Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well I'd think Quebeckers would watch American TV rather than exclusively Radio-Canada.... They'd be surrounded by English everyday with the media. English is different than just another language you learn in school and lose after 10 years. English is an international language and has a big influence everywhere so it would be hard to just lose it when you're surrounded by it.
The overwhelming majority of the world doesn't speak English and isn't completely surrounded by English media. It's present, no doubt (especially music and movies) but it's not omnipresent and even then in the case of movies and literature it often gets translated into the local language.
I don't understand why this is so hard to grasp. ANYTHING important that's available in English is also available in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Chinese. These languages also produce MASSIVE amounts of media in terms of television, movies, books, magazines and newspapers, and media that was originally in English also gets translated into other languages as well. You can be educated from birth to PhD level and NEVER have to encounter more than a passing amount of English if you don't want to, and many university educated people across the globe don't speak English because they don't have to. They may know a few words here and there and possibly be able to carry on a basic conversation because of learning it in school, but the majority of the world doesn't speak passable English by any standard.
If Quebec can be situated in the middle of 350 Anglophones in North America and still be 60% monolingual that should tell you something. Hell, if there can be monolingual Spanish speakers that have been living in the United States (which has NO obligation to offer services in Spanish at all) for decades, that should be indicative of the degree to which one can get by without learning English even in the largest Anglophone country on Earth.
I gave my personal example in an earlier post and would only suggest you have not met many separatists if you have never met anyone who would do such a thing. Nice deflection back to the other person in the equation though.
And for the records I went to school 2 years in English, so I know both sides pretty well.
To think that "separatists" will spend years learning English and then pretend not to be able to speak is a common misconsception (or dare I say wishful thinking of the "oh these bad guys want to separate from our country so they must be biggots/racists and refuse to speak English" variety.
The reality is very different. If someone "refuses" to speak English to you, there are typically two possibilities: (1) he just can't (even if he understands you - understanding and speaking a language are two different things) (2) you've been rude or arrogant and he just doesn't want to deal with you.
English is by far the biggest and most important language in the world.
It is the official language of
science
technology
diplomacy
business
Politics
Military
finance
culture
movies
music
tv
Sport etc.
Science and technology is all in English and English only.
Most of the new scientific and technological words of the last fifty years only exist in English. Other languages use the English words because there is no other translation for them in their own language, they have to use English.
New technologies, inventions and scientific terms are all in English, and don't exist in other languages, eg Internet, cloning, antibiotics, X-rays, nylon etc etc, nearly all technological terms only exist in English as they were created and invented mostly in the anglo world.
Global popular modern culture is also dominated by English.
Even countries that don't have English as their official language. most still speak it as a second language.
English is the official language of the EU, it is the official language of the entire anglo world, it is the official language of over a billion people in India.
English is the most spoken language in Africa, it is the second most spoken language in the Middle East, hundreds of millions of Chinese people speak English, English is the second biggest language is South America and Latin America and the second biggest language in south east Asia.
English is the language of the global educated elite
Everywhere the British empire went (most of the world) it created large English speaking populations.
There is simply no other language on earth that comes close to the global hegemony that the English language has over the world
Last edited by Obi wan spaghetti; 05-06-2014 at 02:32 PM..
Most people just don't need to speak / understand English in their daily life, in most countries of the world.
So why do so many of them speak english, why are they so desperate to learn it, why is it heavily taught in most countries in the world, why do governments encourage their people to learn English, why do governments make it a top priority to educate their people to speak english.
You wouldn't be able to post here if you didn't know English.
Whenever I travel to other countries, the people I meet nearly all speak English, even the people in low paying jobs spoke to me in english
Last edited by Obi wan spaghetti; 05-06-2014 at 02:44 PM..
English is by far the biggest and most important language in the world.
It is the official language of
science
technology
diplomacy
business
Politics
Military
finance
culture
movies
music
tv
Sport etc.
There is no "official" language(s) for any of these, though English is used the most for most of them when there is an international aspect to the activity that is going on.
And for the records I went to school 2 years in English, so I know both sides pretty well.
To think that "separatists" will spend years learning English and then pretend not to be able to speak is a common misconsception (or dare I say wishful thinking of the "oh these bad guys want to separate from our country so they must be biggots/racists and refuse to speak English" variety.
The reality is very different. If someone "refuses" to speak English to you, there are typically two possibilities: (1) he just can't (even if he understands you - understanding and speaking a language are two different things) (2) you've been rude or arrogant and he just doesn't want to deal with you.
If you had bothered to read my example you would have gleaned these were a few people demanding endless accommodation by no less than forty other senior management from all over Canada. To suggest the arrogant behaviour emanated from all those others is utter nonsense.
They as a group refused to perform those normal little polite interactions associated with people all undergoing the inconvenience of uprooting themselves from family and normal activities while at the same time demanding special considerations for themselves.
If you want chapter and verse I can provide reams of that from those heady days of the 70's and 8o's but it shouldn't be necessary.
Things have improved markedly since then and if you were not out there in the business world dealing with this silliness while at the same time trying to maintain your employers competitive edge you have no idea how infantile and utterly frustrating it all was.
Science and technology is all in English and English only.
Most of the new scientific and technological words of the last fifty years only exist in English. Other languages use the English words because there is no other translation for them in their own language, they have to use English.
New technologies, inventions and scientific terms are all in English, and don't exist in other languages, eg Internet, cloning, antibiotics, X-rays, nylon etc etc, nearly all technological terms only exist in English as they were created and invented mostly in the anglo world.
Spoken with such assurance about what other languages have and don't have, by someone who almost certainly... doesn't speak any of them, other than English of course!
The overwhelming majority of the world doesn't speak English and isn't completely surrounded by English media. It's present, no doubt (especially music and movies) but it's not omnipresent and even then in the case of movies and literature it often gets translated into the local language.
I don't understand why this is so hard to grasp. ANYTHING important that's available in English is also available in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Chinese. These languages also produce MASSIVE amounts of media in terms of television, movies, books, magazines and newspapers, and media that was originally in English also gets translated into other languages as well. You can be educated from birth to PhD level and NEVER have to encounter more than a passing amount of English if you don't want to, and many university educated people across the globe don't speak English because they don't have to. They may know a few words here and there and possibly be able to carry on a basic conversation because of learning it in school, but the majority of the world doesn't speak passable English by any standard.
If Quebec can be situated in the middle of 350 Anglophones in North America and still be 60% monolingual that should tell you something. Hell, if there can be monolingual Spanish speakers that have been living in the United States (which has NO obligation to offer services in Spanish at all) for decades, that should be indicative of the degree to which one can get by without learning English even in the largest Anglophone country on Earth.
Yeah I get that. I am originally from Former Yugoslavia and I know over there the older people don't speak any English at all because all they need is their language when they live there because all the movies, shows, media, etc. is all translated. I just assumed because Quebec is surrounded by both English Canada and America I thought the English presence would be stronger there. But I guess due to Quebec politics they made Quebec exclusively French in the province so English doesn't become a big influence there. That's fine and there's no problem with that but I find English is more useful to know in Quebec than French is to know in other parts of Canada or English is to know in some parts of Europe if that makes sense. Overall English is a very important language to know on an international scale (though French is probably the second most important language to know, which is why the French speakers in both Quebec and France are very proud of their language and want to protect it) so it's always useful for Quebeckers to know English as well.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
