Machjo

It was the white man's burden, remember. The conquerers were there to educate the 'savages' and spread their divine civilization. No. At that time, empire-building was the goal. Nothing else mattered. Or how about not conquered at all? Hmmm... Sounds like you haven't outgrown that era yet, have you. Why should they have been conquered in your opinion? Was assimilation the objective of conquest in your mind? Or is it that you perceive even a neighbouring country that doesn't speak the Queen's English to be a threat to Britannia? Or was it just that the Loyalists needed some lebensraum?Too bad Britannia was busy fighting the traitors to the South, otherwise it could have redirected its efforts at a more efficient cultural or literal genocide of the pesky savages and the French, eh. You seriously haven't left your cubicle yet, have you. If an Algerian should do business with France, he's highly unlikely to do so in English. The same applies with a Brazilian doing business with Peru, or a Persian with an Arab, etc. English really is limited to tourist traps, aeronautical and maritime communications, and extremely wealthy multinational corporations. I have lived abroad, and on occasion, even in groups of people with various mother tongues, usually the local language prevails. I remember having no choice but to communicate with a Korean in Chinese since even though she'd studied English in Korea for many years, she'd never really mastered it, but since living in China, she'd picked up Chinese. Just check the world statistics for English. Though English is given a privileged status in many international organizations, it's often restricted to professional translators and interpretors, since even in those organizations, many don't know English. English as the international language is pure myth. Accepted worldwide no doubt. In central Quebec, they seem to believe they're the only ones in the world who don't know English and so had better get on with learning it. In China, they seem to believe the same thing. It's just a commonly held worldwide myth believed among those less traveled. Sorry to burst Britannia's bubble.

You've obviously not traveled much abroad, have you. Or if you have, you stuck around the tourist traps. I've traveled off the beaten path a few times, and can tell you that English is not nearly as global as you make it out to be. You'd be surprise how much international business goes on in neighbouring languages, such as Chinese doing business with Koreans in Korean instead of English, which is a growing trend now in that region.

An income tax has little to no bearing on road use. I'm not against income tax per se, but as much as possible ttaxes ought to be rationally distributed to ensure natural incentives for peopel to make less use of resources.

I'm not suggesting that government monitor our road use. I realise that would be expensive, inefficient, highly bureaucrcatic, impractical, etc. However, simple solutions like shifting taxes from income to gas for example, we'd end up with an at least approximate correlation. I think it's reasonable to suppose that the more you use the roads, the more gas you need to buy.

Ok, fair enough. On the one hand, I wish the federal government had never funded the Olympics iin the first place, in which case it woudl not even be any of our business. On the other hand, since the feds did fund the Olympics, then certainly they have a say, and have a right to insist that French have as equal a status as English as is possible. On that front, certainly thy do have a point. But again, we should never have funded the Olympics in the first place.

I don't know about rabid libertarians, but I certainly agree that moderate libertarians would agree. However, the question is not whether the government ought to build infrastructure or not, but rather whether incentives ought to be built into the taxation system to make taxpayers more aware of the cost of the roads and use them wisely and not contribute unnecessarily to traffic when not necessary. If the taxation system has no bearing on your road use for example, then you're not aware of the actual cost of using them and so end up using them even just for joy rides all the time, contributing to wearing of the roads, traffic, pollution, etc. If taxes were more directly related to your use of that resource, you'd use it more responsibly, would you not? And that in turn would help reduce the cost of road construction and maintenance.

See above.

I'll quote directly from the Olympic Charter 2007 (http://www.turin2006.com/Documents/Reports/EN/en_report_122.pdf): 24 Languages 1. The official languages of the IOC are French and English. 2. At all Sessions, simultaneous interpretation must be provided into French, English, German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. 3. In the case of divergence between the French and English texts of the Olympic Charter and any other IOC document, the French text shall prevail unless expressly provided otherwise in writing. So I think this makes it clear that French is the primary official language of the International Olympic Committee, and tradition also places French as the primary language of the Olympics anywhere they are held. This puts this language portion beyond the scope of national policies. If any nation should decide to forgo the French portion, it would be conspicuous by its absence. In a country like Canada, obviously even more so. In order to not raise eyebrows, any nation would need to follow the usual tradition of French followed by English followed by the national language if different. Even if Canada had no significant French-speaking population, it would still have included French, just like Beijing had, and just like London will. If the Chinese government had taken it upon itself to exclude French, it would certainly have made it into the international press. Same if the British government should decide to forgo it next year. Canadian politics really do play a small role in the Olympic languages used. It just so happens that coincidentally our languages are the same as the IOC's, and that's what's leading to all the confusion with Canadian language politics now grafting themselves onto what is essentially the traditional role of languages in the Olympics.

Where do you get 20% from? You can't interpret part of an event. You either interpret it all or not at all. And since Canada is irrelevant in the IOC context anyway, all that matters is that it abides by IOC rules.

Seeing that the Olympics are under the responsibility of the IOC and not the Canadian Federal government, I don't think it's appropriate for the Canadian Federal Government to be criticizing this so publicly. If there's an issue, bring it up with the IOC in private, and if there really is an issue, I'm sure the IOC will make the appropriate modifications come next Olympics. But as the article says, the IOC seemed to be satisfied, so what's the issue?

That's no different from Canadians who assume all Chinese know chinese or all Russians know Russian. Any geographically large political entity brewing with many ethnic groups is likely to be multilingual too. for example, even in Nunavut according to Stats Can 2006, about 15% of the population knows neither English nor French. I'd come across something similar in Western China. Some of them spoke Chinese quite poorly. Europeans coming from small relatively homogeneous countries are not likely to understand such complexities unless they're well travelled, well read or something.

Perhaps in Canada. On the international stage though, there is plenty of international business going on in languages other than English. English might be the major one, but by no means the only one. I remember coming across Chinese who did business with Korea in Korean, not English.

Now in response to a few other comments. It's said that English and French are not difficult. By whose standards? I know both languages fluently, so they're not difficult for me, any more than it would be difficult for the incredible hulk to lift a 1 ton car over his head. We're not going to say now that it's easy to lift a car over our heads because the Hulk can, are we? So what other basis can we use for judging the difficulty level of a language more objectively? Perhaps we could take a statistic of how many people can lift a car over their heads, and that might be a more accurate and objective measure of difficulty. According to Stats Can, only about 15% of Canadians are bilingual in English and French. I m among them, but as for making a more general observation of whether English and French are easy to learn in a public school setting, obviously statistics are more reliable than the simple question of whether I can learn them. I'm but one person. the goal is to teach it to a whole country. We could learn from King Sae Jong here. He knew the Chinese script, but he was still smart enough to recognize that it was too difficult for most Koreans. He was able to look beyond himself. Today,Korea has among the highest literacy rates in the world and we can thank Sae Jong's committee of scholars for that. We can learn from Zamenhof too. He spoke at least nine languages, but still recognized the value in creating an easy language for all to learn. 'Abbas Effendi likewise know a number of Middle-Eastern languages, but when in the West, realized how useless all those languages were. He too supported the idea of a universal auxiliary language. It's not enough, when talking about universal public education, to ask what I can learn, but rather what the whole population can realistically learn based on real and not imaginary circumstances. On these fronts, we can certainly learn from those wise men.

So are you advising we ban TV now? Clearly if this is the , then any intelligent teacher could figure out that maybe an easier second language ought to be introduced that these lazy sods could handle, don't you think? Let's look at King Sae Jong about 300 years ago. Back then, few Koreans could read and write the Chinese characters. But he didn't just sit there blaming them for being lazy. He realized the importance of literacy and so brought a committee together to create a new script that would be easy for all to learn. Instead of blaming them for their vices, he simply went out and solved the problem. We need problem-solvers, not whiners.

The basics will only get you so far. I speak basic Chinese. But you'd be surprised how much of daily conversation involves higher-level language. We're not just economic robots engaging in trade all the time. Over the course of a day, we make puns, joke, discuss the news, films, books, etc. etc. etc. Knowing just the basics will always leave you handicapped in the end. Add to that that outside the environment, a person who just knows the basics is likely to get bored with just the basics in the end, and so will have to either progress or eventually forget his language.

I know. I'm one of them. I'm a Franco-Ontarian by birth. However, you obviously didn't read what I was responding to. The point was that if we assume an English-Canadian is stupid because he doesn't know French, then clearly the same would have to apply to a French-speaker who doesn't know English, right? Whether I agree with a particular argument or not, I still expect to see some consistency in its logic.

Also, if you make friends from people from around the world and have a sense of curiosity, you'll be amazed at what you can learn without having to travel. I've met 'earth-bound' people who sometimes know more about the world than avid travellers who just stick to organized tour groups everywhere they go.

Actually, I'd never been to Japan, though I'd been in China. Yet I'm still aware of the Ainu and Korean Japanese community. I learnt it through reading.

Have you ever been abroad. When I was in Asia, I'd met people who asked me about Canada's different cultural groups, including First Nations, Quebecers, and even Franco-Ontarians. So if people on the other side of the world know of Franco-Ontarians, then I can assure you they're aware of Quebec. It's the same as us being aware of Japan's minotiry ethnic groups like the Korean Japanese and the Ainu for example.

Check Stats Can. Only about 43% of Quebecers know English. And if we consider that StatsCan is based on self assessment, the real figure is probably even lower. So are most Quebecers stupid because they don't know English? I'd disagree. Quite simply, both English and French are difficult languages to learn. Even in Germany where they speak a Germanic langauge as a mother tongue, only an estimate 6% of Germans really know English well. The bottom line is, English and French are difficult languages to learn. I count myself lucky to know both languages fluently, but would not consider those who don't know both languages to be stupid, but rather less lucky.

If that was the OP's intent, then that wasn't clear. The OP itself was addressing language specifically. And on that front, there were't too many problems. Almost everything was started in French. Apperently, one speech wasn't totally interpreted into French, and that's an unfortunate oversight, but certainly not the end of the world. As for the presentation of French culture, yes I agree it could have received more coverage, considering that Federal funding went into the Olympics.

Yes, but there is so much diversity even just on the West Coast alone, where do we find the time to squeeze in every aspect of Canadian culture. Had this event been more focussed on West Coast culture, then the next Olympics, if held on the East Coast, for example, could have more adequately covered East coast culture, etc.

There is so much to cover even just from West Coast culture, that alone could fill an event. Sorry. I should have been clearer. As far as I'm concerned, no government funding should go into the Olympics, even if that means no Olympics. I guess that point was too subtle.

Yes, but it was referring to the language used, not the other aspects of it. Seeing that the OP has zilch to do with the non-linguistic content of the ceremonies, it does make it a separate issue. Totally relevent. Beijing is not the only non-Anglophone and non-Francophone Olympic host to have followed the policy of including French and English plus the local language if different. That is just standard IOC practice. Seeing that this is an Olympic and thus international event, some of the policy decisions made, though possibly locally implemented, are still based on international IOC norms.