Bilingualism in Canada

[-TSS-]

Btw, is it true that the Quebec French has its own ways of saying the numbers as it is always as hilarious as the French in France counts the numbers up until the number 69 as usual but after sixtynine doesn't come seventy but comes sixtyten and then comes sixtyeleven, sixtytwelve etc and the number usually known as 79 is known as sixtynineteen.

The number 80 is known as four twenties and the number 90 is known as four twenties and ten and the number 99 is four twenties and nineteen.

However, is it true that the Quebec French has its own numbers for 70,80,90?

[Bryan]

For English-speakers French must be the easiest foreign language to learn as about half of the vocabulary is similar to English.

Most english speakers find the verb conjugation in French to be so confusing that they quit even trying to learn it very early in the process.

I have found French to be quite difficult to learn beyond the bare basics. I've taken it in school my whole life, and I never did really "get" it. I could get by enough to not starve in rural Quebec, but that was about it. I'm finding Spanish to be significantly easier to learn by comparison.

[cybercoma]

Btw, is it true that the Quebec French has its own ways of saying the numbers as it is always as hilarious as the French in France counts the numbers up until the number 69 as usual but after sixtynine doesn't come seventy but comes sixtyten and then comes sixtyeleven, sixtytwelve etc and the number usually known as 79 is known as sixtynineteen.

The number 80 is known as four twenties and the number 90 is known as four twenties and ten and the number 99 is four twenties and nineteen.

However, is it true that the Quebec French has its own numbers for 70,80,90?

It's the same, as far as I know.

[Vineon]

It's the same, as far as I know.

It is. The variant 'septante' for 'soixante-dix', for example, is mostly used in Switzerland and Belgium.

I'd like to also remind the TS that the French in Canada make up a substancially larger portion of Canadians than Swedish speaking Fins.

But you came here in an English forum made of people mostly much bitter towards the French in their own country to validate your opinion against bilingualism - even though the comparisons between Canada and Finland hardly stand - and you found yourself a few wazoos to tell you exactly what you wanted to hear.

Congratulations.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Vineon

[August1991]

Isn't Montreal really a truly bilingual city unlike rural Quebec which is French only? The 1995 referendum was incredibly close but surely Montreal decided it.

You are basically right on both points.

About 80% of people in Quebec have French as a mother tongue, and the remaining 20% minority are divided between anglophones or allophones (people whose mother tongue is neither English nor French). This 20% minority roughly lives in Montreal (although there are some surprising English communities/towns spotted around Quebec - just as there are some truly surprising French communities/towns outside of Quebec, in the rest of Canada.) Montreal is about 50/50.

The non-francophone 20% largely voted against independence in 1980 and 1995. In 1980, the francophone vote was split 50/50 and the referendum result was 40/60. In 1995, the francophone vote outside Montreal generally favoured independence. The francophone vote in Montreal generally favoured federalism and the end result was 50/50.

Parizeau blamed "money and the ethnic vote" but in fact it was a divided French vote, and specifically francophones in Montreal.

America weilds too much influence on Canadian culture and by that controls on our freedom, as culture is self identity, and creates the boundaries of our liberty, it is vital to protect our Canadian heritage, and French is one gatewateway to acheiving that. Canadien culture is something that is being turned against itself, and that is unfortunate, together we stand strong, divided or subjected we are nothing.

I strongly disagree.

Canada and its "culture" will stand on its own. People today still speak Bulgarian and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church still exists despite 500 years under Turkish/Muslim rule and despite 50 years of Soviet communism. If Canada means anything, English Canadians do not need the crutch of "bilingualism" to survive.

[August1991]

At least French is a world language and may be useful, you never know, but we here in Finland are lumbered with Swedish which is just a useless minor language like that of our own. I just can't believe we have so spineless politicians who have allowed this idiocy to go on. I know there are a lot of very wealthy Swedish-speaking people's trusts who clearly bribe politicians to maintain the current idiocy but despite all that it is still just mind boggling.

I recently watched a wonderful Finnish/Swedish movie on Netflix: Mother of Mine (Aideista parhain).

I understood the movie well. Most Canadians would. I suspect that people who live in unilingual countries would find the movie unbelievable or confusing - or simply too obvious. (BTW, if you watch the movie, you should know that Swedish and Finnish are far more different than French is to English.)

IMHO, a bilingual state is a good thing. It encourages understanding.

However, it is also true that when I drive to and around Montreal I never see a road sign in English - not even a bilingual highway sign. The same is not true of the 400 series highways around Toronto or the rest of Ontario.

Some roads in Montreal are under federal jurisdiction, and these have bilingual signs.

But Wild Bill, you raise a good point. It seems to me that the private sector speaks better the language of its customers. I think that what I am saying is that if Finns still speak Finnish, it is not because road signs in Finland are only in Finnish. It is rather because Finns speak Finnish at home, Finnish schoolteachers teach proper Finnish grammar and there are smart people who always invent new Finnish slang/jokes. There are Finnish songs that only Finns understand.

Edited March 20, 2012 by August1991

[August1991]

Spanish is doddle until you get to the subjunctive. The very idea of subjunctive is just so alien to anyone not speaking a Romance language that it really takes some coping when learning. I Hve myself studied Spanish and I love the language but the subjunctive is still a pain.

To me, Spanish is the subjunctive on steroids.

I recall Pierre Trudeau giving a speech in French, using a phrase that put himself into grammar limbo, and then extricating himself correctly. He smiled and jokingly explained that he just used the subjunctif conditionnel du passé simple.

For anglophones, an example of the subjunctive is: "The court ordered that prisoner be held."

Why do we not say: "The court ordered that the prisoner is held."? (It sounds wrong. And this is the basis of all language: It sounds wrong.)

Edited March 20, 2012 by August1991

[Smallc]

Some roads in Montreal are under federal jurisdiction, and these have bilingual signs.

A couple of bridges maybe.

[August1991]

One of the problems for the federal public service is it's absolutely full of utterly incompetent managers and executives who only got their job because the bilingualism requirement screened out more than 95% of those who would otherwise do the work.

Sorry, Argus. You may blame francophones.

At this point in Canadian history, most Canadian taxpayers reckon that all Canadian civil servants are incompetent.

It means all those in leadership positions in the federal public service have to be fluently bilingual before any screening of their actual skills in leadership or job knowledge is even looked at.

Argus, think more broadly. How does the federal public service pick/promote its managers?

There's an old joke my kids used to tell me. Two hunters find some tracks in the bush.

"These are deer tracks!" says the one. "No, they are bear tracks!" says the other.

While they are arguing the train runs over them!

Delightful. Or as Stéphane Dion would say, Paf!

----

But WB, the real lessons are to think outside of the box; and never put all your eggs in one box.

Edited March 20, 2012 by August1991

[Hank Gigandet]

French is not an easy language to learn. While the grammar textbook may be regular size, the 'exceptions' are more twice as thick.

The key is to learn basic French so that we can communicate with each other. Nobody expects to be perfectly bilingual. The same goes for French Canada learning English.

Now to add a new twist to our linguistic duality: please see below: It's all a matter of mutual respect.

The 189th. St. Patrick's Day Parade March 18, 2012 Montreal. We participated in our 18th. consecutive parade. Crowd surpassed 300,000 on this beautiful sunny day with thousands cheering us on. Photos courtesy of Ross C. See/voir Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/TRCF/325287667487540?sk=wall (you do not need a facebook account to view)

La 189e parade de St. Patrick à Montréal le 18 mars 2012. Nous avons participé pour la 18e année consécutive. La foule dépassait 300,000 pour cette belle journée ensoleillée où des milliers nous ont encouragé.

[-TSS-]

What I've heard from the learners of French they say that French is considerably easier than German. I don't know as I have never studied French myself.

[MACKER]

I strongly disagree.

Canada and its "culture" will stand on its own. People today still speak Bulgarian and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church still exists despite 500 years under Turkish/Muslim rule and despite 50 years of Soviet communism. If Canada means anything, English Canadians do not need the crutch of "bilingualism" to survive.

Yeah just like French stood on its own in Canada...

you are blind and ignorant if you don't think our neighbour 10 x our size will destroy our cultural independence if we allow it to.

[Jack Weber]

What I've heard from the learners of French they say that French is considerably easier than German. I don't know as I have never studied French myself.

It is...German has 3 genders..It has entire words instead of phrases...It's also from a completely different family of languages...

German,Dutch,Danish,Norwegian,and,Swedish (Icelandic,as well) are all the guteral Germanic laguages of Northern Europe....

Interestingly Finnish is more closely related to the Estonian,Latvian,Lithuanian Baltic family of languages and not it's Scandanavian neighbours...

[-TSS-]

It is...German has 3 genders..It has entire words instead of phrases...It's also from a completely different family of languages...

German,Dutch,Danish,Norwegian,and,Swedish (Icelandic,as well) are all the guteral Germanic laguages of Northern Europe....

Interestingly Finnish is more closely related to the Estonian,Latvian,Lithuanian Baltic family of languages and not it's Scandanavian neighbours...

Finnish and Estonian are closely related, almost mutually intelligible. Neither are even Indo-European languages.

[Argus]

You did not understand Argus. He beleives french language should desapear. Do I need to tell you it means your Finnish language should deseapear as well? According to him, neither sweddish, nor finnish should be teach in Finland. Just english. He is the perfect example of the residual former british empire I talked about.

Argus said nothing of the sort. What I said was that the natural flow of language is that as peoples merge, they combine languages into one so that they can better communicate. You might notice there are tons of French words in English, for example. The Quebec and French governments have been zealous in trying to prevent foreign words and phrases from creeping into French. That is, they have been dedicated to stopping this natural linguistic characteristic of merging languages. As far as I know they are the only people in the world who do this.

The natural tendency in Canada would be for French to merge with English, given its dominance, for more and more Anglicisms to creep into French until they are basically speaking English. As to Sweden and Finland. I don't know how much interaction there is between them, but the numbers aren't as disparate as Canada. If there was a lot of interaction the natural result would be for Finnish words to creep into Swedish usage and Swedish words to creep into Finnish until the two languages basically merged.

[Argus]

For one, to be less idiot and stop saying stupid things like this:

Your ill-mannered unhappiness at my statement makes it no less true.

[Argus]

Not true at all.

And what is the basis for your statement? I've worked in the federal public service in Ottawa for almost fifteen years now, while most of my relatives and friends over the years have worked there as well, in a wide variety of departments and agencies. You?

Edited March 25, 2012 by Argus

[-TSS-]

Argus said nothing of the sort. What I said was that the natural flow of language is that as peoples merge, they combine languages into one so that they can better communicate. You might notice there are tons of French words in English, for example. The Quebec and French governments have been zealous in trying to prevent foreign words and phrases from creeping into French. That is, they have been dedicated to stopping this natural linguistic characteristic of merging languages. As far as I know they are the only people in the world who do this.

The natural tendency in Canada would be for French to merge with English, given its dominance, for more and more Anglicisms to creep into French until they are basically speaking English. As to Sweden and Finland. I don't know how much interaction there is between them, but the numbers aren't as disparate as Canada. If there was a lot of interaction the natural result would be for Finnish words to creep into Swedish usage and Swedish words to creep into Finnish until the two languages basically merged.

Indeed, a lot of Swedish-speaking Finns use language where they use a lot of Finnish words. A Swede could not understand those people.

[Argus]

Sorry, Argus. You may blame francophones.

At this point in Canadian history, most Canadian taxpayers reckon that all Canadian civil servants are incompetent.

Civil servants aren't incompetent. The civil service is incompetent. There is a difference.

The inefficiency of the public service is caused by several factors. One is poor management, of which bilingualism is one factor.

The real problem is the congruence of the political will for oversight in order to never have bad things happen that gets into the media, and the natural careerist desire of management types to never be blamed for something when it does go wrong. Add in the high number of women in management positions, especially in HR (due to government mandate), and you get a disastrous combination.

Women like consensus. What does that mean in a large bureaucracy? It means tons of meetings and negotiations and the need for 'buy in' and 'stakeholder consultation' for even the smallest of changes. Management types want to avoid blame. What does that mean? It means they like policies. Policies are developed through lots of meetings and buy-ins and stakeholder consultations. And once a policy is in place, it relieves senior managers from the risk of making decisions. They simply consult policy, and however absurd the answer, that's what they go with. And of course, government wants no bad publicity. What does that mean? It means more oversight, which means more meetings, more reports and documentation, more buy-ins and consultations within the constraints of policy...

The end result, as you can guess, is that you have a lot of people who work hard, who have good ideas, trying to operate within a system which is inherently inefficient and which requires enormous amounts of time and effort to get anything done. You can work for years to get a minor system change pushed through. Does that make YOU incompetent? I don't think so.

Argus, think more broadly. How does the federal public service pick/promote its managers?

It holds competitions for those in the positions below. In order to apply for those competitions you must be bilingual. You can be the most effective, efficient, genius level bureaucrat in the world, but if you aren't bilingual you can't even apply. Although, to be honest, why anyone with more than half a brain would want to be a manager in the public service is beyond me. Talk about thankless jobs!

[cybercoma]

The natural tendency in Canada would be for French to merge with English

[Benz]

What I've heard from the learners of French they say that French is considerably easier than German. I don't know as I have never studied French myself.

+

I'm finding Spanish to be significantly easier to learn by comparison.

French is much easier than german, one of the easiest language to learn on earth but, not the easiest. Still many are easier like spannish. The subjonctive is questionnable and I wonder if we could just make it vanish. The worst are all those pointless exception and the "no rule, just remember all the cases" like the words' gender. Spannish is easier on that. There are also too many letters that must not being sound. Even the french like me find it annoying.

TSS, what I heard about finnish is, it is a very difficult language to learn, sounds almost like japanese. However, once you've pass few times in Finland, you just fall in love with the country and pass beyond the difficulties of learning it.

[MACKER]

When will people realize the French culture and religion must be preserved because without it the French king will resume control of Quebec due to breach of treaty.

It is only graciousness among the civiized Christian kingdoms that we respect the agreement that brings New France under English title.

Edited March 27, 2012 by MACKER

[Benz]

...That is, they have been dedicated to stopping this natural linguistic characteristic of merging languages.

There is actually nothing natural in that at all. The reason why 60% of english words come from french and/or old french, is because for centuries the crown was hold by french monarchs. Ever since the british won the French and Indian war in America, they have put energic actions to ban any other language than english assimilate the people by the force. The only place they never succeed is in Quebec. Everwhere else, the ban here and there made unrepairable damages to those cultures. If many natives speak only english today, it's not by choice. It's because their own language was banned in their own home land. It is as natural to merge toward english as it is for Michael Jakson being white.

The world domination of english language was also due to the superiority of america's industry. It's not "natural", it's practical. Even then, it only motivates other nations to use it as a second language, not marginaliszing their own language for the sake of english as the primary one. No nation in the world choose english as their mother tong by their own will. Those who did it, like the Irish and Scots, was rather after a long oppressive period and linguistic rules against the locals.

As far as I know they are the only people in the world who do this.

Several places in the world do that. It's not because you don't know it that it doesn't exist.

The natural tendency in Canada would be for French to merge with English, given its dominance, for more and more Anglicisms to creep into French until they are basically speaking English.

Durham 1840. Forgit it man. The old british empire is dead, move on.

As to Sweden and Finland. I don't know how much interaction there is between them, but the numbers aren't as disparate as Canada. If there was a lot of interaction the natural result would be for Finnish words to creep into Swedish usage and Swedish words to creep into Finnish until the two languages basically merged.

And so should males and females merge together to become one unique new species.

I'm glad to be a Québécois and I don't find anything neither in Harpar's Canada, nor in USA that could make me desire to merge my culture with any of them. If I have too, I'd rather merge with the finnish. Being swallowed by a big whale doesn't excite me at all.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Benz

[Vineon]

I'll accept that there is something "natural" about English imposing itself on minority language groups if people accept it is just as "natural" for Québécois to impose certain protectionnist measures while they still are a majority in the piece of land they half govern.

Fuck that frustrating automatic 'edit' tag.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Vineon

[Argus]

There is actually nothing natural in that at all. The reason why 60% of english words come from french and/or old french, is because for centuries the crown was hold by french monarchs.

What you mean to say is that the Norman conquest had all the most influential positions held by Frenchmen, and thus Englishmen had to learn the language in order to have any influence. That perculated downward. But going back further you find that English itself is an amalgamation of the languages of the people who lived there.

. Ever since the british won the French and Indian war in America, they have put energic actions to ban any other language than english

The English have never felt the need to do anything to protect their language. English is a growing, natural language which shifts and changes with the times and with the experiences and needs of the people who use it. By comparison, French is a stilted academic language administered by a cadre of language professors.

Several places in the world do that. It's not because you don't know it that it doesn't exist.

What places?

I'm glad to be a Québécois and I don't find anything neither in Harpar's Canada, nor in USA that could make me desire to merge my culture with any of them.

Do you think the Irish have no culture? Yet they largely speak English. If your culture is too weak to survive the use of another language then perhaps it isn't worthy of survival.