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As time goes on English becomes more important a language as more people learn it all over the world. Bilingualism at the federal civil service level has fallen in importance, now it's mostly a phrase you teach everyone telling the person on the phone to wait while they get the office's french speaker. Other than court trolls fishing for money from airlines, or the odd Quebecer with a huge stick up his ass, French used in the rest of Canada isn't an issue. If you come upto most English speaking Canadians and only speak French, I would break out my useless 1 year of highschool french, (before I switched to spanish) and try and help you out, this is the case 99% of the time. Unlike trying to use English in Quebec with has a 50/50 chance of being a good experince or a bad one.

An investment in French is for most of Canada a poor investment. An investment in English for the two parts of the nation that might need it, is a great investment.

So long story short, English in Quebec is for their own economic intrests, that is why they should bother with it.

   

Language Police.

Nobody would oppose bilingualism if it was applied fairly across the board but since it's a one way street that benefits only Quebec people are pissed about it and rightly so.

   

The largest problem I see is that in this nation all you need to speak is English, have other languages are nice but unless you practice them they will rust. The german I learned in Highschool has all but faded into nothing because I havent heard nor spoken anything german in over 10 years.

If you want Quebecois french to be taken seriously, people who speak the language will have to move out of Quebec and settle in other parts of the country. That is what many Chinese and Asia minor expatriates have done and it is forcing many places in BC and the rest of Canada to take measures to accommodate them. You cant sitting back on your hands, and dictate to the rest of nation how your language must be supported will not have it welcomed with open arms.

   

If you are narrow minded enough to stay in Canada all your life and not cross the border of your province, yeah, you might be right. I find it very funny to answer German tourists in German when they ask something in English with a huge accent

   

I know many narrow minded Quebecers. I'm glad to say none of them are on this site.... anymore.

If you ever want to help me regain my German, I would welcome it Brenda!

   

See my post about the balancing act Quebec has to deal with, and the various ways in which that province has retooled its language laws to better accommodate its English minority. How would any of the other provinces handle it if they were the only English-speaking majority on a French-speaking continent?



Oddly enough, during the summers I spent in Jonquiere and Quebec City, many of the locals told me I spoke pretty good French. Then again, I took French immersion through all 12 years of school, and I went to the University of Alberta's francophone faculty for my university education.



By that logic, French is the logical second language for Alberta, given the work the French-speaking priests did to lay the ground for eventual settlement of the West, ranging from economic development to convincing the Natives to sign the Treaties to developing the infrastructure of some of the early Alberta communities, and the work francophone Albertans have done to contribute to the province since then.



Not necessarily, if you immigrate to Canada and speak good French but not good English. Like I said, we have immigrants in Edmonton who come from French-speaking countries and are integrating into society through the languages they already speak.

And speaking for me, learning French and going through French immersion has been a fantastic investment. It's given me a much better understanding of the perspectives of other parts of Canada, and arguably sparked my interest in Canadian history.

Just out of curiosity, when it comes to Chinese or Punjabi as secondary languages in B.C., how far are these efforts going? Is there a push to have them recognized as official provincial languages, or just as options in school?

   

Really, who cares about French outside of Quebec and NB? I'm all for preserving the language in Quebec et al but it's kinda crazy that it's rammed down everybodies throat elsewhere and we have to pay for it.

Langauges come and go. French is on the ebb in North America and Spanish is on the rise. English will dominate as long as the US dominates culturally in the West.

   

Thanks... I think.

   

I even agree with you, but I also think that Québec should continue protecting French in Québec. One of the reasons is monetary. I have no doubt that a lot of tourists come here because of the fact that we are a French enclave.

   

I'm all for services for both languages where numbers warrant. It's not warranted in some parts in the country but it's enforced regardless, ideology wins over practicality and comon sense.

The original intent of bilingualism was to ensure people had access to government services in both English and French were numbers warrant. But now it's been hi-jacked by language zealots.

It started out with well I'm Francophone and my supervisor should talk to me in French if I want to speak my mother tongue because my language is threatened, and if I don't force the anglophone to speak french to me at work I might lose my french when I go home from work where I live the rest of my life in French. Yes, this is the thinking.

Now its been molested to the point, for example in the Ottawa area there's a big push to make all jobs bilingual, sort mail, count paper clips, deliver packages for the government where you never have to deal with the public. You have to speak both official languages to do the job. Ideology.

There are exceptions of course science based jobs, were they work mostly in english because the shit they do is a matter of life and death. They leave these departments alone. Hypocrites.

It's nothing more than affirmative action for a language minority group, and it's working well for them were they can apply it.

This is all happening in the Ottawa area, which everyone should be reminded where the majority of our federal government jobs are. Ottawa, you know where our laws come from.

   

See, that's another problem. Bilingualism policy is worthwhile in and of itself, but there are parts of it that really need to be updated. Crap like this, for one.

   

As a person born and raised in small town Sask I can personally say that bilingualism royally sucks for a lot of us. Our post offices are required to have at least one French speaker which generally requires importing somebody from another town because nobody that is bilingual sticks around in town long enough to take the job. As a result we generally have to hire anyone that has even half decent French because it is just that hard to find them around here. We actually have more people that speak Swazi than French because until recently every doctor we brought into town was from South Africa.

In high school the French class was mandatory for years, I was among the many students that realized early on that it was a lot of work for a language that we might have to use once or twice in our lifetime so it became a class where you just messed around and didn't try at all. Far more useful languages to many people here would be German, Ukrainian, or Russian as the (great)grandparents of most people in town either spoke English or one of the three. Cree would also be a lot more useful as more people in Sask speak Cree than people that speak French and it is also a lot more culturally relevant to the region.

Simply put, in small towns and the major cities, French is just not worth the cost of teaching it, there are one or two towns in Sask that speak French and everyone in them also knows English. There is no cultural defense for having French but not Cree, German, Ukrainian, or Russian as well.

   

Why is it good to make it easier for them to come to Canada?

   

For the same reason we want to make it easier for any immigrant to come to Canada-so they can contribute to our economy. They can communicate in at least one of our official languages, so they can integrate more quickly. This is why, as I understand it, the Harper Conservatives implemented those new immigration requirements that require immigrants to speak good English or French before they're allowed in.



Doesn't that mean that there's no cultural defense for Russia not including Chinese in its curriculum, or China not having Ukrainian, or the Ukraine not having Tagalog in its curriculum? People complain about the costs of bilingualism, but how much more does that cost increase if we start including all the other languages now too?

As I see it, bilingualism exists because the English and the French were two of our three founding peoples. These languages are the ones people use to communicate with each other, including immigrants when they speak to someone who doesn't already speak their ancestral language. An immigrant from Bolivia might speak Spanish to his family or other immigrants from South America, but when he interacts with someone who originally hails from, say, Mali he'd probably need to use English or French. Same thing if he interacts with someone who originally hails, from, say, Lebanon.

These people who come to Canada and start speaking English and/or French have just as much to call themselves English Canadians or French Canadians as I do. You could be a black guy from Rwanda or a white guy from Belgium, but if you come here and use French to interact with your neighbours I think you could call yourself a French Canadian. Same thing with those Chinese and Tagalog speakers who immigrate to B.C.-if they use English to get along with people who don't speak their ancestral languages, then they can call themselves English Canadians if they so desire.

It's a bit trickier with the Aboriginals, since there are multiple languages and it may not be practical to make all of them official everywhere. Making them official on Aboriginal territory, of course, is important.

   

So we will try to address a short term labour problem by creating a long term social problem. Great.
~
But again why does French get protection, while German, Ukrainian, or Russian was aloud to fade and be replaced by English? In everywhere but Quebec people let other languages but English die off.

And guess which location is the constant pain in the ass for the rest of the nation?

Bilingualism is government sanction and support of disharmony in the nation.

   

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