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Like I said, it depends on how proficient you must be to be considered a speaker of a language. I would say being able to have a conversation about most things, even if it's not a flawless one, makes a person a speaker of that language. The goal of speaking any language is to be understood and to understand others, and the Dutch and Scandinavians certainly do well in that respect. I didn't say they spoke English flawlessly. But English abilities are very strong in the Netherlands & Scandinavia.
I guess you and I have a different notion of what's "practically useless." I think Finnish, for example, is practically useless in Quebec. I wouldn't say the same thing for a language the dominates the rest of North America (US & Canada) outside of Quebec, a language which itself has a significant presence in Quebec, and which is widely considered the global language, to be "practically useless." The fact that most Francophones in Quebec can function without English does not make English useless.
It's not simply that nearly all francophones can function in Quebec without English that makes it useless, it's the fact that most people you encounter in Quebec can't speak English that makes it useless there. Montreal and Gatineau aside, the majority of Quebec is monolingual French, and so speaking English there is about as useful as speaking English in Japan.
It's not simply that nearly all francophones can function in Quebec without English that makes it useless, it's the fact that most people you encounter in Quebec can't speak English that makes it useless there. Montreal and Gatineau aside, the majority of Quebec is monolingual French, and so speaking English there is about as useful as speaking English in Japan.
Be that as it may, I was discussing the usefulness of English for Francophone Quebecers, not the usefulness of English in Quebec. The fact remains that English is the most useful second language for a Francophone Quebecer.
Am I the only English-speaking North American who strongly supports Quebec being ONLY French-speaking? I do not speak French at all, but I love visiting Quebec and seeing only French signs. I dislike seeing English signs even though I speak the language. French is the major part why many of us love visiting Quebec because we get a taste of France in North America! If it becomes bilingual, then it would suck and French will be in decline and Quebec would become like rest of Canada and North America.
Please support ONLY French in Quebec and increase bilingualism in rest of Canada. Let Quebec be unique and charming.
I guess you have a point. I find it equally tiresome when I visit the U.S. and don't see any signs written in Spanish.
Other Franco-Ontarians (probably mainly those who speak a sign language, the local indigenous language, or some other unofficial language) are likely to support reducing both English and French-language rights in the Constitution so as to promote more justice for speakers of unofficial language,.
Allophones and immigrants typically don't care much about the official and non-official status of their languages. They've made the choice of moving to a country where their language is non-official. They primarily want to get ahead socio-economically, and although they often do want to practice their culture and language without any overt oppression, they aren't generally scandalized by the fact that it does not permeate every aspect of their everyday lives in Canada.
I'm far from fluent in Ojibwe (and I'm not Ojibwe), but I have taken an Ojibwe course. I can say that many Ojibwe want to learn their language but cannot find the resources to do so. Let us not forget that the residential school system started over 100 years ago for the explicit purpose of cultural genocide, "to kill the Indian in the child", and the last such school closed it's doors only in 1996, not in the 1500s. It is well recorded that this system was brutal in many cases.
Though it is true that many indigenous people cannot speak their language well, the ones I have met generally want to learn it.
Let us not forget too that just in 2012 a TD Economics report published by Sonya Gulati indicated that on-reserve schools continue to be underfunded by about 2000 to 3000 dollars per student per year. The same Report indicates that some of these communities still speak the indigenous language as a mother tongue, which further impedes understanding in an English - language classroom.
There is no contradiction here. On the one hand, these languages are dying in numbers of speakers. On the other, there are communities that speak it as a mother tongue and whose children must negotiate an English-language classroom. To make it worse, they're caught between the Indian Act and the Official Languages Act. On reserve, the Indian Act dominates them. Off-reserve, they feel the assimilationist pressure of the Official Languages Act. It's a no-win situation for them.
I am mostly with you on this. From a cultural standpoint it would have been cool if we had developed in a way that would make Ojibwe, Cree, Inuktitut, etc. viable societal equivalents to Hungarian, Czech and Dutch.
But that's not what happened. It's too late to turn back the tide for much of this landmass. That said I've always said that I would enthusiastically support any Bill 101-type stuff for Nunavut or even smaller aboriginal communities like Wendat, Maliotenam, etc. across the country.
I am a francophone but I don't see that I have that much to lose (nor is it any of my business) if certain communities want to restrict the use of my language on their territory in the interest of cultural-linguistic perennity. (Something that many Anglo-Canadians seem to have a lot of trouble accepting when it comes to French.)
And speaking of French, you always seem to place it on the same level as English as if it was nationally, continentally and globally turbocharged in a similar way. That's not the case at all. It seems fairly strong at least in Quebec and has been able to sustain itself but in the continued absence of language territoriality, autonomy for Quebec or outright independence in the long run I fear it will come to reveal itself as a bit of a paper tiger.
We're holding our own at the moment, but as for the future, who knows?
I've lived abroad. Yes, there are opportunities to use English in academia, but it has become extremely restricted in Quebec's private sector due to the French Language Charter. .
French was dominant in Quebec, so Quebec passed a law to make it more dominant. .
The law was actually meant to counter the very evident trends that were pointing towards English taking over from French as the dominant language in Quebec.
You probably wouldn't enjoy the reaction among the thousands of immigrants, from every part of the world, who take most of the entry-level service-sector jobs which keep Quebec functioning. Most of them rebuilt their lives with the belief that learning English was a prominent part of the path upward. Now not only to they have to deal with a closed and occasionally adversarial culture; their kids are usually being educated in French-speaking classrooms, leaving them with less chance of participating in their education.
In all of the separatist elections, immigrants, have played a central role in a coalition with Anglophones, native tribes, and a few other minorities, in keeping Quebec a part of the Canadian union.
And my hat is off to every one of them.
It's actually been quite clear since the first part of the 1970s that it's a really, really, really good idea to learn French if you move to Quebec. I am somewhat sympathetic to those who came here before that time during different societal circumstances, but as for the rest (which is most of the immigrant population), it's not really my fault if some of them chose to ignore the memo.
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