[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Barrister]

Maybe the answer is to make French language education and requirements stronger in the West, then? So more Westerners end up speaking French, thus widening the pool of potential bilingual candidates.

The main problem is that teaching fluency through school alone is hard. As soon as you leave the class you have no reason to speak French, nor do you have many opportunities to hear it. The reason English is so ubiquitous around the word it that it's dominated pop culture for at least a century.

Many of the people I know who even took french immersion all of the way through school have since lost it (though presumably it would be easier for them to re-learn it).

[HVC]

My spoken French is a shadow of its former self. I didn't  go to French Immersion, but did take French from preschool to grade 10. I was surprised that my listening skills are still okish (but still degraded) when I watched the euro final on the Quebec feed. You don't use it you lose it. My father was fluent when he moved to Montreal in 67. But the time I was born in 84 he had lost it all.

*edit my reading is still good, but that mainly from being able to read Portuguese, I think. And I've gotten better at reading Portuguese over the years.

[Jacob]

Let's not make it some sort of brain structure problem, because otherwise, you'll have to explain why the sort of educated people I meet in Europe for some reason are able to overcome this difficulty, and educated people in Canada (and to some extent, in the US), don't. Or that utterly uneducated people in Senegal tend to speak at least their language, plus Wolof and French. Uniligualism in the anglosphere is the sort of low-level privilege that comes with people learning your language and you never bothering to learn the other.

I agree with all of this. Anglophones - especially in North America - tend to be unilingual for structural reasons. There is little opportunity (relative to Europeans, Francophone Canadians, or Senegalese) to immerse yourself into another language. There are few situations where you can't get by in English, so there's not much of an incentive to learn. And there are fewer enticing opportunities where learning French (or some other languages) is a requirement to access (unlike Quebecois wanting to access opportunities outside of Quebec, and unlike Europeans wanting to work or study in other EU nations).

So yeah, you're right, it's about privilige but it is also actually a taller barrier to climb. When you don't have much scope for exercising the language in a day-to-day setting, when any struggle with the language can typically be circumvented by switching to English, and when there's little in the way incentive to master the language (because that elusive SCC seat or party leadership is pretty far in the future compared to the prime time for actually learning additional languages) - then it is significantly harder to learn a new language.

So when the uptake of French in Anglo Canada is pretty low then it's not, IMO, an expression of laziness compared to the multilingual skills of people in different situations.

Which is why I agree with you that we should take concerted action to create an environment where learning French is both easier and further incentivized.

Beeb - dream big for you boys. Make sure they learn fluent French so one day one of them can become the Conservative prime minister of Canada. Think of it - Alberta roots, your values and charm, fluent in French and the give and take of the Albertan backlands, able to bring voters like Viper to the table while keeping the prairie locked for the Tories. The hockey skills won't hurt either, I have no doubt. It'd be glorious!

[Barrister]

Beeb - dream big for you boys. Make sure they learn fluent French so one day one of them can become the Conservative prime minister of Canada. Think of it - Alberta roots, your values and charm, fluent in French and the give and take of the Albertan backlands, able to bring voters like Viper to the table while keeping the prairie locked for the Tories. The hockey skills won't hurt either, I have no doubt. It'd be glorious!

The Alberta backlands?  They have grown up in suburban Edmonton.  And "my" charm?

Where are you sending your kids to school?

[Oexmelin]

I suspect further debate on this point is going to be fruitless for both of us.

I was pretty sure it was - because you've mentionned how we should dispense with French requirement a few times in different context. I suspect it's because you can easily project yourself in those situations - and perhaps you have, in fact been confronted with this. That's fine. The only thing I would ask is perhaps to try to project it the other way - to imagine a moment or circumstance where you are placed, in fact, in a position of institutional and cultural vulnerability. At one level, imagine if we constantly had arguments that were variations on: is the presence of Albertans really necessary on the Supreme Court? Aren't we limiting ourselves by only considering candidates from Alberta? At another level, imagine that this momentous hurdle to your career progression is just a "fact of life" way earlier in the experience of any francophone in elementary school outside of Quebec, and to any francophone in college inside of Quebec.

(as an aside, I think being placed in a position of cultural and institutional vulnerability is an experience that would hugely benefit our society)

I wanted to present the argument as one that is political in nature, because you usually consider these sorts of argument seriously.

[Jacob]

The main problem is that teaching fluency through school alone is hard. As soon as you leave the class you have no reason to speak French, nor do you have many opportunities to hear it. The reason English is so ubiquitous around the word it that it's dominated pop culture for at least a century.

Yeah for sure, which is why I support making French a requirement so there's at least some incentive.

It'd be interesting to try to figure out what incentives could be put in place to encourage the spread of French in the general population. I mean I can think of a bunch of ideas that probably would work, but would be hilariously against the code of human rights and/ or create obnoxious second order effects. But if we - for a moment - accept that increasing bilingualism among the Anglophone population is a good thing (which I personally do, but I expect that some people don't), what if any are the effective steps we can take to encourage it beyond what we do now? Especially given what we know about the challenges of making French stick, even for the people learning it to a reasonable or semi-reasonable level in elementary school.

[HVC]

I think being bilingual is good, and if I ever have kids I'd want them in French immersion. The other problem is division of resources. We have enough trouble making sure kids are good at math and history, for example. Guess it boils down to where people put their priorities. If you ask parents if they'd rather invest more in math education or French, the vast majority would choose math. 

[Valmy]

Maybe the answer is to make French language education and requirements stronger in the West, then? So more Westerners end up speaking French, thus widening the pool of potential bilingual candidates.

The main problem is that teaching fluency through school alone is hard. As soon as you leave the class you have no reason to speak French, nor do you have many opportunities to hear it. The reason English is so ubiquitous around the word it that it's dominated pop culture for at least a century. 

But in the 21st century this is not the limitation it used to be. You have infinite opportunities to hear it and use it online for free every day.

[HVC]

Opportunity to, but not incentive to. You want to watch blockbusters without subtitles? Play games without weird translations? Stalk your favourite celebrity on social media? Learn English.

I'm actually surprised Korean hasn't taken a bit of bump with the rise in Kpop, but I guess it's a hard language lol

[Jacob]

The Alberta backlands?  They have grown up in suburban Edmonton.

I'm counting on the hockey to do a lot of that work.

And "my" charm?

Then let's say "your incisive intellectual and political analysis and sound moral compass" instead

... they'll just have to get the charm from your wife or develop it themselves, I guess.

Where are you sending your kids to school?

I'm not actually going to share any details about where they're going to school, since between that and other information I've shared here it would allow anyone to locate my children individually. Languish is not that secure, and I've shared a fair bit of my identity here over the years. I'll be happy to talk about it in person some time.

But to what I think your point might have been - I'm totally not following my own ideals here, or practicing what I'm preaching. Which I think speaks to some of the barriers that are in place, because I'd take the opportunities if they were at all practical (I'd like to have one of my kids be Prime Minister one day too, why not, though probably in a different mold than what I think you'd like from yours). And for the record, no, I don't speak French beyond what I retain from grades 9 and 10.

I'm hoping I can find ways to help my kids develop French fluency at some time in the future - maybe by means of some long immersive vacations and/ or camps in Quebec or France - but "hope is not a strategy" as we all know. Which underscores my reasoning for wanting more structural support for bilingualism. Because my own shortcomings notwithstanding, I think maintaining and supporting the bilingual myth of our country is pretty important for its long-term health.

[Valmy]

Opportunity to, but not incentive to. You want to watch blockbusters without subtitles? Play games without weird translations? Stalk your favourite celebrity on social media? Learn English.

I'm actually surprised Korean hasn't taken a bit of bump with the rise in Kpop, but I guess it's a hard language lol

Right. You have to want to. And you probably need to learn at least a few Francophone celebrities' names before you can enjoy stalking them.

[Barrister]

I suspect further debate on this point is going to be fruitless for both of us.

I was pretty sure it was - because you've mentionned how we should dispense with French requirement a few times in different context. I suspect it's because you can easily project yourself in those situations - and perhaps you have, in fact been confronted with this. That's fine. The only thing I would ask is perhaps to try to project it the other way - to imagine a moment or circumstance where you are placed, in fact, in a position of institutional and cultural vulnerability. At one level, imagine if we constantly had arguments that were variations on: is the presence of Albertans really necessary on the Supreme Court? Aren't we limiting ourselves by only considering candidates from Alberta? At another level, imagine that this momentous hurdle to your career progression is just a "fact of life" way earlier in the experience of any francophone in elementary school outside of Quebec, and to any francophone in college inside of Quebec.

(as an aside, I think being placed in a position of cultural and institutional vulnerability is an experience that would hugely benefit our society)

I wanted to present the argument as one that is political in nature, because you usually consider these sorts of argument seriously.

But that's what I've been trying to argue.  That by requiring French for all these high level positions you are systematically excluding Albertans.  That we are within government in a position of cultural and institutional vulnerability.  Heck since we are talking about SCC Justices take Justice Sheilah Martin as an example - she spent her working career in Alberta but was born and raised in Montreal, and got her BCL from McGill.

Western / Alberta independence movements are a joke and will never happen, but there's a reason it keeps coming up.  There are a lot of people from the West who do feel shut out of the central Canadian consensus.

[Jacob]

I think the best answer here is to increase bilingualism in the West, but it's a tough row to how that's for sure.

[crazy canuck]

Learning another language is a superhuman feat that only a small 4 billion people in the world have been able to achieve. Mere elite lawyers and judges stand no chance.

Mere elite lawyers and judges who are in the running for a Supreme Court slot tend to be rather more elderly than the average school kid, and so rather less capable of picking up another language. This is a function of human physiology, because ability to learn a language varies with age.

Moreover, studies have shown that it takes between five and thirty years for the average person to master a new language (the opinions of researchers vary). This means it is not something the average person can simply pick up in short order, when they discover they may have a shot at a Supreme Court position. 

Of course, some people pick up languages much faster. But there is no guarantee that (say) brilliance at law makes one a brilliant linguist.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/at-what-age-does-our-ability-to-learn-a-new-language-like-a-native-speaker-disappear/

The retirement dates of justices are known.  The only exception would be early retirement or death.  Those who think there could be in contention for when those spots in their region come up have at least those 5 years to learn.

[crazy canuck]

Mere elite lawyers and judges who are in the running for a Supreme Court slot tend to be rather more elderly than the average school kid, and so rather less capable of picking up another language. This is a function of human physiology, because ability to learn a language varies with age.

But that is, in essence, the core issue here. It is perfectly possible for people to have, very young, aspirations of all kinds, for which they will prepare accordingly. Either these pertain to education (taking the required math classes), or to social capital (sinking many hours in music teaching). In this country, French - the other official language - never really enters the portrait. If you are an elderly lawyer or judge, and never bothered to learn French, but - as I am suspecting - otherwise sank all sorts of time in all sorts of pursuit, it's not your elderly physiology that is in play. It's the importance you placed on French in a country that is legally bilingual, that has declared itself culturally bi-legal, and for which you have aspirations to speak about the law.

Sure, there are some structural elements to it. Bilingualism tends to be low for all native speakers of English, whether in the US, Canada or the UK. Let's not make it some sort of brain structure problem, because otherwise, you'll have to explain why the sort of educated people I meet in Europe for some reason are able to overcome this difficulty, and educated people in Canada (and to some extent, in the US), don't. Or that utterly uneducated people in Senegal tend to speak at least their language, plus Wolof and French. Uniligualism in the anglosphere is the sort of low-level privilege that comes with people learning your language and you never bothering to learn the other. But, unlike the US, or the UK, Canada has made a choice - under centuries of political pressures - to declare itself bilingual.

At some point, it's also a choice, a choice that most French judges with aspirations for these sorts of careers, have made. No one has done so in order to become "a great linguist" and they dreamt of contributing to the Merriam-Webster. They did so because it's part of the job, and because it's part of a certain idea of one's self. If you'd rather have learned the violin when you were a kid, that's great. If you imagined yourself playing the violin, but never imagined yourself speaking French, I think you ought to curtail your imagination about being a judge in the Supreme Court.

If a lawyer thinks they are SCC material in their first years of practice, they probably are not SCC material.

But having said that, there is plenty of time for Court of Appeal judges to learn if they think they have a chance to be appointed when a spot in their region comes up.