weren’t for “that French thing”.
First of all, anyone who takes the time to look around North America can see that there are many, many places where the English language is free to blossom unhindered and that are way worse off economically than Montreal and Quebec.
Secondly, just by looking back at history to the “good old days” prior to 1976, one will see that the economic gap between Quebec and the rest of Canada was quite a bit wider than it is now, the unemployment rate was higher, and that what wealth there was in Quebec was concentrated in the hands of a small elite, with a large mass of population living in relative poverty.
Today, there is still poverty in Quebec as there is elsewhere, but affluence is much more widely spread out across the entire population, especially at the middle class level.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by k-sol

And I can't help but notice how your paragraph resembles the situation in another North American country that does a ****-poor job of protecting its borders.

I know what you are alluding to, but the situation in Quebec would be akin to Mexicans or Brazilians moving to the States and deciding they wanted to speak mostly French, or German, rather than English. If you look at the names of the complainants on the recent Supreme Court case file, they are overwhelmingly non-anglo names like Ye, Khan, Nguyen, Ayad, Mustafa and Lok.

Also, contrary to Hispanics in the U.S., people who want to push for more in English in Quebec also have the tacit support of the media, population and business sector from other parts of Canada (and Quebec is part of Canada). They also used to have the support of Canada’s federal government, but they have gradually lost much if not most of this in recent years. In this most recent case for example, federal organizations like the Attorney General of Canada and the Commissioner of Official Languages for Canada were involved in the case siding with the Government of Quebec and its language laws.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by k-sol

Not shocking! In your opinion, would you say that illegal immigration or migration is part of the root cause?

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Illegal immigration is not much of an issue here, and I would say that probably all of these people entered the country legally. [/SIZE]
Note that immigration is a shared responsibility between the federal Canadian and Quebec provincial governments. Roughly speaking, about half of the immigrants to Quebec are selected by the feds, and the other half are selected by the province. [/SIZE]
Now, I have no idea if the people who are challenging Quebec’s language laws were selected for admission by the Canadian or Quebec authorities. [/SIZE]
There is also no restriction of movement once immigrants arrive in Canada, so some of these people may have been accepted for immigration to English-speaking provinces like Ontario or Alberta, and later moved to Quebec for whatever reason at some point.

[kkgg7]

Originally Posted by k-sol

Wow. Great way to spout off an opinion. Who are you to tell me I'm wrong? And people wonder why people dislike anything related to France.

If French was able to express things so well, why does English have 4 times as many words? When an English speaking child tells me his dad works "up over that big old hill", how does on express that in French word-for-word? It is that hill, it is big, it is old and he went up and over it. I don't remember French liking chains of prepositions like that. How about "eating crow" or "the devil's beating his wife ('while his grandmother is laughing' is an older Germanic addition) or "six in one hand, half a dozen in the other", "needle in a haystack", "quiet as a church mouse", "so quiet you can hear a rat **** on cotton", "get on the good foot"? None of these translate directly ergo my forementioned point.

If I was a researching working on the cure to AIDS and you asked me why I don't have it 20 years later, I would tell you "it's very hard to find the cure; it's tougher than looking for a needle in a haystack." English allows me to use phrases like that and still maintain comprehensibility (that may not be a word; but English allows me to make them up). The French translation would read as a drier sentence. Due to their smaller word base, one phrase eg "quand on parle du loup, il apperai" can have multiple meanings besides just "speak of the devil and he appears" or literally "when we speak of the devil, he will appear".

Let's not talk of the complication of French's past tenses. If French was the superior language, everyone from your local criminal to Osama bin Laden would know it, so the proof is in the pudding. Both of them can speak English, I'm sure. Every terrorist in the world can as well. So can 320,000,000 native speakers of English versus 67,000,000 native speakers of French. Those are just the facts. That's not calling English perfect because it has a range of issue like historical spellings (good, foot, boot, flood, blood...)

AS FOR MONTREAL, it would be sad to see something like language wars ruin this gem of a town. But if it is more corrupt that New Orleans et al, I will be shocked. Losing all your finance jobs is breathtaking. Have they backed away from these stringent language requirements or are they still on the books?

You've got to be kidding me in being proud about English having expressions such as "looking for a needle in a haystack"... I speak Mandarin and we have at least a dozen expressions, each comprised of only 4 characters and each with a story dating 2000 years back, examples such as "finding a needle in the bottom of an ocean" or "counting the hair on a cow" etc. Trust me, a language like French must also have suvh vivid expressions with equal comphrehensibility, you just don't know them.

Speaking of comphrehensibility, how the hell does one know why "know up" means get someone pregnant, and "knock off" means something counterfait? It took me months to fully differentiate these two because they simply don't make ANY sense. Nevertheless, English speakers love to use such senseless expression which is extremely confusing and frustrating for foreigners. Yes, English has A LOT of words and phrases, which don't make it more efficient or superior. English has its currently status and popularity PURELY because the economic power the UK and the US had and has now, not because it is any better than other languages such as French or Russian.

And with respect to tense, I have to say English is a mess as well. For example: I will let him know when he comes. "comes" is the present tense when the sentence is apparently expressing future tense, such examples can go on and on. Another senseless example is "I am hungry" means "I feel hungry" in the same way as "I am tall" using the same verb "be", which totally doesn't make any sense, as "hungry" unlike "tall" is not a permanent attribute of "I". It is completely a logical flaw in my understanding. You think everything makes perfect sense in English only because it is your native language.

Anyway, I don't want to go too far about languages, just keep in mind English is popular not because it is superior or explains things better, it is all because of the British Empire and the Unites States.

[netwit]

Originally Posted by kkgg7

Speaking of comphrehensibility, how the hell does one know why "know up" means get someone pregnant

Nevertheless, English speakers love to use such senseless expression which is extremely confusing and frustrating for foreigners. Yes, English has A LOT of words and phrases, which don't make it more efficient or superior. English has its currently status and popularity PURELY because the economic power the UK and the US had and has now, not because it is any better than other languages such as French or Russian.

.

I don't know if that's a typo but the phrase to get someone pregnant is actually knock up, not know up.

As to the rest of your post, I agree with the basic premise. There's tons of expressions in German, and various German dialects that express, in my view, far more adequately a situation than English.

This is just a personal peeve, but what I dislike about English is the lack of a formal way of addressing older people or people you don't know well. Almost every other language has that thee and thou/ du and Sie way of being able to address people. It's just never going to feel right to me to say "you" to people who are older than me. I mean, I suppose English could go back to using thees and thous but it won't so...

[k-sol]

Originally Posted by kkgg7

You've got to be kidding me in being proud about English having expressions such as "looking for a needle in a haystack"... I speak Mandarin and we have at least a dozen expressions, each comprised of only 4 characters and each with a story dating 2000 years back, examples such as "finding a needle in the bottom of an ocean" or "counting the hair on a cow" etc. Trust me, a language like French must also have suvh vivid expressions with equal comphrehensibility, you just don't know them.

Then why don't you tell me? I'm talking French not Mandarin. Obviously Mandarin has those phrases -- its one of oldest languages in the world (since at least the Thirteenth Century) spoken by at least 1 billion people! You think since that time at least one Chinese person thought to himself "man, this is like trying to find a needle in a haystack?" DUH!

Speaking of comphrehensibility, how the hell does one know why "know up" means get someone pregnant, and "knock off" means something counterfait? It took me months to fully differentiate these two because they simply don't make ANY sense. Nevertheless, English speakers love to use such senseless expression which is extremely confusing and frustrating for foreigners. Yes, English has A LOT of words and phrases, which don't make it more efficient or superior. English has its currently status and popularity PURELY because the economic power the UK and the US had and has now, not because it is any better than other languages such as French or Russian.

The phrases you are talking about aren't senseless; idiomatic expressions also serve as visualization cues. See, you don't even know about what you are speaking. "Knock up" is to get a female pregnant. It comes from the sound of the bed knocking against the wall during the reproductive process. "Knock off someone" is to kill, "knock off" is to leave work and "knock it off" is to stop an activity. It's not senseless or confusing if you activate that tool betwixt your ear. And the point of English isn't to sound good or be efficient, it is to be accurate.

And with respect to tense, I have to say English is a mess as well. For example: I will let him know when he comes. "comes" is the present tense when the sentence is apparently expressing future tense, such examples can go on and on. Another senseless example is "I am hungry" means "I feel hungry" in the same way as "I am tall" using the same verb "be", which totally doesn't make any sense, as "hungry" unlike "tall" is not a permanent attribute of "I". It is completely a logical flaw in my understanding. You think everything makes perfect sense in English only because it is your native language.

Tell me story in the past then write it in a book in the past and tell me why we have to use to different tenses when we are still in the past. Why don't you try looking for a needle in a haystack. When you see the difficulty, you'll see how the maxim came to be developed. I can speak both languages and a lot of French's mechanics are senseless. Je t'aimerai and je t'aimerais sound the same but mean two different thing. In English, we just use two different verbs to solve the problem; "will" if it is going to happen and "would" if it might happen.

Anyway, I don't want to go too far about languages, just keep in mind English is popular not because it is superior or explains things better, it is all because of the British Empire and the Unites States.

France had an empire too. Maybe had the dispensed with the language pretentiousness and over-cultural sensitivity, we'd all be speaking French. Language police? Give me a break! As I said in the beginning, language influences thinking. Apparently judging from the history of Anglophone world circa 1750, there have been few changes to mechanics, structure and orthography of English: Anglophones have been too busy stealing people's resources, importing slaves and killing indigenous people (it's all about the money). 1.1 billion English (1 in 6 Earthlings) speakers are not wrong: whether the language is their birth tongue or lingua franca, all these other people are adding to the development and propagation of English. Don't see that happening for Francophones since they all seem to be worrying about their language and using it to divide the classes a la Haiti, Vietnam, Cameroon, etc. and not more important issues.

French = Mac = form over function; looks good but doesn't work with 80% of the software out there.
English = PC = clunky, senseless built with old and used parts, but gets the job done well (like Win XP).

Have some crow.

[k-sol]

Originally Posted by netwit

I don't know if that's a typo but the phrase to get someone pregnant is actually knock up, not know up.

As to the rest of your post, I agree with the basic premise. There's tons of expressions in German, and various German dialects that express, in my view, far more adequately a situation than English.

This is just a personal peeve, but what I dislike about English is the lack of a formal way of addressing older people or people you don't know well. Almost every other language has that thee and thou/ du and Sie way of being able to address people. It's just never going to feel right to me to say "you" to people who are older than me. I mean, I suppose English could go back to using thees and thous but it won't so...

Ahh... honorifics! Japanese has plenty of them. English dropped them long ago. I'm glad they are gone; it levels the playing field a bit. If I'm on the phone with a person, I have no clue if they are 22 or 72 judging by their words. You can still just use "sir" and "ma'am" though. Older people, southerners and ex-military like that. At a store when a salesperson calls me "sir", I tell them "You can call me Mr. K-Sol instead."

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by k-sol

I can speak both languages and a lot of French's mechanics are senseless. Je t'aimerai and je t'aimerais sound the same but mean two different thing. .

If you are pronouncing them properly, they are not supposed to sound the same.

Anyway, I am glad that you are in love with your English language. Love is a wonderful thing. One of things it makes us do is overlook the less pretty stuff and accentuate the positive - and even make some up.

[Neutre]

Originally Posted by k-sol

Even though I think it is preposterous, I have been told by a few (very few) people that in Montreal, Francophones look down on Anglophones. Looking at Google Earth, I see that Montreal lies within a Francophonic province which is part of an bilingual country which is surrounded on three sides by English-speaking areas: Ontario, the United States and New Brunswick/Newfoundland and Labrador.

It would seem that since Quebec is a Francophonic province that most people would know or at least understand some French, so I would think any "looking down on Anglophones" would be done by a minority. On the other hand, je m'excuse mes amis Francophonique, I have noticed that where ever the French language is, a linguistic rivalry takes place. I had a friend from Africa and his tribe was split between England and France and after colonization, the French-speaking members of the tribe don't like the English speaking members because they speak English. The same thing is happening in Cameroon.

Anyway, I was just curious about this so-called looking down upon idea. I've been to Montreal before and I was treated just fine. Maybe it was that mix of USD and CAD.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that English replaced French as the lingua franca in many parts of the world.
French was also quite (in)famous for their linguistic chauvinism.
But I think most of the younger generations are over it.
When I was in France (Lyon, Mâcon & vicinity), people were actually willing to speak to me in English. I'm not sure about Paris.
Btw, I think French is one of the most beautiful languages I've learned.

[Cornerguy1]

Acajack:

If you look at the names of the complainants on the recent Supreme Court case file, they are overwhelmingly non-anglo names like Ye, Khan, Nguyen, Ayad, Mustafa and Lok.

Ahhh! Well that certainly makes a difference.

How dare folks with names like that think they may be entitled to equality.