Nov 262011
Short form: French-only speaking will be “encouraged” in Montreal schools by representatives of the government.
Of course, in the US, local state and federal government representatives bend over backwards to spend taxpayer dollars to make sure that *nobody* ever has to sully their tongue with the English language, and yet still rake in all the free bennies.
A nation has the right to encourage the continuity of its own language and culture. But somehow that simple fact never seems to apply in the US.
7 Responses to “What’s French for “This will go well?””
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Cui bono? Keeping people poor, by keeping them illiterate in english keeps socialists in office.
The English tried this in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The Australians tried it in their country. The Americans tried it on the Indians. The best indicator of the future is the past.
To be fair, the French tried this in France, the Norwegians tried this in Norway… and they both succeeded. IIRC, well into the 19th century both of those countries were majority non French/Norwegian speakers. Hell, I believe that “Norwegian” was a more or less artificial language at the time, an attempt to weld a whole bunch of related but distinct dialects and languages into a single language, for practical and nationalistic reasons.
The practice of “Vergonha” succeeded in turning France into a nation of French speakers, through humiliation and exclusion. One can argue whether it was ethical, but it clearly worked.
My own view: a nation should encourage its language, but should not make other languages illegal. Give me dictatorial powers (go on, I dare you), and all government business in the US, from local through state to federal, will be done in English. Voting, publications, Miranda Rights, court proceedings, public schooling etc, should all be done in English… with a few *distinct* exceptions. Those exceptions would be solely for government business done in pre-Columbian languages… Cherokee, Iroquois, so on. Spanish, German, Vietnamese, Russian, Arabic… no. The only people who have the right to not understand and use English and have the government accommodate them are those who are speaking a language that existed here prior to 1492.
An additional thought: I believe that the US should encourage English, and the French (be they Euro or Canucks) shoudl encourage French. One area where I find the Francophiles rather laughable is the repeated efforts to not only make French universal, but to make it *pure.* Expunging English loan words, and setting up commissions and bureaucracies specifically to amke up French words to replace accepted English words. But English, be it Brit or American, is a language that cannot be made even remotely “pure.” One of the all-time best quotes on the topic:
The problem with defending the purity of the English language
is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t
just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their
pockets for new vocabulary.
James Davis Nicoll
Add whatever words you like to the English language, and let it compete. It’s when people try to replace the English language wholesale, and demand that everyone else go out of their way to accommodate them, that I get miffed.
Ahhhh those rascally “Canadiens” – willing to fight to the death to speak French… poorly.
This may be a good, albeit painful, development. Sounds like (finally) the Francphiles of Canada are losing ground fast enough that the panic is setting in.
20 years from now look back at it and see it was a generational-change thing.
So, when are they going to start speaking French, then? And which French are they talking about?
So, when are they going to start speaking French, then? And which French are they talking about?
It’s like trying to tell China to speak only one dialect of Chinese — which dialect would you choose?