Machjo

Of course a person who resides in Ontario should probably know English except maybe (big maybe) in majority-French municipalities. However, encouraging people to become bilingual helps the tourist indutry. Unless we're now going to expect foreign tourists to know English too? Trust me, a good chunk of tourists to Canada do not know English. Knowing a second language helps not only for those who live here but to interact with tourists and others too. In fact, though I presently work in Quebec, I call South America, Europe, and more rarely Asia on a fairly regular basis and if I'm dealing with a smaller business (which is often the case), I do encounter language barriers often enough but I muddle through inefficiently. the fact is that the world is quite integrated and so we should promote personal bilingualism.

A multilinguistic society with one common second language can work even better than one with no common language and two dominant groups.

Could be. I think though that some Francophones don't realize they're playing with fire. Quebec is very cautious about court rulings that increse French language righrts outside of quebec out of a fear that it expand English language rights in Quebec. French Canadians outside of Quebec shouldn't act surprised if Quebc suddenly turns on them like it in the Yukon case. Yes, Quebecers seemed simpathetic to the plight of Franco-Ontarians, but that was just an initial emotional response. After thinking it through some more, they'll react more rationally. If this goes to court to ask for more French language rights in Ontario, Quebec could very well either bow out or even present acase against the Franco-Ontarians. If it goes to court, it could be interesting.

True. I was referring to an official language of internal government administration.

I actually do favour official unilingualism jurisdictionally. That's why I think Ontartio should adopt English as its sole official language of government administration while leaving each municipality to choose its own official language too.

1. I'm not disputing that even in those states in which the student can choose his second language, English remains the preferred choice. I'm well aware that Eastern Europe is somewhat of an anomaly and even in Hungary where English might be the least popular choice, English still comes first at over 40% far ahead of German in the 30% range. And that's not to mentioni the many states especially in the Far East that simply make English compulsory. But let's not confuse studying the language with achieving any reasonable level of competence in it. The success rate in germany hovers at around 7% and in India at around 4% for example; and even Quebec experiences shortages of competent English teachers and most Quebcers fail to learn English well too. A difference exists between a language's popularity among students and the actual rate of success in that language. 2. You are in fact correct. Indigenous and other peoples were very much excluded. Indigenous peoples were soon interrred at residential schools and while the state tolearated Germans, Ukrainians, etc. for a while when it needed them, it later turned on them when it banned them from sending their children to school in their languages after WWI. 3. I've read the B&B Commission report, so I'm well aware that 'race' was used more or les synonymously with 'people,' but it also makes it clear that 'the Indians and the eskimaux' and 'the other ethnic groups' didn't belong. In fact, its entire Book I pretty much devotes itself to definig and defending the idea of 'two founding races' even though the only linguist by profession among the commissioners wrote a dissenting opijnion rejecting the idea of 'two founding race,' arguing that there existed a few 'founding races' including the Ukrainians and other European Canadians and that they should enjoy certain language rights regionally too; though even he made sure to exclude any non-European peoples from the mix. It's basically a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-historical claim of mythic proportions. Heck, even chinook contains words of Chinese origin, and that's an indigenous language.

I suspect another factor was optics. They could present the issue with Ford as something to do with those evil English. The French vs. the English. Had they had an uprising about Quebec's move, it would have been a French family feud for all the Anglos to see. Wouldn't want that.

So if I understand you correctly, Franco-Ontarians should just pay their taxes and then shut up? I oppose Franco-Ontarians demanding special rights for themselves above and beyond what we might grant Deaf, indigenous, and other language communities, but I also oppose attempts to purposely quash all diversity too.

I could be wrong, but I think English is compulsory in Scandinavian secondary schools. Bear i mind though that they're also Germanic countries. France is one country where students do have a choice but overwhelmingly choose Engllish. Qhen France tried to rectify that by making a second foreign language compulsory, they overwhelmingly turned to German as their second foreign language. So yes, it doesn't always work in all countries, but even the French system still has the virtue of giving choice at least in principle. Where choice of the second language has proven more successul is Hungary where only around 40% of students actually choose English, around 30% German, and shockingly, Esperanto comes in a distant third followed by French in close fourth followed by other languages numbering over fourty from which to chooce. As to why it's proven so successful in Hungary, I can only guess that it might have to do with regional factors. I know Poland allows at least English, German, French, and Esperanto too, so the language policies of neighbouring countries might play a role to an extent. As for Canadian history, I know enough to know that the notion of 'two founding races' is a myth. I've read the B&B Commission report. In fact, did you know that the only linguist by profession among the Commissioners wrote a dissenting opinion in the report with the main focus of his dissent surrounding the notion of 'two founding races.' Also, did you know that Chinook Jargon, an indigenous language of the pacific Northwest, borrowed words from Chinese too? Did you know that Ukrainian Canadians consider themselves among the 'founding races' of Canada too? You'll find that in the dissenting option of the B&B Commission report if you read it. The report makes for dry reading, granted, but I think one can not truly understand the development of the notion of 'two founding races' without reading at least Book I of that report. Perhaps ironcally, my reading of that report made me further reject the notion of 'two founding races.' I say ironically since except for the dissenting opinion, the rest of it attempts to convince me to adopt the notion of 'two founding races.'

By the way, Quebec suffers a similarly critical shortage of English second-language teachers and for the same reason.

One reason for the critical shortage of French-language teachers is precicely because Ontario imposes French as a second language in all of its schools. Should it allow more freedom, then more sino-Ontarians might decide to study education in university and teach Chinese as a second language too. Some unilingual Anglo-Ontarians might decide to study Esperanto (due to its ease of learning) and become qualified as second-language teachers too. Some Deaf Ontarians might then have an interest in pursuing a career in second-language education too. Within a generation, we wouldn't have this critical shortage of competent teachers anymore. the reason for the critical shortage is a government-imposed second-language bottleneck in our schools.

What would have given German Ontarians that idea? Probably the fact that they actually did enjoy that right prior to WWI and in fact had established schools around Berlin Ontario. As for unofficial language rights, those exist in a few countries. Sweden has a school-voucher program. It's history is interesting too in that the most vocal proponents of the program were members of unofficial language communities, especially the Saami and the Finns. Under the school-voucher program, they do not enjoy the guaranteed right to education in their language, but they do enjoy the freedom to do so according to market supply and demand. The rest is up to them. In Hungary, any person or NGO can present a course plan for any language to the Ministry of Education which it will then rate according to its pedagogical soundness. Once the plan is approved, any public school can teach it and any student can take a test in it to fulfil the second-language requirement for high-school graduation, again according to teacher supply and parent or student demand. Indonesia has one official language, Indonesian, which evolved from a trade Pidgin (since systematically developed for use by the state) that few in Indonesia actually speak as a first language. Instead, it serves as the state's official lingual franca. In a sense, Indonesia turns the notion of language rights on its head. In Indonesia, no one has a right to his first language and everyone has an obligation to learn the official language of the state. One advantage with this is that since it's no one's 'ethnic' language, Indonesians therefore have no interest in promoting it as such and instead want to promote it as Indonesia's auxiliary language to serve as a common second language in conjunction with the mother tongue. This is very different from the case in Canada where the state promotes the languages of its two dominant ethnic groups and so has a certain incentive to assimilate others to it. So yes, others states do recognize the idea of unofficial-language rights.

As for Anglo-Quebecers, I don't believe they should enjoy more rights than any other of Quebec's unofficial language communities either.

You want the opinioin of a Franco-Ontarian? Well, here's mine: 1. Ontario should rename the Ministry of Francophone Affairs 'the Ministry for Language Rights.' 2. Appoint a Commissioner for Language Rights, a Deputee Commissioner for Deaf Language Rights, a Deputee Commissioner for Indigenous Language Rights, and a Deputee Commissioner for an International Auxiliary Language, but do not increase the Commission's budjet and instead just shrink staff as required to hire the Commissioners. It has fourteen staff members at present, so it should be able to find the savings from that. 3. Establish a school-voucher program that would allow each student to present a voucher to the institution of his choice and allow each institution to teach in the official or unofficial language of its choice accoridng to market supply and demand. 4. Make learning a second language in secondary school compulsory (as is already the case), but let each school teach and each student take the test in the second language of his choice (within reasonable limits like in Hungary) to fulfil the second-language requirement to obtain his secondary-school diploma. in Hungary for example, a student can choose from languages as diverse as Latin, Esperanto, and Hungarian Sign Language among many others.

While what you say is true, it applies even more to other languages. For example, sign-language communities are even more marginalized. Also, German Ontarians lost the right to send their children to school in German after WWI, but unlike Franco-Ontarians, have not regained that right to this day. If I had my way, I'd rename the Ministry 'the Ministry for Language Rights' and broaden its scope to include Deaf, indigenous, and other unofficial language rights too. As for the Francophone university, just issue school vouchers, let each student present an electronic voucher at the participating university of his choice, and let each participating university teach in the official or unofficial language of its choice. What irritates me the most as a Franco-Ontarian myself is not the ignorance that some anglophones reveal towards French but the ignorance francophones reveal towards other languages. In many respects, French Canadians are just as self-centred as English Canadians on this matter.

In 2015, the Government of Quebec stood against the Commission scolaire francophone du Yukon's call for more freedom to accept more students to its schools at the Supreme Court of Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_bilingualism_in_Canada#Official_bi-unilingualism_based_on_the_territoriality_principle While French-speaking communities spoke out against Quebec's move, we never witnessed the uprising we witnessed in Ontario in the last week. Why is it that when Quebec opposed more language rights for French Canadians outside of Quebec, French Canadians politely expressed their disappointment; but when an anglophone should do the same, all hell breaks loose?

Actually, Esperanto, like any other living language, is in constant development. According to one study, due to Esperanto being from five to ten times easier to learn than English, if the EU switched to Esperanto as its common second language, that could save the EU from 17 to 18 billion euros yearly. It's kind of ironic how Esperanto is the fiscally conservative choice in the long term.

Yes, but you can't expect your local marriage registrar, police or immigration officer, or even lawyer to get a specialized degree in a foreign language. That requires a major investment of time and money on a mass scale. That's where an international auxiliary language could come in handy. We cannot afford to provide specialized language training to our entire civil service.

I've translated between the two official languages and between co-nationals.

I know a few languages and work in the language industry so I do have some knowledge with regards to the complexities of language. Remember that mortal human beings with limited human knowledge of imperfect human languages will be creating this technology. Do you know a second language? Have you ever had to translate complex text from one language to another? Let's put it another way. Why do you think most languages arte so difficult to learn? And if a language is that difficult to learn (just because it includes so many complex components, then how do you think we can create this technology in any cost effective manner? Remember too that a language changes over time, meaning a need for constant upgrading.

You do have a point in saying that a person who intended to rely on machine translation would not intend to learn another language to use it more effectively, since that would defeat the whole point of machine translation (i.e. not needing to learn another language). Going by that, then we need to accept certain limitations. Firstly, machine translation will probably never be able to produce a literary translation, so let's put that aside and focus on academic or technical translation. As for technical translation from English without needing to learn another language (since that's the pont of it after all), then I could see three different solutions. For the buyer on a budget, Google translate as it now exists. Highly unreliable and not something you'd want to rely on if your life depended on it, but it can usually produce reasonably comprehensible translations from simple sentences. For the one willing to spend a lot more, I could see an interactive machine translator that would request clarification at each stage of the translation process. It might be a slow and tedious process, but it could produce an accurate translation at last. For the wealthy, a total machine-translation system, interconnected with every smart device he owns to collect as much information as possible to help provide context, with unlimited internet access and cloud storage. Even then, it might still need prompting, but it could present the meaning it thinks is the correct one at the top of the list, so that in most cases the person would just need to select the first option. The information it would be processing would probably mean that you'd need extremely high-speed internet. So yes, it's doable. But as a taxpayer, would you not rather Government employees just share a common language?

That would not be enough. The machine would need input from both visual and audio contexts too. Your phone is not recording your every move, is it? Unless it is, then the machine translator would be missing context. Now, a simple solution to that would be to program the translator to request clarification; but especially for a language like English where nearly every word can mean severeal things, for the machine to correctly translate one sentence might require multiple requests for clarification. That could be a very tedious process, especially in an industry in which time is money. Beyond language, the machine must also understand cultural context, which again could vary somewhat even between municipalities. The input required would be phenomenal. Now of course some solutions exist. For example, we could learn a language like Lojban and machine-translate from that. Since Lojban is so semantically precise, all necessary linguistic input would already be included in the sentence. But then if everyone must learn Lojban, why not just skip machine translation altogether and just communicate in Lojban? And if we all need to learn a common second language anyway, then why not an easier one like Espeanto (since except for cybernetic communication like machine translation, Lojban is far more precise than most people would need in their daily lives anyway)? Anyone who knows a second language understands the complexities involved in communication. It involves not only grammar and lexis but context too. And context itself is far more complex than many realise. While the human brain can compute it instantly based on a lifetime of accumlated personal knowledge, how do you program that kind of data into a computer system individually for each person? Even English contains different dialects and different accents exist across the English-speaking world and even English-speakers might have lived very different life experiences which can afect the meaning of their sentence. It's far more complicated than some seem to realize.

Also, what happens when the machine breaks down in an emergency? Would we accept pilots and ships' captains relying on this technology with the possibility of the battery dying all of a sudden or the machine getting damaged due to rain or impact, etc. It would need to be a physically robust system too, which would just add to the cost.

But you leave out one point. Most human languages, and especially English, are too grammatically vague for the purpose. If I worked in the field of professional machine translation, I'd focus on translation from Lojban and expect professionals to learn that language. When precise translation is less important (i.e. where misunderstanding wouldn't risk a person's safety in anyway and at most could cause some inconveniences), then translation from ambiguous languages like English would suffice. Again, the problem is not with the tech (we have that already), it's with the language itself. English is not suited for cybernetic communication.

Even a human might need to ask the original speaker which he meant between different possibilities, though we could program a machine to do the same. Now if you want a machine that has the same interpretive capabilities as a human, you'd have to walk around everywhere with a GPS cap on your head with audio and video to record every aspect of your life so that when you refer to an inside joke you heard, or referring to the party you attended yesterday, etc. it could always know which you meant between different possible meanings. That would be an extremely expensive system. Also, I can't imagine government employees consenting to walking around with these things strapped to their heads daily and I can't imagine the taxpayer being willing to pay for it. If we want a world with efficient machine translation, we'd all need to learn Lojban, but that would defeat the whole point of machine translation, wouldn't it?