British citizen creates national uproar in Quebec

[garbon]

Ok then they are already assimilating their own way.  There is no rule that says you have to completely not speak your native language to join the club or somehow assimilate borg like into the WASP collective.

Again in the past sometimes this process took 3 or 4 generations or longer.

I am not sure the relevence of the 21st century barb....but um consider me injured.

Well I'm not sure why every immigrant group will react in the same way as immigrant groups of the past.

[Berkut]

That is the core of it.  The attraction of english is already so strong because of the N-A demographics that there's no justification to fragilise french any further by allowing full bilinguism across the board.  Especially considering the increase in the influx of immigrants who will 'naturally' drift towards english since english is present in one form or another around the world.

As for Malthus' latest spurious argument, I must dreaming!  As if anyone was deprived of fundamental rights by being asked, far too nicely IMO, to respect the majority of the inhabitants of this country!  In this case as in others, collective rights trumps individual ones.




G.

Co the collective rights of the majority of francaphones in  quebec should trump the individual rights of theanglos and immigrants in quebec, while at the same time the collective right of the anglo majority in canada should be ignored in favour of the indivdual right of the minority of quebec within the federation?

I bet there is some minority of people in Quebec somewhere that speak English, and are an actual majority in some geographic portion of Quebec. I think they should pass laws banning French in their little neighborhood, so that their collective rights won't be infringed.

Good for the goose and all that...

[Grey Fox]

They don't really have any ways to do that. If they had, they probably would have done it by now.

[HVC]

They don't really have any ways to do that. If they had, they probably would have done it by now.

Mobs with pitch forks and torches worked int he past :p

[Grey Fox]

You know what's funny? The text of the Official Language Act (Loi 22) is also in English.

[Berkut]

They don't really have any ways to do that. If they had, they probably would have done it by now.

You mean they are denied representation in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Quebec????

Scandalous!

[Grey Fox]

No, I just mean they don't have anywhere to legislate on such things.

[HVC]

You know what's funny? The text of the Official Language Act (Loi 22) is also in English.

Anglos oppressed by their own language? Damn Quebecois and their cruel irony

[Crazy_Ivan80]

What does that have to do with it?  The German communities in the US lasted for almost 100 years.

And this is the 21st century.

Note, many of the people in my neighborhood also speak English...I'm not sure why they would suddenly decide to throw out Spanish.

so they're not at all a good counterexample in other words. Assuming a bilingual Quebec there'd be no reason whatsoever for anyone to learn or use french in Quebec, ever.

as for collective rights versus individual rights... It's funny as it's the francophones using the exact same argument over here in Flanders: the law of the individual vs. the law of the land, except that they use it to continually attempt to redefine internal borders in  favour of the francophone community while at the same time claiming to love Belgium. Well, they're loving it alright... to death.
Thing is: when the francophones were ascendant over here they used these same individual "rights" to deny the dutch-speaking group their individual rights, and that collectively. Until the flemish more or less collectively managed to get their individual rights respected and safeguarded through language-laws, a language-frontier and a federalisation of the country. And we do that collectively, which is why we don't generally give a rats ass about what you speak at home or in private, but when you're going to deal with the government you'll do it in dutch. (many flemish are francophone at home, and have been so for generations, but use dutch when dealing with the government. Unlike the francophones moving in mostly from Brussels who a) leave their city because it's too full of arabs/too busy/too filthy/to expensive b) come live in Flanders because it's none of (a) but c) refuse to learn Dutch and d) have the arrogance to demand that the communities in which they live be ceded to Brussels, which they e) left in the first place)

Obviously this is the local situation but sometimes I get the impression that Quebec is more or less struggling with the same problem.
And as Grubler said: no amount of explaining will ever suffice to make it clear cause it'll only become understandable when the tables are somehow turned.

[Berkut]

What does that have to do with it?  The German communities in the US lasted for almost 100 years.

And this is the 21st century.

Note, many of the people in my neighborhood also speak English...I'm not sure why they would suddenly decide to throw out Spanish.

so they're not at all a good counterexample in other words. Assuming a bilingual Quebec there'd be no reason whatsoever for anyone to learn or use french in Quebec, ever.

Except that they might want to  - and if they don't want to so much that they must be forced to it via legislation, then it isn't really worth it anyway.

[jimmy olsen]

Berkut is just being Berkut. He doesn't really believe what he writes, he hasn't thought it through either.

I disagree, Berkut is right. Ideology and political culture is important not language. If everyone in America woke up tomorrow only knowing how to speak Spanish would anything change? No, we'd have the same beliefs and act the same ways as always.

[Berkut]

And as Grubler said: no amount of explaining will ever suffice to make it clear cause it'll only become understandable when the tables are somehow turned.

You didn't read grumbler's post very carefully...

[garbon]

so they're not at all a good counterexample in other words. Assuming a bilingual Quebec there'd be no reason whatsoever for anyone to learn or use french in Quebec, ever.

And yet many people in my neighborhood want to learn Spanish and in fact fairly cheap Spanish classes for English speakers are taught at the community college a few blocks from me.

[Valmy]

Well I'm not sure why every immigrant group will react in the same way as immigrant groups of the past.

Because it is in their own best economic and social interests to do so.

[garbon]

Because it is in their own best economic and social interests to do so.

Being bilingual? Sure. Becoming "wholly anglo*"? Not so much.

*as much as one can be said to be wholly anglo, in this country.