Canadian Language Education Questions

[HVC]

What I found weird is that we learned Parisian French, not the French the speak in quebec.

Escutar-te a falar francês "padrão" deve ser hilário, ó H.... Ao julgar pelo português.
Anglo Canadian-Azorean-Lisboete-"French" (Canadian and Parisian?) pidgin. Wunderbar!

Eu ja disse eu nao falo azorean. O meu pai era de lisboa e minha mae de nazare. por isso eu falo mais 60's Lisboete.

Mas sim, o meu acento frances e mal

Sorry for my crappy Portuguese writing. I speak better than I write... both in English and French hah.

[Duque de Bragança]

So based on this thread it sounds like that in all students in Canada should have some familiarity with both official languages; is that a fair assessment?

One of the complaints put forth in the independence thread deals with the lack of bilingual speakers and services outside of Quebec.  If there was a separation, though, it seems likely that Canada would put less emphasis on bilingual education and leave Francophones even more restricted in their opportunities.

Depends what you mean familiarity.  I can't hold even a simple conversation in French, though I can identify a few words and very basic grammer.

That's spelling à la HVC or Grey Fox.  Something uniting Canada, though.

[HVC]

So based on this thread it sounds like that in all students in Canada should have some familiarity with both official languages; is that a fair assessment?

One of the complaints put forth in the independence thread deals with the lack of bilingual speakers and services outside of Quebec.  If there was a separation, though, it seems likely that Canada would put less emphasis on bilingual education and leave Francophones even more restricted in their opportunities.

Depends what you mean familiarity.  I can't hold even a simple conversation in French, though I can identify a few words and very basic grammer.

That's spelling à la HVC or Grey Fox.  Something uniting Canada, though.

why do you hate me so I have cousins in france if that helps

[Duque de Bragança]

So based on this thread it sounds like that in all students in Canada should have some familiarity with both official languages; is that a fair assessment?

One of the complaints put forth in the independence thread deals with the lack of bilingual speakers and services outside of Quebec.  If there was a separation, though, it seems likely that Canada would put less emphasis on bilingual education and leave Francophones even more restricted in their opportunities.

Depends what you mean familiarity.  I can't hold even a simple conversation in French, though I can identify a few words and very basic grammer.

That's spelling à la HVC or Grey Fox.  Something uniting Canada, though.

why do you hate me so I have cousins in france if that helps

It's more about caring. Nothing worse than indifference. 

[Grey Fox]

I take offense to that, I would never spell it grammer. Maybe typo it but not spell it.

[HVC]

So based on this thread it sounds like that in all students in Canada should have some familiarity with both official languages; is that a fair assessment?

One of the complaints put forth in the independence thread deals with the lack of bilingual speakers and services outside of Quebec.  If there was a separation, though, it seems likely that Canada would put less emphasis on bilingual education and leave Francophones even more restricted in their opportunities.

Depends what you mean familiarity.  I can't hold even a simple conversation in French, though I can identify a few words and very basic grammer.

That's spelling à la HVC or Grey Fox.  Something uniting Canada, though.

why do you hate me so I have cousins in france if that helps

It's more about caring. Nothing worse than indifference. 

I tell you that they use "drivar", "parkar, and "garbish" here and all of a sudden I'm the one that uses it . I say guier (or conduzir, but sounds weird to me, so I use it less), estacionar, and lixo.

Also, what's with the continental hate and azoreans? if anything people from the alentejo sound the worst.

[Duque de Bragança]

So based on this thread it sounds like that in all students in Canada should have some familiarity with both official languages; is that a fair assessment?

One of the complaints put forth in the independence thread deals with the lack of bilingual speakers and services outside of Quebec.  If there was a separation, though, it seems likely that Canada would put less emphasis on bilingual education and leave Francophones even more restricted in their opportunities.

Depends what you mean familiarity.  I can't hold even a simple conversation in French, though I can identify a few words and very basic grammer.

That's spelling à la HVC or Grey Fox.  Something uniting Canada, though.

why do you hate me so I have cousins in france if that helps

It's more about caring. Nothing worse than indifference. 

I tell you that they use "drivar", "parkar, and "garbish" here and all of a sudden I'm the one that uses it . I say guier (or conduzir, but sounds weird to me, so I use it less), estacionar, and lixo.

Also, what's with the continental hate and azoreans? if anything people from the alentejo sound the worst.

Guiar Conduzir weird? No comment...
Come on, it's not like Portuguese spelling is as bad as English or French spelling.
What? Alentejo has the most melodic dialect in South Portugal. Singing and all, if only Brazilians had stuck to it. Since their dialects come from Southern Portuguese.
Brazilians = Québécois of Portuguese, only (much) worse. No crappy spelling reform thanks to them for instance.

[Eddie Teach]

I take offense to that, I would never spell it grammer. Maybe typo it but not spell it.

What if you meant Frasier?

[Duque de Bragança]

Eu ja disse eu nao falo azorean. O meu pai era de lisboa e minha mae de nazare. por isso eu falo mais 60's Lisboete.

Mas sim, o meu acento frances e mal

Sorry for my crappy Portuguese writing. I speak better than I write... both in English and French hah.

'60s Lisboete? As if that were better...
As for your speaking skills, hopefully yes.

Back to Anglo bigotry vs Québec now, where so-called "multiculturalists" are staunchly monoglot and promote unilingualism by holier than thou attacks on Québec's alleged anglophobia.

[HVC]

Guiar Conduzir weird? No comment...

cut me a break, I can barely spell in English . and conduzir just sounds weird to me. it's like someone saying I'm going for my morning constitutional, instead of saying they're going for a walk.

Come on, it's not like Portuguese spelling is as bad as English or French spelling.

you still have weird sound rules that are off putting for someone who doesn't write natively.

What? Alentejo has the most melodic dialect in South Portugal. Singing and all, if only Brazilians had stuck to it. Since their dialects come from Southern Portuguese.
Brazilians = Québécois of Portuguese, only (much) worse. No crappy spelling reform thanks to them for instance.

they sound like hillbillies to me

[Grey Fox]

I take offense to that, I would never spell it grammer. Maybe typo it but not spell it.

What if you meant Frasier?

Fair point.

[Savonarola]

3.)  If you are French/English Canadian how much English/French did you study?

sufficient knowledge of English as a second language is required for many university faculties.

Why is that?  Are courses taught in English at the Universities?

[garbon]

And many Canadians have trouble understanding that Quebec wants to keep its language and culture.

But the way you do that is by getting your future generations invested/interested/dare I say excited about your language and culture. Propping them up by artificial means like laws aren't going to matter much if people are uninterested.

that's not how it works in the real world I'm afraid.

Anglo-Canada smells a lot like Franco-Belgium until -and against heavy oppostion of the francophones there- was reformed so that Dutch was recognised as an equal and official language in Flanders (the result being the surreal situation where the basically monolingual Dutch region of Flanders was officialy bilingual and the monolingual francophone region was unilingual French, dispite a massive amount (up to 25% of population in certain places) of dutch-speaking immigrants. Luckily even that bilingual nonsense was relegated to the dustbin of history after some more decades). But before that the francophone belgian state also had freedom of language.
Which of course meant: freedom for the francophones to not speak and understand dutch and the freedom for neerlandophones to useFrench when dealing with the government or have no contact with the government at all. (leading to situations where parents wanted to register their children in Dutch -as was their right- and the official refusing to register because he didn't want to use Dutch, leading to a court-case where the -francophoen Judge- of course said that the official had that right.

So in the real world it's often necessary to enact laws that contain a larger/stronger -oppressing, even- language in order the safeguard the rights of the speakers smaller/weaker language.

EDIT: "in public" usually means in regards to the government. What one speaks on the street is one's own business.

The first bit of your story sounds great, in that the gov't became more flexible and people could communicate with public services in the language they feel appropriate.

The second part of your tale sounds not so good. Forcing people to speak a language for certain aspects of their life is just artificial means to prop up a language and I fail to see how that will win out. Seems like it only delays the day when the majority of the populace declines to speak the protected language - barring some efforts to actually get people enthused about speaking it.  Besides, if the populace doesn't want to speak it - then it seems a waste of resources (and just plain bad gov't) to force them to.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

But the way you do that is by getting your future generations invested/interested/dare I say excited about your language and culture. Propping them up by artificial means like laws aren't going to matter much if people are uninterested.

that's not how it works in the real world I'm afraid.

Anglo-Canada smells a lot like Franco-Belgium until -and against heavy oppostion of the francophones there- was reformed so that Dutch was recognised as an equal and official language in Flanders (the result being the surreal situation where the basically monolingual Dutch region of Flanders was officialy bilingual and the monolingual francophone region was unilingual French, dispite a massive amount (up to 25% of population in certain places) of dutch-speaking immigrants. Luckily even that bilingual nonsense was relegated to the dustbin of history after some more decades). But before that the francophone belgian state also had freedom of language.

And many Canadians have trouble understanding that Quebec wants to keep its language and culture.

Which of course meant: freedom for the francophones to not speak and understand dutch and the freedom for neerlandophones to useFrench when dealing with the government or have no contact with the government at all. (leading to situations where parents wanted to register their children in Dutch -as was their right- and the official refusing to register because he didn't want to use Dutch, leading to a court-case where the -francophoen Judge- of course said that the official had that right.

So in the real world it's often necessary to enact laws that contain a larger/stronger -oppressing, even- language in order the safeguard the rights of the speakers smaller/weaker language.

EDIT: "in public" usually means in regards to the government. What one speaks on the street is one's own business.

The first bit of your story sounds great, in that the gov't became more flexible and people could communicate with public services in the language they feel appropriate.

The second part of your tale sounds not so good. Forcing people to speak a language for certain aspects of their life is just artificial means to prop up a language and I fail to see how that will win out. Seems like it only delays the day when the majority of the populace declines to speak the protected language - barring some efforts to actually get people enthused about speaking it.  Besides, if the populace doesn't want to speak it - then it seems a waste of resources (and just plain bad gov't) to force them to.

you're still stuck on the being enthused-thing. It has nothing to do with that. It's about power, supremacy and imperialism. The flemish didn't have to be enthused to speak dutch. They were already speaking it, and had been doing so for close to a 1000 years. The issue was that the francophone minority -which had total control over the state- believed (and all too often still believe) that by being francophone they had the right to eradicate anything non-French from the country, comme à la France (just look up how France treated its linguistic minorities since at least Napoleon and until EU-directives put an end to that, more or less).

[garbon]

Again, I agree that it was good that such was changed and they can't force everyone to speak French only. However I don't see why it is good for the "abused" to turn around and become the "abusers".  I can't think of why one country should have different regions where a different language must be spoken for certain public services.