Time to cut down immigration?

[M.Dancer]

The side discussion on ancient languages is drifting the thread considerably BTW. I'm just commenting here.

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[Guest TrueMetis]

Does the Cherokee guy who created his own language for the Cherokee people to use count as a First Nation language? It was created in 1821 but it's still pretty impresive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoyah

[Michael Hardner]

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Morris,

I don't know what you're saying but I'm guessing that it's not 'family hour' material.

[M.Dancer]

Morris,

I don't know what you're saying but I'm guessing that it's not 'family hour' material.

You would have guessed wrong.

[GostHacked]

that's like saying Quebecois and Parisian french aren't the same language....mycenian greek is....GREEK

They really are not the same language. Sure there is much in common with both factions of the language, but Perisian French and Quebecios are quite different. They have evolved quite differently over the years. I doubt you have ever seen a Perisian and a Quebecios talk to each other.

Equate it to the difference in the english language that is used by the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. Much in common, but when you get down to it, quite different.

[ToadBrother]

They really are not the same language. Sure there is much in common with both factions of the language, but Perisian French and Quebecios are quite different. They have evolved quite differently over the years. I doubt you have ever seen a Perisian and a Quebecios talk to each other.

Equate it to the difference in the english language that is used by the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. Much in common, but when you get down to it, quite different.

Mutual intelligibility (or unintelligibility) is what marks whether two dialects remain part of the same language or not. Quebecois and Parisian French speakers have few problems communicating. There are some anachronisms in Quebecois. Linguistically they are the same language, just as Mexican Spanish and European Spanish are the same language.

[ToadBrother]

Not one that could be understood by anyone except a scholar, while the Greek spoken during the time of Augustuscan be read by a Greek today much like a Canadian could read Piers poughman

Example. Piers Ploughman 14th century middle english

1In a somer sesun, whon softe was the sonne,

2I schop me into a shroud, as I a scheep were;

3In habite as an hermite unholy of werkes

4Wente I wyde in this world wondres to here;

5Bote in a Mayes morwnynge on Malverne hulles

And then Beowulf in anglo saxon 8th century

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,

þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum

And Anglo Saxon from the 6th century

nu scylun hergan

hefaenricaes uard

metudæs maecti

end his modgidanc

uerc uuldurfadur

swe he uundra gihwaes

eci dryctin

or astelidæ

While one is recognisibly English, the others are unrecognisable. A Modern greek would not be able to read Mycenian Greek anymore that we can read Caedmon, but they can read Kione Greek like we can read William Langland.

Not every word can be understood, in part because pronunciation has changed considerably in a thousand years, and in part because some words, particularly the nouns like "God" are inflected in Anglo-Saxon whereas by Middle English, most noun inflection had been dropped (this is a general trend in the Germanic languages, which started out, like all Indo-European languages in being highly inflected, but have, particularly over the last 1500 years, become increasingly uninflected).

[M.Dancer]

Kingdom= ric....Reich

It's bloody german!!!

[ToadBrother]

Kingdom= ric....Reich

It's bloody german!!!

Well of course it is. English started out as a dialect of West Germanic (closely related to Frisian and Dutch). Structurally, our language is still West Germanic, but the damned Normans came along and dumped a whole bunch of Latin and Greek on us masquerading as Franco-Norman. Vocabulary changes much more quickly than the underlying linguistic structure. That's why just about every copy of a Shakespearean play you'll buy has a column on each page dedicated to anachronistic words and phrases. Elizabethan English is, underneath it all, modern English, but with enough older words and odd turns of phrase to make it tough for beginners. In fact, reading anything older than Victorian English can get a little tricky (though more often than not that is because it wasn't until the 19th century that the everyone largely regularized spelling).

But if you think Old and Middle English are tough to listen to, try out this relatively modern North East accent

Or even worse, try listening to Scotch English

Sadly, a lot of the old dialects are dying out, overrun by the merciless march of regularized English. Two hundred years ago a guy from Dover would have been at a distinct disadvantage in Yorkshire.

[M.Dancer]

Well of course it is. English started out as a dialect of West Germanic ....(

Yes I know...I took old and middle english lit in college.

Our professor was a yorkshire man, a Geordie, right off the farm...his accent, when he really put it on to read Chaucer was quite the treat. When he spoke normally, after a few beers, was quite funny...or I chould say, vunny, fery vunny

[ToadBrother]

Yes I know...I took old and middle english lit in college.

Our professor was a yorkshire man, a Geordie, right off the farm...his accent, when he really put it on to read Chaucer was quite the treat. When he spoke normally, after a few beers, was quite funny...or I chould say, vunny, fery vunny

Practically like hearing it in the original Middle English. That would have been pretty close to Chaucer's dialect.

Worst English accent I ever heard wasn't from an Indian in a call center in New Delhi, but from a Scotsman who I had to go fix his computer. I could catch about every second word.

Edited October 9, 2009 by ToadBrother

[wyly]

Well of course it is. English started out as a dialect of West Germanic (closely related to Frisian and Dutch). Structurally, our language is still West Germanic,

there is a Frisian connection to very old english, dutch very little...frisian and dutch(Low Fanconian) are unintelligible to each other, Frisian is Germanic but a unique language....from my understanding english has strong links to Low Saxon also West Germanic but Low Franconian very little... Edited October 9, 2009 by wyly

[M.Dancer]

Or even worse, try listening to Scotch English

My father and his family were from just outside Glasgow, a place called Paisly. He came over around the age of ten, and his accent was softened but even so everyone, including my mother called him Scotty (His name was Henry) His siter (My aunt) was a young woman when she came..and her accent was quite thick, but I was a young boy and had no trouble with it.

I'll always remenber her spitting into a hankie to wipe my face.

"Ye hae muckle clark on ye phisog"

trans: You have a lot of muck on your face

phisog comes form the french, visage.

And she drank. 12 beers a day, 2 bottles a scotch a week. The Drink ended her life early at 91

[wyly]

Practically like hearing it in the original Middle English. That would have been pretty close to Chaucer's dialect.

Worst English accent I ever heard wasn't from an Indian in a call center in New Delhi, but from a Scotsman who I had to go fix his computer. I could catch about every second word.

I knew a Scotty from Glasgow, same thing I could barely understand him, an Irish friend who lived in London who I thought could translate for me couldn't understand him either...but then I had a friend from one of the out ports of Nfld who was very difficult to follow as well...

Edited October 9, 2009 by wyly

[Wild Bill]

I knew a Scotty from Glasgow, same thing I could barely understand him, an Irish friend who lived in London who I thought could translate for me couldn't understand him either...but then I had a friend from one of the out ports of Nfld who was very difficult to follow as well...

I know what you mean. My family is from Nova Scotia. We moved to Ontario when I was 8 years old. Now I'm 57 but still when I get drunk or excited I lose my Ontarioan accent!

[ToadBrother]

there is a Frisian connection to very old english, dutch very little...frisian and dutch(Low Fanconian) are unintelligible to each other, Frisian is Germanic but a unique language....from my understanding english has strong links to Low Saxon also West Germanic but Low Franconian very little...

I did mispoke a bit. The Franconian dialects were West German. The large issue is exactly when they all became separate languages. There was, even the late centuries of the first millennium, at least partial intelligibility between West and North Germanic languages, which are certainly more distantly related than the Franconian and Anglo-Frisian languages/dialects. I don't know enough about the eastern Germanic languages like Gothic, but they were all but extinct by the end of the first millennium.

The North Germanic languages still have a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility as compared to the West Germanic languages. I worked for a Danish fellow who said that he could hold a conversation with a Norwegian with little difficulty, and had even had an Icelandic girlfriend and while tough, he could get most of what she said. Swedish was a bit tougher.

The reason English seems to have diverged so much is in large part the Norman Conquest, which injected a huge number of loan words of Latin and Greek origin (West Germanic vocabulary at the time tended to be relatively small). Structurally, Middle English is still a West Germanic language, though my understanding is that by that point, English's mutual intelligibility with other West Germanic languages had pretty much ended.

[Mr.Canada]

The Frasier Institute has just released a book on the problems Canada faces due to mass immigration which is based on a series of papers presented to a 2008 Montreal conference on immigration.

VANCOUVER, BC—Recent mass immigration has negatively affected Canadian living standards and is challenging the country’s existing national identity, culture, and social fabric, concludes a new book released today by the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading economic think tank.

“Since 1990, Canada’s annual rate of immigration has been the highest in the world, resulting in a population increase of 3.9 million people between 1990 and 2006. This mass immigration has had profound effects on Canada’s economic, demographic, social, and political conditions, affecting the well-being of all Canadians including past immigrants,” said Herbert Grubel, Fraser Institute senior fellow and co-editor of the book.

“Unfortunately, most Canadians are insufficiently aware of these effects partly because a code of political correctness tends to identify any examination of immigration policies with racism and partly because Canada’s electoral system rewards politicians who are in favor of the current high intake.”

In a chapter about recent immigration and Canadian living standards, Grubel stresses that official statistics show that recent immigrants on average earn substantially lower incomes than native-born Canadians, so that the system provides them with subsidies through taxes paid by high-income earners. Grubel estimates that immigrants who arrived in the 12 years before 2002 imposed a fiscal burden of $18.5 billion on all Canadians in the year 2002 alone.

They show that it currently requires five taxpayers to cover the costs of government benefits provided to each recipient, and calculate that in order to maintain that ratio, the number of immigrants would have to rise so much above present levels that Canada’s economy and society could not deal with them successfully.

This is a very interesting book to say the least. I have placed an order today and hope to receive it within a few weeks. I will update MLW once I have read it. Finally perhaps we'll be able to have some hard data so we can discuss immigration in a meaningful way.

Discussing immigration levels isn't racist nor is it racist to suggest our immigration levels are unsustainable and too high. I don't wish to see Canada bankrupted because some politicians want to import a large number of immigrants forever.

I cannot comment too much yet as I have yet to read the book but if mass immigration isn't sustainable forever then we need to seriously consider that and plan a strategy in order to cut immigration numbers to a sustainable level. Some things they say make sense though for sure. Like about the pace at which immigrants age is the same as Canadians and in order to pay for every ones OAS and other ld age benefits we'll need to increase immigration just to pay for it if the trend continues putting even more stress on an already tapped out system. Canada doesn't have an infinite amount of money.

It will interesting when we're able to put hard facts against the arguments that mass immigration is wonderful and sustainable forever, Stay tuned.

[Argus]

and my daughters who are citizens took the Canadian Citizenship exam in high school...failed...where as I the immigrant dad passed...

And yet, you remain, as does a certain other immigrant from Somalia, almost entirely ignorant about every facet of life in your community. Hmmm.

[Argus]

The solution is to ship all the whiners back to Europe. Snot dripping from noses and all! That'll take care of the immigrant problem and we don't have to listen to big tough grown men whine like little kids anymore

Yes, but then all the natives and visible minorities on welfare get to starve to death since none of them know how to work for a living, and don't know a thing about how to grow food or make an economy function.

[Argus]

You've come as close to any of them of providing a solid argument, however you can't separate cultural and religious influences so the banning of certain religions is not rationally supported.

Immigration is such a goddam mess I'm probably thinking in terms of blunt, quick, massive hacks and slashes to get it back on track. It's such a mess the idea of fine-tuning just doesn't cut it.

My appoach, as I've stated on other occasions, has always been to equate looking for citizens (who we are recruiting to be workers) with my experience of looking for workers directly. I don't think this is irrational.

Above and beyond selecting people after they have passed certain criteria vis a vis experience and education, we test people, and then we interview the survivors. My criteria for selecting those I want out of those pools has always been personal/behavioural. And I think that is something that our immigration system appears to be lacking.

Example. The testing the government does, or at least, my agency does, during competitions at the officer level have always stressed communications and behaviour. Yeah, so you've got a degree, yeah, so you've got experience, all well and good. But what kind of a person are you? Why should we trust you with important responsibilities? The last such test I saw was made up of a couple of hundred questions, many related to communications, ie, vocabulary and grammar, but also how to talk to people. Ie, what would you say, what would you respond to, what would you write, how would you say, etc. The government considers communications skills extremely important in employees.

But not so much in immigrants. Huh?!

Behaviour is also extremely important. What would you do if.... how would you respond to this situation... Some of them were obvious, but a lot were fairly nuanced. It's quite clear the government is specifically looking for people who can get along, who know how to act appropriately in social situations, who wouldn't go running to HR or their manager every time someone said Boo to them, and who wouldn't get into fights and arguments all the time. It was looking for honesty and integrity, as well.

We do NONE of this for potential immigrants. We don't test them AT ALL regarding their behaviour, yet we are, in essence, hiring them for a position for life, where we will, with very few exemptions, never be able to get rid of them. Does that honestly make sense to anyone here?

The economic argument would require someone to submit an alternative economic model, and unfortunately for you is state-control seems to be the only other option.

Did you read the report on immigration I posted the other day? I did not say we should have no immigration. I said that we are not getting either the numbers we actually need (we are taking in more than we need ) or the type of immigrants we need with regard to our economic needs.

[Argus]

How about all you guys talking about ancient dialects start another thread or drink a nice big cup of STFU?

[Michael Hardner]

Yes to the ancient dialects complaint -> please post in Sumarian folks...

Now, Argus -

We do NONE of this for potential immigrants. We don't test them AT ALL regarding their behaviour, yet we are, in essence, hiring them for a position for life, where we will, with very few exemptions, never be able to get rid of them. Does that honestly make sense to anyone here?

This testing you speak of... I'm afraid that it wouldn't achieve your goal of reducing whatever type of immigrant you want it to as many of them have degrees from somewhere, many of them are qualified to do things, and many of them speak English well enough to work here.

Furthermore, the open secret about immigration is that they want anybody with a pulse to come here. I don't think I have ever denied that, but the motivations for doing so appear to me to be purely economic.

It's not because immigrants vote Liberal, or the Conservatives would have cut immigration.

And I can't believe immigration continues because it's politically correct to let immigrants in, or because it's popular to do so. The public doesn't love immigration enough to justify that suspicion.

[M.Dancer]

How about all you guys talking about ancient dialects start another thread or drink a nice big cup of STFU?

How about bugger off yourself? There, now go get a hot water bottle put it on your tum tums and watch 90210

[Guest TrueMetis]

Yes, but then all the natives and visible minorities on welfare get to starve to death since none of them know how to work for a living, and don't know a thing about how to grow food or make an economy function.

You really expect us not to think your racist?

[Argus]

You really expect us not to think your racist?

The statement was in the same mentality as that which preceded it, which you apparently had no problem with.