Machjo

French is my mother tongue, I read in French and English every day, I speak Chinese every day, and am presently working on a book project in Esperanto, yet I reject my right to French and English in the Constitution.Why? There are a few reasons. 1. Why should the government guarantee me a right to service in the languages of members of the world's two mist advantaged language communities instead of a sign language or the local indigenous language? 2. Instead of guaranteeing me a right to English or French monolingualism, why not impose on me the obligation to learn an international auxiliary language like Esperanto? That way, dyslexic indigenous, Chinese, and other Canadians would need to learn the same IAL instead of the far more difficult English and French. In other words, we'd all meet each other part way in the communicative process. Why should I have a right to unilingualism by virtue of my mother tongue? 3. After having read Book I of the Report of the Report of the Royal Commisdion on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, I'd come to realise how racist an ideology official bilingualism is. If you don't have time to read the Report, then read at least the Wikipedia Article on official bilingualism in Canada which includes quotes from the Report. Though official bilingualism was about promoting equality between English and French Canadians, it was also explicitly about excluding others. Any progressive-minded person would reject official bilingualism for these reasons. It's a reactionary policy of the 1960's.

Grammatical correction without stylistic improvements: Si vous voulez un emploi, alors vous apprendrez le français. I'm sure the English-ASL, English-Algonquin, and English-Chinese bilinguals in Ottawa will appreciate being told: Thanks for your taxes, but the government is an Anglo-French club. You don't belong here because you don't speak the right two languages.

Why hire an illiterate in the working language?

Video signs?

I could agree with multiple official languages, but then we would need to differentiate them somehow. As an example, the UN has six official languages, but the 'working language' is English. Practicality requires a common language. It's all politics. At the UN, only the Chinese ambassador uses the Chinese interpreter. He knows English, but still addresses the Assembly in Chinese and will still put the headphones in his ears and at least pretend to listen to the Chinese interpreter. Why? Because it's his job to do so. We want to avoid the same kind of problem in Canada. In fact we have it already with people suing Air Canada for a 7-Up in French. What I could see would be the following modification to the Constitution: 1. Remove all rights pertaining specifically to English and French from everyone who is born more than one year after this new Act is passed. 2. Require all public schools to teach an international auxiliary language (maybe Esperanto) as a compulsory second language. 3. The Government if Canada must produce a curriculum for students at least up to the age of fifteen in each of Canada's indigenous languages. 4. The local indigenous language shall be the default language of instruction until the age of fifteen. For example, the Government would have to send an unidentified orphan who speaks no other language to a school that teaches in the local indigenous language. 5. Each parent can send his child to school in a language of his choice, maybe through a voucher programme for example. 6. Each government within which boundaries the local indigenous language is the same everywhere shall require all new hirees to be bilingual, with preference, in order of preference, all other qualifications being equal and knowing Canada's international auxiliary language, going to: a. The one who knows the local indigenous sign language. b. The one who knows an international auxiliary sign language (maybe International Sign). c. The one who knows the oral and written local indigenous language. D. Any other language. This might apply to local governments for example. 7. Every government within which boundaries more than one local indigenous language is spoken shall require all knew hirees to be bilingual, preference, all other qualifications being equal, first to the one who knows International Sign, and then to any other language. This would ensure a common language while also promoting the local indigenous language in an efficient manner.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I don't doubt it. I was just quoting statistics, not commenting on any particular person.

To those who think every Canadian should be bilingual by the end of high school, there would be an easy, efficient, and cost-effective way to achieve this. Each Provincial government passes the following law: 1. Each public school can teach the second language of its choice. 3. Each student can write the test for the second-language of his choice. 3. No student who is born more than one year after this law is adopted graduates from high school without acquiring a complete knowledge of a second language or obtaining a medical certificate indicating a disability that prevents him from doing so. In such an environment, schools would exploit one of three strategies: 1. Exploit the local environment. For example, a school in Burnaby might offer Chinese immersion or one in an English suburb of Montreal English immersion. 2. Teach a similar language. Some English schools might teach Afrikaans immersion or another Germanic language that resembles English as much as possible. Some French schools might teach Spanish immersion or another Romance language as similar to French as possible. 3. Teach an easier language (meaning phonetic spelling, no silent letters, simple grammar, no exceptions, etc.). Some schools might offer core or at most intensive Esperanto (immersion would be overkill and a waste of time for such an easy language). This might apply in rural areas where a school can't find a qualified Afrikaans or Spanish teacher for example. The problem though is that proponents of official bilingualism are more interested in creating jobs for English teachers in Quebec and French teachers outside of Québec than ensuring that the students learn their second language well, so they would not tolerate that such a pedagogically sound approach replace the ideological approach we have now.

Add to that that if Stats Can says about 49% of Canadians between 16 and 65 is functionally literate in neither official language, I'd imagine that the rate is even higher for the deaf, dyslexics, and especially deaf-dyslexics.

However, Canada has invested crazily in promoting official bilingualism compared to even Europe.

Stats Can: about 17% can hold a conversation in both official languages Canada-wide. This does not count unofficial languages.Furthermore, 49% of Canadians (and around 60% on reserves) between the ages of 16 and 65 is functionally literate in neither official language! I'd say functional literacy should be more of a national priority than official bilingualism.

Just to be clear, I'm fluently trilingual and semi fluent in a fourth language. However, I can make a distinction between personal multilingualism and language policy as public policy.

Hate to bust your bubble, but statistically only about 43% of Europeans learn a second language well, and only about 6% learn English well.

So the whole point of learning a second language is to relearn it more easily the second time around?

Agreed.

That's the problem. If the state is bilingual, then everyone learns just those two languages, so we end up with shortages in ASL, Chinese, etc. If the state is officially unilingual, then everyone can learn a second language of his choice, so instead if duality, we have unity in diversity. The state should be unilingual and the people bilingual, not the other way around.

Ridiculous. English and French are too difficult for that. Plus what if the child or parent would prefer Cree, ASL, or Arabic instead? Maybe Esperanto, five times easier to learn than English, as a common second language. But given the prejudices against that, the next best thing is English Canada and French Canada, each officially unilingual.

Norway is an EEA country, not an EU member.

Proof. I'd read a CBSA statement in broken English and could even identify the conclusions as false. She's misunderstood everything. Not only was she allowed to work in English, but even through an English interpreter!

Trust me. When I'm in Ottawa and I don't know the person's language, I default to English just as I default to French in Gatineau. Imagine how tiring it would get to ask at the beginning of each encounter what language a person speaks. Then there"s the matter if interpretation. I know one case of a French-speaking CBSA officer who's interviewed a person in broken English since no French-Chinese interpreter was available, and botched it all up and misunderstood everything, probably because of the language barrier between the officer and the Chinese-English interpreter. At a bond hearing, a judge asked me in a French accent to address her in English because interpretation was already going on between English and Chinese. The fact is, that on the job, fédéral workers sometimes have to use the language that best allows communication, not the one in which he's weakest for practice. He can do that at home, but at work we want him to use the language that will best suit the circumstances.

What we need is official unilingualism in the dominant local language maybe. This would mean Federal offices in Ottawa would operate unilingually in English, and those in Gatineau unilingually in English. It's not the government that should be bilingual, but the citizens. The Inuit visiting Ottawa has no right to service in Inuktitut in Ottawa, si why should the French Canadian in French? Same with the unilingual English speaker in Quebec city. And in the modern world, of what use it it? I remember participating at an IRB bond hearing by phone in Ontario. Hearing the accent, I responded in French. The judge asked me to switch to English because there was already interpretation between Chinese and English. Given that the accused enjoyed the right only to the balance of probabilities, I was not about to argue over some hypothetical Constitutional right to service in French. The world has become too complex for official bilingualism, especially where translation and interpretation is concerned.

Then again, a 20 something where I used to work just a few years ago and who was educated in Canada had never even heard of the Canadian Indian Residential School System, and she'd gone to school in a town bordering a reserve and had indigenous classmates!

But after WWII, we'd witnessed significant improvements in human rights. Maybe we do need another world upheavel to spur us to take another leaps of faith towards a better world.

Under proportional representation, I could imagine one new party forming. A new party, maybe moderately libertarian-leaning, called 'the Equality Party' or something similar with a focus on abrogating the separate school system and reducing the status of official bilingualism that would attract almost everyone but English and French Canadians. Another possibility would be that the Libertarian Party itself adapt to fill that role. Inversely, I could imagine English and French Canadians sticking with the present parties, but with these parties working together in Parliament to more aggressively defend these privileges.

I see only one advantage with proportional representation: it allows unofficial religious, linguistic, and other communities to unite to remabrogate the separate school system and official language rights from the constitution. Under FPTP, if the English and French ethnic communities hold even the smallest of majorities in most ridings, they can continue to impose the separate school system and official bilingualism on all taxpayers to subsidize their own religions and languages. Under a more proportional system, members of unofficial religious and linguistic communities can better combine their votes against the religious and linguistic provisions of the constitution. Even with that though, I still see FPTP to be preferable at least in a non-parrisan electoral system for the sake of unity. That way, it would put pressure on members of unofficial religious and linguistic communities to educate the English and the French about the injustice of the separate school system and official bilingualism and so have the English and the French voluntarily relinquish their privileged status. In a partisan system though, unofficial religious and linguistic communities might have no choice but to support proportional representation to defend themselves more adequately. The drawback still comes down to the potential development of animosity between the English and the French on the one hand and everyone else on the other.