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Next time I travel to Calgary I'll speak in French to every Calgary Transit worker just to get a kick out of the responses. Hey, Canada is a bilingual country after all, right? Right!?
My take on the Francophone comes from 40+ years of being in Quebec the last 30 of which was spent in a large dairy processing plant with 350 Francophones and 5 Anglophones and while like in any culture some of the guys were the rudest and most racist guys i ever met most were straight up people many of whom i consider friends,however most always considered me as the French speaking Maudit Anglaise and although it was usually done in a joking manner i got the message.
for the most part transit workers aside its not the Francophone i have a problem with its their stupid government that keeps on with this archaic linguistic purity agenda conditioning its people to believe if you arent French you aint sh... Evil Anglos and their oppressive ways are around every corner trying to turn all Francophones ito Anglos
As i've said before at this point i dont see any point or relevance to Quebec staying in Canada,you have a government that doesnt like Canada,and doesnt like Les Autres,and just likes the money Ottawa is handing over.
In the past i would have been sad and disappointed to see Quebec leave Canada but over the last few years watching friends and family leave,also the kids leaving seeing a marginalized future for themselves by remaining in Quebec my attitude has changed to =its time to kick this mooch out of the nest, go and have your little linguistic utopia,just dont expect the rest of Canada to continue paying for it...
.Mrs Marois you and your province have become an expense Canada can no longer afford.. http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/17...ayment-program
I see that no one has chosen to address my point about magic English and how that hasn't helped Mississippi and West Virginia, for example, pave their streets with gold.
Disagree. No language ever came close to being a worldwide language in the way English is now. Did Latin or French ever make much headway in China or India for instance (across the whole country I mean, not just in the small parts of India that France temporarily colonized)?
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Has English really made that much headway in China? Beyond Hong Kong?
I find people tend to greatly overestimate the international ubiquity of English. It is certainly the most useful language to know internationally, but that is not the same as being the ONLY language you need to know internationally. There is no single language that opens all the doors for you internationally - and probably never will be one. At least not in our lifetimes nor those of our children.
The fact that you'd read this article and feel more enraged at the man asking for a ticket in French, than at the extremely rude reception he was given by the subway workers, speaks volumes about where your sympathies lie. If it was the reverse and a Franco Ontarian was being treated rudely by transit workers in Ottawa you'd turn it into a sob story about the poor treatment of Franco Ontarians (and in that case I too would side with the person being treated rudely...no matter what situation I would, no matter where, simply because workers should not treat customers that way in general).
Montreal is a bilingual city, these workers probably should know at least some measure of English. And if they don't, they at least shouldn't be rude about it.
It is not what you think. I am not enraged (re the metro) either way. I do consider it dumb and intolerant on the part of the employee. But I was also pointing out that that issue could be viewed from another angle.
That of the insularity of certain anglos in Quebec who also like to live as hermits or in a bubble. Like it or not, most people spend their lives in their immediate environs, not swinging deals on the NYSE or attending G20 summits. So basically anglos living in Montreal who speak only English may be able to listen to Lady Gaga and get all the lyrics or watch The Simpsons in the original version, but they could be said to be far more isolated from their immediate surroundings than francophones who speak only French. At least the francophones are not alienated from the most basic human interactions that everyone partakes in no matter what - the local ones.
As for this happening to Franco-Ontarians, well it happened to me several times living in Ottawa and in other parts of the province when I was growing up there. But instead of getting the UN, the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa involved, we simply shrugged it off and moved to Quebec.
Next time I travel to Calgary I'll speak in French to every Calgary Transit worker just to get a kick out of the responses. Hey, Canada is a bilingual country after all, right? Right!?
That's a ridiculous comparison, considering that Montreal has always been a bilingual city and Calgary never has been. Montreal has always had a significant English population, Calgary has never had a significant French population. A better comparison would be to speaking French to a transit worker in Ottawa.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BIMBAM
What? Of course they do, c'mon, you can't honestly tell me there isn't a significant portion of the population that would be upset. Just look at how people act when old Chinese people in Richmond BC can't speak English!
In Richmond BC, signs in Chinese are tolerated, and they are all over the place. Doing business in Chinese, no matter what the size of your business, is tolerated too. Richmond is much more tolerant than Quebec, and I'd argue that the expansion of Chinese there is a bigger threat to the linguistic status quo than the (relatively non existent) expansion of English in Quebec.
Has English really made that much headway in China? Beyond Hong Kong?
I find people tend to greatly overestimate the international ubiquity of English. It is certainly the most useful language to know internationally, but that is not the same as being the ONLY language you need to know internationally. There is no single language that opens all the doors for you internationally - and probably never will be one. At least not in our lifetimes nor those of our children.
I believe English is making huge headway in China lately. The statistic most commonly floated around is that 300 m Chinese (so, about one quarter of the population) are learning or have learned English.
English is as close to a global language as any language ever has been, far closer than any before it. No, it won't open EVERY door. No, not the whole world is fluent in it. But it occupies a category of its own as a language of international and interethnic communication. I challenge you to find another language that occupies a similar clout on a worldwide level, outside of the regions in which it is the mother tongue and those regions' immediate periphery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
It is not what you think. I am not enraged (re the metro) either way. I do consider it dumb and intolerant on the part of the employee. But I was also pointing out that that issue could be viewed from another angle.
That of the insularity of certain anglos in Quebec who also like to live as hermits or in a bubble. Like it or not, most people spend their lives in their immediate environs, not swinging deals on the NYSE or attending G20 summits. So basically anglos living in Montreal who speak only English may be able to listen to Lady Gaga and get all the lyrics or watch The Simpsons in the original version, but they could be said to be far more isolated from their immediate surroundings than francophones who speak only French. At least the francophones are not alienated from the most basic human interactions that everyone partakes in no matter what - the local ones.
As for this happening to Franco-Ontarians, well it happened to me several times living in Ottawa and in other parts of the province when I was growing up there. But instead of getting the UN, the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa involved, we simply shrugged it off and moved to Quebec.
But the vast majority of anglos living in Montreal also speak French. The ones who speak English only are likely either old people or university/college students only in the city temporarily. If you look at city-data's stats (google search "Beaconsfield city-data language" or "Westmount city-data language" or for other west Island boroughs) you'll see that only around 30% of Anglophones don't know French. And of that number I'd wager a substantial number are old people, and in some areas, students in the city temporarily.
However, I'd argue that being a unilingual English speaker in Montreal wouldn't exclude you from partaking in cultural events in the same way that being a unilingual French speaker in most of the rest of Canada would. There's probably a substantial enough amount of events and social gatherings that are in English or bilingual that you could still participate in a social scene of your own.
As for discrimination against Franco-Ontarians, as I've said before, the key distinction here is that discrimination against Franco-Ontarians is not sanctioned by the government. Discrimination against Anglos in Quebec is.
I have a feeling the reason you felt the need to move to Quebec has more to do with your own attitude than the way in which you were treated. But I could be wrong. So tell me, what are the worst examples of being mistreated as a Franco Ontarian that you personally experienced?
In Richmond BC, signs in Chinese are tolerated, and they are all over the place. Doing business in Chinese, no matter what the size of your business, is tolerated too. Richmond is much more tolerant than Quebec, and I'd argue that the expansion of Chinese there is a bigger threat to the linguistic status quo than the (relatively non existent) expansion of English in Quebec.
Wow, things have certainly changed in BC since I was last there.
So, now BC spends more than 25% of its post-secondary education funding on Chinese-language colleges and universities?
More than half the channels available on cable TV in Vancouver are in Chinese languages now?
People who do not have a single drop of Chinese blood in their bodies are adopting a Chinese language as their main language for family life and interaction with wider society?
That's a ridiculous comparison, considering that Montreal has always been a bilingual city and Calgary never has been. Montreal has always had a significant English population, Calgary has never had a significant French population. A better comparison would be to speaking French to a transit worker in Ottawa.
And how do you think you would fare in Ottawa if you spoke in French to every single person you bumped into? A good chunk of people would be polite but respond in English, another chunk would be able to respond in French, and a small portion would be rude and hostile.
I wonder if the United States will have its variation of the "Quebec Question" a few generations from now in the Southwest?
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. Evil Anglos and their oppressive ways are around every corner trying to turn all Francophones ito Anglos
