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.
My post referred to small towns outside Wpg. St. Boniface is part of Wpg. In south-eastern Manitoba, there are small towns in which you can get by with only French. As with other languages. I am not Anglo or Francophone but my language is spoken in small towns here and I can get by with only my mother language.
And obviously, if a young person has ambitions besides small town life, then they would need to know English. In case it isn't clear, I was referring more to the older farming generations. Young people are bilingual since their lives are not contained wholly by small towns. But the language of use in these small towns is francophone. Chances are that if you hear English spoken, it is by an Anglo passing through.
As for small francophone town mechanics/ doctors/dentists, they will be bilingual but the language that is spoken in these garages/offices is French, their mother tongue. An English-only speaking person can very quickly feel out of place and most anglos would not choose to practise their profession by moving to a small town, where French is the language of the majority, and in daily, majority use, and where people are clannish. By definition, small towns do not offer the sorts of opportunities to advance one's career that a large city does. So there is no reason for anglos to move into these towns.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I will say though, that many small francophone towns here do not have significant anglo populations. There are some anglos in every town, but signficant no, since the every day language you hear in the cafes is French, and some Anglos tell me they feel there is a deliberate attempt to exclude them (the anglos). Anglos who did not grow up in these francophone towns are not likely to move to them in order to practise their profession. My doctor and dentist and mechanic all grew up in small francophone towns and choose to practise there on purpose. That is not an uncommon attitude among other ethnic groups who also choose to practise their profession in one of the small rural towns that has traditionally been defined by a language other than English.
If you are ever around this area, come and see for yourself. Since I'm not Anglo or francophone but Canadian born, and didn't learn English until I went to school, I enjoy the linguistic diversity and the unique character of the rural towns here.
I have a niece and nephew who are life guards in the summer in a French town. They took French in school and the language at the pool is French. They would not be able to do their jobs properly if they weren't fluent in French in a town where there is a French majority.
Hope that answers your questions.
Quite interesting. May I ask what your mother tongue is?
quote=Neutre;9526156]Quite interesting. May I ask what your mother tongue is?[/quote
]
Mennonite Low German, a dialect similar to Frisian and Flemish. Almost identical really, since Frisian speakers in the Netherlands and the Flemish in Belgium both understand me.
Mennonite Low German, a dialect similar to Frisian and Flemish. Almost identical really, since Frisian speakers in the Netherlands and the Flemish in Belgium both understand me.
When you talked about your non-English, non-French language that was still widely spoken, I thought that it might be a Mennonite language. Since they tend (or at least tended) to live in relative isolation from broader society, this has had the effect of preserving their language within their families and even in entire communities while others on the Prairies have spectacularly declined.
The Mennonites’ Plattdeutsch has a better intergenerational survival rate in Western Canada than any of the other historically-present languages like Ukrainian that were originally spoken by much, much larger groups.
The Mennonite language likely has even more vitality and is more frequently passed down to younger generations than French is, even though French has official status federally in Canada and semi-official status in Manitoba to back it up.
[SIZE=2][/SIZE]
Two friends of mine from Saskatchewan come from Plattdeutsch Mennonite background. He can still remember his parents speaking it among each other. Although they usually did it when they didn't want the children to understand. His wife, on the other hand, grew up only in English. Ironically, she learned German faster than him.
When you talked about your non-English, non-French language that was still widely spoken, I thought that it might be a Mennonite language. Since they tend (or at least tended) to live in relative isolation from broader society, this has had the effect of preserving their language within their families and even in entire communities while others on the Prairies have spectacularly declined.
The Mennonites’ Plattdeutsch has a better intergenerational survival rate in Western Canada than any of the other historically-present languages like Ukrainian that were originally spoken by much, much larger groups.
The Mennonite language likely has even more vitality and is more frequently passed down to younger generations than French is, even though French has official status federally in Canada and semi-official status in Manitoba to back it up.
[SIZE=2][/SIZE]
I was afraid I'd have to explain we don't all ride horses and buggies.
About the isolation, you are partly correct. But Russian Mennonites (where I come from) were invited to come to settle Manitoba by the Canadian government who feared the sparsely populated prairies might prove too much temptation for the Americans and originally promised Mennonites that they would be allowed to have their own schools, in their own language. I'd have to refresh my memory on the exact dates, but I think it was after the second world war that they reneged on that promise.
It is my understanding that the Catholic church played a great role in sustaining French culture in Quebec due to the power it had over people's lives - in that sense, the Mennonite church played the same role, as did the Eastern Orthodox churches for the Ukrainian immigrants here. It is because of that that Manitoba was settled more linguistically than other places and since the communities were ethnically the same, it was easier to retain the language and customs of the region from where they came.
For example, I worked some years ago in a place with we had one Flemish from Belgium person, one French Canadian from a little French town in Manitoba, and one Ukrainian and then moi, myself, the Russian Mennonite. All of these folks spoke their native language fluently and were connected culturally, except for the lone Anglo-Saxon who spoke only English, poor thing.
That's just not uncommon here. As far as Mennonites retaining their cultural/language, that is dying out among native-born Canadians. It seems that as soon as you think of a language in terms of being aware of it as a minority language, you are no longer living it in the sense that people who live in their languages take them for granted.
However, there are a number of conservative Mexican Mennonites who move back and forth between Mexico and Canada fairly regularly (dual citizenship), and I think that the future of the language depends on them and the influx of Mennonites via Germany but originally from the former Soviet Union who have been coming here in pretty good numbers for years.
For some Mennonites, there was a stigma attached to their language - the "smell of the barnyard," as my husband puts it.
I can live entirely in my own language in my area and in many of the towns originally granted the Mennonite settlers. I am starting the downside of my 40s though, and my younger siblings do not speak MLG well enough to be understood. The church lost a lot of its authority and with it the ability to be an influence on the retention of language.
My nieces and nephews understand it not at all - although they speak French!
In my house my husband and I make a point to speak MLG. We both learned English in school - and in my husband's time at least, it wasn't uncommon for Mennonite children to be beaten if they were caught speaking MLG even during recess - and for myself, after living in an Anglo world, for some time my native language was pretty much on the back burner. It is easy to lose a language when you don't use it regularly.
My grandfather immigrated from Russia after 1917. They were kulaks so... not a good place to be then. My husband's parents immigrated which makes my husband second generation Canadian and they were more multi-lingual than in my family, speaking at home, Russian (mostly for swearing ), Ukrainian, some Yiddish, High or standard German, as well as Mennonite Low German, and of course, the new language of their new country - English.
Sorry if TMI. I just really love it when people don`t toss out the old ways to make room for the new. If there is one really good thing about Manitoba, for me, it would be that ability to have a mini United Nations contained in one province. It would be a poorer world for me if there was nothing but Anglos.
I was afraid I'd have to explain we don't all ride horses and buggies.
About the isolation, you are partly correct. But Russian Mennonites (where I come from) were invited to come to settle Manitoba by the Canadian government who feared the sparsely populated prairies might prove too much temptation for the Americans and originally promised Mennonites that they would be allowed to have their own schools, in their own language. I'd have to refresh my memory on the exact dates, but I think it was after the second world war that they reneged on that promise.
It is my understanding that the Catholic church played a great role in sustaining French culture in Quebec due to the power it had over people's lives - in that sense, the Mennonite church played the same role, as did the Eastern Orthodox churches for the Ukrainian immigrants here. It is because of that that Manitoba was settled more linguistically than other places and since the communities were ethnically the same, it was easier to retain the language and customs of the region from where they came.
For example, I worked some years ago in a place with we had one Flemish from Belgium person, one French Canadian from a little French town in Manitoba, and one Ukrainian and then moi, myself, the Russian Mennonite. All of these folks spoke their native language fluently and were connected culturally, except for the lone Anglo-Saxon who spoke only English, poor thing.
That's just not uncommon here. As far as Mennonites retaining their cultural/language, that is dying out among native-born Canadians. It seems that as soon as you think of a language in terms of being aware of it as a minority language, you are no longer living it in the sense that people who live in their languages take them for granted.
However, there are a number of conservative Mexican Mennonites who move back and forth between Mexico and Canada fairly regularly (dual citizenship), and I think that the future of the language depends on them and the influx of Mennonites via Germany but originally from the former Soviet Union who have been coming here in pretty good numbers for years.
For some Mennonites, there was a stigma attached to their language - the "smell of the barnyard," as my husband puts it.
I can live entirely in my own language in my area and in many of the towns originally granted the Mennonite settlers. I am starting the downside of my 40s though, and my younger siblings do not speak MLG well enough to be understood. The church lost a lot of its authority and with it the ability to be an influence on the retention of language.
My nieces and nephews understand it not at all - although they speak French!
In my house my husband and I make a point to speak MLG. We both learned English in school - and in my husband's time at least, it wasn't uncommon for Mennonite children to be beaten if they were caught speaking MLG even during recess - and for myself, after living in an Anglo world, for some time my native language was pretty much on the back burner. It is easy to lose a language when you don't use it regularly.
My grandfather immigrated from Russia after 1917. They were kulaks so... not a good place to be then. My husband's parents immigrated which makes my husband second generation Canadian and they were more multi-lingual than in my family, speaking at home, Russian (mostly for swearing ), Ukrainian, some Yiddish, High or standard German, as well as Mennonite Low German, and of course, the new language of their new country - English.
Sorry if TMI. I just really love it when people don`t toss out the old ways to make room for the new. If there is one really good thing about Manitoba, for me, it would be that ability to have a mini United Nations contained in one province. It would be a poorer world for me if there was nothing but Anglos.
It’s not "too much information" at all, but rather very interesting.
And no, I didn’t think you all rode horses and buggies.
It’s too bad - but not surprising I suppose - that the younger generations of Mennonites are losing their ancestral language like many other groups already have.
I think most Canadians who were born in Canada and went to school from K-12 in Canada would know some French. At the bare minimum, in B.C., one has to study French from grades 4-8, and many study French until grade 11-12. I studied French in public school from grades 4-11, and I can read simple French and get the main idea, and I can easily talk in sentences (though my grammar isn't great).
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.
), Ukrainian, some Yiddish, High or standard German, as well as Mennonite Low German, and of course, the new language of their new country - English.
