Machjo

Actually, under the current circumstances, I would defend at a minimum that we translate all official government documents into both English and French, and that interpreters be available to MPs in Parliament. What I mainly object to is giving hiring preference to French speaking public servants in Victoria BC or English-speaking public servants in La Malbaie, when their skills will obviously be of no use to them there anyway, not to mention that it also takes away valuable language resources form the private sector and risks givng some of the duller-minded compatriots of ours a false sense of linguistic security. To take one instance, I'd met a Quebecer in Ottawa who'd run out of money and was struggling to find work sinse her English was very poor. To be fair to her, I must say that it was her ex-boyfriend who'd brought her here from central Quebec. She had no money during the break up, wasn't getting along well with her family, and so was more or less stranded in Ottawa and dependent on social assistance. Again, I'm sure the government will provide her with some kind of trades training to help her get back on her feet, and her English will undoubtedly improve in the process in Ottawa's English environment. I'm not pointing fingers at her necessarily, but I would say that certain policies like Official Bilingualism do risk giving certain Canadians this false sense of linguistic security, that they can go anywhere in Canada knowing just one official language and function just fine. But when things don't work out for them, the taxpayer ends up footing the bill for them, and it's not entirely their fault either since they were just misled into this false sense of security. Just because some federal government offices in a city are bilingual, this does not mean that you can just pack up your bags and relocate without first considering whether your language skills are satisfactory for the local job market. And if they're not, then why would we worry about bilingual public servants in cities where unilingual minorities should not be. Honestly, of what use would a federal office be to a unilingual Quebecer stranded in Victoria BC or an Albertan stranded in Quebec City?

In what direction do you think our immigration policy needs to move? Personally, I'd like to see the following: 1. Require all applicants for immigration to pass a sufficiently rigorous English or French language test and cut all federal spending for all new citizens on the following language training programme: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/pub...ome/wel-22e.asp 2. maintain or raise all other personal requirements. 3. Eliminate all immigration quotas. Since overall standards would be raised, they would take over the purpose of quotas anyway. Besides, it's also a matter of jusice in that if one immigrant can get in, then so should any other who can meet the same or higher standards.None should be turned back just because of his number in the lineup. Would such a policy increase or decrease the rate of immigration to Canada? I think it's hard to say, but however many come, the new personal competence standards would ensure that they'd be well equipped to integrate without being unilaterally dependent on the federal government for special services such as the one linked to above. In some respects, I suppose it could be equated with a shift to a moderately libertarian approach in that it grants more freedom to foreigners to come to Canada while at the same time making them responsible for preparing for their own integration into their destined local community before coming. In what direction would you like to see Canada's immigration policy shift, if at all?

OK, here are the origins of the term, or so it seems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineer It would seem that in its original sense it has neither a positive nor negative connotation. It's simply viewed as an applied social science that can be directed towards good or evil alike, or simply aiming at efficiency in the plant. Then we have more modern definitions. In the political sence, we come up with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engine...itical_science) Ah, as I thought. I've just read this last article, and it confirms why I was so confused about the term. It clarifies that nearly all government policy is by definition social engineering as it aims at modifying social behaviours, for good or bad. So in spite of its negative connotations in some circles, in its own right it's, like its original definition, an amoral term for a political application that can be used for either good or ill. And then we have the sociological sense of the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociological_practice And then we have this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security) I'm assuming you meant it in the political sense, yet seeing that it's not a dirty word in its own right, that's probably why it says nothing to me when you use it in a negative sense minus any context. Without a specific example or instance, the negative connotation can only be lost on me.

Can anyone give a clear definition of 'social engineering'? Honestly, the phrase means little to m; it's just a very vaue concept in my mind. I could probably comment more on it if I had a clearer understanding of what one means when he uses that phrase.

Too vague to comment on. Any specific examples?

And that's on the English language sites. Visit some French-language ones.

I disagree. I'd say diversity minus unity is weakness. You seem to see the two as exclusive. If anything, they depend on one another. In a homogeneous society, people will go out of their way to seek out diversity. In a society lacking unity, people will seek out unity. One cannot exist without the other. I will agree however that Canada has gone out to seek diversity minus unity. As a result, people have gone out to seek unity, examples being a united Quebec identity through the Bloc Quebecois, etc. If we fail to promote a common national identity for all, then people will seek out unity elsewhere, even if it's ethnic unity. I should point out too that language plays a powerful role in society too. For example, it would be awfully difficult for a unilingual Quebecer to feel as one with his Albertan homologue, so it's natural that he'd seek unity elsewhere, and language is a very powerful source of common identity since it's the glue that keeps a society together and that shuts other out more than any other, on a very practical level.

I disagree. I'd say diversity minus unity is weakness. You seem to see the two as exclusive. If anything, they depend on one another. In a homogeneous society, people will go out of their way to seek out diversity. In a society lacking unity, people will seek out unity. One cannot exist without the other. I will agree however that Canada has gone out to seek diversity minus unity. As a result, people have gone out to seek unity, examples being a united Quebec identity through the Bloc Quebecois, etc. If we fail to promote a common national identity for all, then people will seek out unity elsewhere, even if it's ethnic unity.

I agree that many French Canadians are unreasonable in their linguistic expectations from the government. That said, I've come acrs the same unreasonableness among many English-Canadians too. So no, French Canadians haven't got a monopoly on unreasonable expectations from the government by way of language policy.

What culture of entitlement?

I wasn't talking about official languages, but languages. It does have over 300 languages, but only one official language. Imagine 300 official languages! Couldn't happen. That would be like Canada making all of its Aboriginal languages official. We have over 60 of them!

What kind of logic is that? So in that case, once we win in Afghanistan, when can we expect them all to be talking English? Have you ever read Gibbon's Decline and Fall? Facinating book. In it he talks about how the Romans tolerated the Greek language. Why do you think that was? Do you think it would have been wise of them to just impose Latin or to just go out and slaughter the Greeks? Granted, they still maintained the supremacy of Latin. But we'd think in the modern world we would have advanced beyond concepts of might makes right to thinking of what is right instead. I don't know if you're a Christian, but if so, you might enjoy The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy, available online. I'm not Christian myself and don't agree with everything in the book, but I admire his intentions and learnt alot from it none-the-less. How about going eyond simple muscle flexing to civilization and culture?

Now you said' Frech, so I take it you're from France. I've never been there and so can't comment on it, but Canada is not France.

So how can you say 'typical' when you know damn well that we're not borgs. At least in the Ottawa area, language is about the only thing that unites us. Beyond that, we're of every religion, some are vegetarian, some drink, some don't, and don;t identify with any particular ideology. So beyond language and our literature, what really do we 'typical' French Canadians share in common?

Leafless, have you ever knowingly met a French Canadian?

Oh the stereotyping. Of course all French Canadians are 'typical'. Heck, we all look the same too. We all go to Catholic mass every Sunday. We all eat poutine. We all live in Quebec. We all vote Bloc. We all go to Quebec City to celebrate Carnaval. We all dress the same, talk the same, and even have the same ahircuts. Oops, but I'm not Catholic, I dont eat putine, I don't live in Queebc and so couldn't vote Bloc even if I wanted to, and haven't visited Quebec City for years. Or perhaps you imagine a more European model, with a bonnet on the head, abaguette under the arm and sitting on a bicycle going to the restaurant to eat frogs' legs? I bet you do. FYI, we're not borgs and don't appreciate being steretyped as such.

I'll partly agree. I don;t believe it's the government's job to impose this or tht culture, but rather to just administer the state. I support one official language in Quebec because of the efficiencies in brings with it in administrative costs, not to 'protect its culture'. Sure that might be an added bonus, but imposed assimilation shold never be an objective of government. Integration, yes. Assimilation, no. There is a sbtle difference. Assimilation implies loss of one's own culture; integration implies learning the local culture but not necessarily abandoning your own. In other words, assimilation implies trading one culture in for another, whereas integration implies becoming bicultural in your first culture plus a second common culture.

Why shoudl they have to assimilate when they've been here for 30,000 plus years! Talk about the tourist calling the locals foreigners.

That I will agree to. Indeed until recently the govenrment severely neglected local languages, and certainly I wouldn't want to adopt a similar policy altogether. The basic principle of creting, or in the case of Bahasa Indonesia, developing, a common language while maintaining its grammatical regularity still stands, and has proven successful. I'm not defending any other policy of the government's other than that one alone.

As for Indonesia, I'm speaking of its language poicies only, not anything else. They can at least communicate with one another in spite of over 300 languages. Now that's quite a feat. As for unity in diversity, I don't see how we can have one wihtout the other, at least language-wise. To take an example, without a common language (unity), we would all need to learn a number of languages, and that woudl likely mean all the major languages, thus taking time away from learning other languages. As a result, without that linguistic unity, extreme diversity is not possible. Supposing however that an easy common language were established, then we could learn the first language of our choice, be it French, English, Inuktitu, Inuinaqtun, etc. and it wouldn't matter because, worse case scenario, we'd all share a common second language. In this resepct, diversity depends on unity, andunity depends on diversity.

Well, to take Esperanto as an example: 1. I'd learnt it from a book without a teacher in 100 hours. 2. Owing to its logical structure, oneonly needs to read in it now and then to maintain it. 3. Canada has a number of inter-linguistic regions, including the outaouais and Ottawa regions, Montreal, parts of NFL, and parts of Northern Canada. This being the case, many people in or near these interlinguistic regions who lack the aptitude for language learning (83% judging from StatsCan) would likely exploit this new found freedom. Granted, in many parts of Canada it woud not have much ues, but even then some British Columbians might be interested in visiting Charlevoix internet forums to exchange ideas, something not at all possible today for most since most in BC fail to learn French and most in Charlevoix fail to learn English. Would you deny that the new found freedom to exchange dieas between Canadians would likely bring them closer together and make them feel less like strangers? Have you ever heard of incrementalism? They have added it to their list of languages to fulfil school second-language requirements. That alone could be of gret benefit. Let's suppose that we keep English-French bilinguaism in government, but allow Esperanto or a similar language as an alternative option in school for those who find English to be too difficult. This would allow that language to spread among those who lack language abilities, and as it spreads, its value would naturlaly grow in the private sector in inter-linguistic parts of the country, thus breaking down the walls of linguistic segregation and promote more undertanding among such Canadians. Official Bilingualsm is useful only to provide governmetn services, but does little to promote grasroots understanding among individuals unless they can learn both English and French (no more than 17% of the population). This does not bode well for the Federation and its future unity except as a highy decentralized one with each side minding its own business. I never suggested making it compulsory across the board, but rather as an option that could evolve. Right now, it's not even an option in Canada. As for culture, it's laughable to suggest English is part of unilingual Francophone culture, just as it's laughable to suggest that French is a part of unilingual English culture in Caanda. In this respect, Canada has no common culture, but cultures. Looking at it that way, English as a second language or French as a second language have no more cultural significance than Esperanto would, except that Esperanto or a similar language would be... learnable, unlike English or French for most. And as such, it could spread and become part of the culture over time. This could never happen with French or english unless it should be simplified somehow. Of course I wasn't suggesting that it happened over night. The Pidgin did evolve over a long time, and Korean script was creted a few centuries ago and spread gradually. I'd assumed that you would have understood this. My fault, I shold have explained it so let me do so now. Korean script was created a few centuries ago and spread gradually so that by the time Japan had invaded it was known to quite a few already and had started to entre into competition with Hanzi in the general population. In Indonesia, though the language itself was not highly developed in the beginning, granted the Pidgin form of it had spread quite a bit already. I'd assumed you'd have understood that this gradualness of what I was saying was implied. Anyway, now it's said. Remember though that in thebeginning the elties also opposed the Korean script but eventually its benefits became apparent to the general population. The idea with a common language for Canada would have to folow the same pattern of incrementalism of course. From the beginning I had the idea of introducing such a language very gradually and assumed you would haveunderstood that. In that respect, I see the moderate policeis in the UK and Italy as being an incremental step that Canada could follow. Even the italian report presented in my previous post acknowledged the potential for Esperanto as a common European language in the future and that this was an incremental step on the govrnment's part. Continued English-French segregation while pretending to be a common nation? If you and your brother shared no common language, in spite of common blood, you'd feel somewhat foreign to each other, wouldn't you? Why should it be any different for a country?

Sieg Heil, Leafless. You do realise how we whites became dominant on a foreign continent, don't you?

Bad example, Quebec's Bill 101 would be like someone hitting his family member (i.e. it's a Quebec law affecting Quebecers). For Ontario to then try to get back at , let's say, Franco-Ontarians (who have nothing to do with Quebec for the most part) would be like us hitting our family members because you insist on hitting yours.

As a trade Pidin. Even fewer spoke it as a mother tongue then as there are now who do! Yet that limited use at that time did not blind the people to its petentialities for the future. Define 'real daily life'. For most English Canadians, French is a theoretical subject to be tested on in a classroom. Ditto for English for most French Canadians. Well, it's still real life, granted. Not daily, probably more like a few lessons per week of about 40 minutes each, but real life none-the-less. From that standpoint, the Indonesian trade Pidgin would have proven to have 'more life' in trade than English or French have for most Canadians. Unless a language is learnable, it will remain limited to the classroom for most. To be fair, English and French do have much more life for those who can learn it, comparable to the Bahasa Indonesia of today in terms of its wide range of uses. But a language of the elites and those who have the chance to learn it hardly a national languages makes, especially in a democracy. As for Esperanto, it also can be uesd in real daily life, though mainly on the internet, through publications, internet radio, and international conferences and institutes. That too is as real as Indonesian as it was used for trade, or French and English as they might be used in the second-language classroom for most Canadians. Limited reality, granted, just as it was for Indonesian (trade is not all their is in life, after all), and is for French and English for most Canadians (there's more to life than language lessons), but reality none-the-less. But like the Indonesian experience, we have to have the emagination to see not the current reality, but potentialities, as the Indonesian people had done. They did not look at their trade Pidgin and lament its lack of vocabulary for industrial, literary, scientific, religious and other aspects of life. Instead, they recognized its potentialities they they could expand its vocabulary, and they did. Interesting. Hangul also served as a symbol of national identity in korea under Japanese rule. The fact that that script had been created nearly from scratch by an scholars appointed by King Sae Jong did not stop them from adopting it as a national symbol of theirs. How do you explain that? And developed it. The Koreans had gone further. They did not choose the script of their country; they created it. What's wrong with a country creating its reality? This simply shows that the Koreans recognized that they did not exist to serve the script, but that the script existed to serve them. As such, the more user friendly the script, the better. In Indonesia it was a little different in that they did not create their language from scratch but from an already existent trade Pidgin. Bear in mind though that the principle still applies that, rather than adopt an already developed language, they chose to adopt an underdeveloped one and shape it to serve their interests, designed along the simlest grammatical lines for their people. Again, the principle was that the language must serve them, not the other way around. If I spend years of my life learning English as a second language in school only to fail to learn it well beyond passing tests, then we can't say that the language is there to serve me, but rather that I'm there to serve the language, with no benefit to me, as is the case for most French Canadians. And as is the case with French for most English Canadians. No, they did not create one out of thin air, but they did develop it considerably along rational lines. Neither need we to. But we cold learn from their experience and reconize that language must serve us, not the other way around. For instance, what would be wrong with creating a language based on English and French but with rationalized spelling, grammar, etc.? Would having all Canadians learn that language to fluency before the end of highschool requiring no more than a reasonable amount of effort not prove more sueful than having 83% of the population fail to learn their second language well? English and French are valued not for their number of speakers alone, but also for how well one masters it. For a person who can't learn it well, it's no more useful than Klingon. You say they wouldn't, yet they have. The Italian Ministry of Public Instruction added Esperanto to the list of languages from which schools can choose to fulfil second-language requirements in 1993: http://www.internacialingvo.org/public/study.pdf Hungary and Poland followed suit in 2000, Croatia in 2001, and England in 2005. Here's the info for the UK's: http://www.springboard2languages.org/home.htm Granted it simply adds the language as an alternative second language option, a far cry from making it compulsory in all schools. However, I don't believe it would be possible to make it compulsory in all schools owing to the shortage of teachers it would cause. But then I can throw the question back, why did they do this if they could see no use for Esperanto? What qualities did they see in the language that we can't, do you think? Or has Euope just started to go mad? And why would professor Grin have presented such an option to the French government in 2005 when requested by the French government for his advice on language policy: http://cisad.adc.education.fr/hcee/documen...apport_Grin.pdf Granted, the French government chose to ignore his recommendations, but the fact that he presented it in his report is significant none-the-less. I shows that while Canadians think only in the here and now, some other cultures think more in terms of potentialities.

I suppose you're right. As long as we are failing to learn our second official language, the government really has no choice but to provide services in both official languages.