A group representing Quebec’s English-speaking community is seeking an injunction with the court to challenge the province’s controversial French-language law known as Bill 96, CTV News has learned.
My first thought is “good.”
Quebec’s language laws have always been punitive, under the guise of protectionism. I can only imagine what people would say if the government here in Alberta decided to pull the same shit against French speakers. (And with Smith in power, it’s entirely possible!)
If you really must, declare a provincial dominant language; then step aside and stop trying to actively harm people for speaking English.
In a hypothetical situation where the dominance of the English language in Alberta was in question, the Albertan government would definitely try to enact English language laws. Same goes for my home province of Ontario.
Quebec’s language laws have always been
punitive, under the guise of[about] protectionism. The value of language protectionism can be tough to understand if you speak English - the most powerful language in Canada and across the globe - as a first (and only) languageThe problem seems to be that Quebec has intertwined language with culture. A language is simply a means for two people to communicate ideas, and that is paramount to a functioning society.
Without a common method to exchange ideas, you can’t have a society. English isn’t the best language, but it works, and like it or not, it’s been globally adopted. It’s a standard, and anyone in the tech industry knows the problems that come with having multiple, competing, interoperable standards.
The only people I’ve ever heard scoff at the idea of culture and language being intertwined have been unilingual anglophones. Funny coincidence.
I’m actually dismayed at the comparison of language with tech standardisation. Sure, it’s silly to pretend that learning English isn’t economically or socially beneficial, no one is arguing against that. But you’re essentially saying that the language I love in, I think in, I learn in, I exchange in, I live in is substandard because what, fewer people speak it?? Language is culture and culture can only live through language, it’s normal for people to want to preserve that. Language is more to humans than a simple communication protocol.
A language is simply a means for two people to communicate ideas, and that is paramount to a functioning society. Without a common method to exchange ideas, you can’t have a society.
You realize French is a language, used by people in Québec (and across Canada, there are a million francophones outside Québec) as the common method of exchanging ideas? Is Québec not a functioning society, or at least as functional as anglophone-majority provinces?
[…]anyone in the tech industry knows the problems that come with having multiple, competing, interoperable standards.
Just curious, if Mandarin suddenly became the new lingua franca overnight, and your province’s Mandarin-speaking population was growing constantly, would you just throw English away and learn Mandarin?
Just curious, if Mandarin suddenly became the new lingua franca overnight, and your province’s Mandarin-speaking population was growing constantly, would you just throw English away and learn Mandarin?
Over several generations? Absolutely.
“culture can only live through language”
Lo-fucking-l.
That was a great example of ignorance in a nutshell. There is nothing wrong with loving your language, but calling it the only way your culture can live is simply wrong.
problem seems to be […] intertwined language with culture
You lost the argument right here. Language is as fundamental to culture as the sky is blue.
The rest of your post amounts to “communication is important to function” and you are not wrong on that front. But you put no weight on the importance of culture too.
Consider this your wakeup call, that just because you don’t personally care about society having an identity doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t.
Of course, and what’s the culture tied to English speakers then? Do you think 2nd and 4rd generation Canadian Italians/Ukranians/wherever, who don’t speak their native language, have lost all sense of their culture? Are the 2nd and 3rd generation anglophones living in Quebec incapable of adopting any of Quebecs culture?
Get over yourself.
You sound like people who hear about evolution and they ask “so where are the monkeys turning into humans.” They are not saying there is culture tied to speaking English, they are saying that speaking English is part of some cultures and therfore by learning English you are participating in those cultures. French is the same. I’d you let French die off, you are letting part of French cute die off. If you learn French, you are choosing to inmerse yourself in French culture.
The guy said “intertwined” and it’s a great way if thinking of it. You don’t learn French and then French culture, learning a language is taking part of a culture, in this case Quebecoise, not even French.
Wow.
This comment reeks of ignorance and colonialism.
Shame on you.
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What do you find so punitive about bill 96?
- First and foremost, the legal declaration that Quebec is a unilingual province. We’re a bilingual country. Maybe we should forbid offering services in French in the rest of the country.
- The cap on English-language CEGEPs. “Sorry, but we’ve hit our limit for your kind of people.”
- Judges no longer need to be fluent in anything other than French. How does that allow for trials in English? (And even if you can find a bilingual judge, getting them to hear the case will be onerous.)
- Businesses with 25 or more employees will be legally required to operate in French - complete with certificates, committees, and inspections. God help you if your employees start talking to each other in their native language!
- Refugees and immigrants will be denied access to services in any other languages after six months.
While it’s true that most of the country doesn’t have a requirement to offer services in both official languages, there’s only one province that is trying to actively and aggressively forbid it. That’s not protectionism, that’s punishment.
I need to file an official request to be served in English with businesses that are serving me paperwork since the bill was passed. This isn’t because they can’t serve me in English. Previously, they had been without issue. These official requests are cover-your-ass statements so they don’t get in trouble when using English versions.
Additionally, the only language you can get certain things like birth certificates, wedding certificates, power of attorney, etc. is French. Need an English version? You’ll need to pay for a translator.
Additionally, even if I wanted to access any government services in English, I need to lie. I don’t speak fluent French, but have been here for more than 6 months, so technically, none of those English-provided services are legally accessible to me. If I want to find out what forms I need, or get information on government services, according to bill 96 I better learn French right now or stay ignorant.
And this is just the hassle it’s caused me. Small businesses have to report headcounts of how many people don’t speak fluent French. Signage needs to be put up by next year that’s compliant with the need to be “visibly French dominant.” Failure to comply means fines.
I don’t care what the official language of Quebec is. I don’t care if the government wants to devote holidays and school time to teaching about French history. This doesn’t affect me, and it’s educational and helps keep Quebecois heritage alive.
I care that, because French isn’t my first language, I’m made to feel like a second-class citizen for asking for service not in French. I care that government services deny accessibility because they’re speaking a different language. I care that businesses will have to jump through even more hoops to do business in Quebec, not because of product safety or consumer protection, and not even because of lack of accessibility, but instead because it’s just not a language the government prefers. I got my citizenship last year, and I’m glad I’m a Canadian. But Quebec’s government sure as shit doesn’t want me living there.
I understand your frustration, and I agree with the 6 month period rule for new immigrants being completely unreasonable.
But, how do you think you would’ve fared in a country like, Brasil, or Spain, or Japan, or France? It’s the same thing.
It’s not though. None of those countries are explicitly banning government communication in other languages, and removing other services that have been in place. None of those countries are going out of their way to say to businesses “If you don’t communicate in the language of our choice, you’ll be required to pay us money.”
Coming from the United States, services were often offered in Spanish because it was an uncommon language, but still prevalent enough that people spoke it regularly. Spanish isn’t an official language of the US, but they recognized the need to serve their people better and took steps to do this. Citizens might be assholes who would say something like “This is America, speak American,” but the government at least made the effort to help. Quebec is echoing those citizens, while saying their own heritage is so fragile that if they have to serve their populace better that it will disappear. I can’t imagine any of those other countries you mentioned are so thin-skinned.
You’re picking the United States as an example? The one country that’s in itself practically the sole responsible for worldwide decline in local cultural and linguistic heritage?
I chose an example I know of that ensures language services are available for its people. If you want to discuss the overall content of my comment instead of a minor aspect of it, feel free. If not, I think we’re done.
I don’t think it’s a bad example in this case, since the US hasn’t lost it’s own cultural heritage much. For better or for worse, the US does a great job of assimilating people and making them “American”.
That’s pretty much exactly what Quebec is trying to accomplish, right? something like ‘if you want to live in Quebec, you have to become Quebecois’. So if US policy doesn’t blanket ban other languages in signage and social services and still manages to ‘americanize’ people, then Quebec could potentially do the same.
The US and Quebec are in pretty different situations, so it’s not a perfect example, but I think it is a pretty good basis for an argument against Quebec’s culturally protectionist policies.
How about Saskatchewan as an example? With Alberta, we are the butt cheeks of Canada, yet in Saskatoon, you can go to the city hall website, click the accessibility button, and get the site served in 19 different languages. Yes, they’re just using Google Translate, so there are no Canadian Indigenous languages, but it’s a start. In addition, I think those languages and more are available for in-person service through an interpretation contractor.
There are plenty of efforts to prevent languages from disappearing. I have no problem with Quebec doing things to preserve their French, but I’m not sure it should be via removal of other language services.
On the other hand, I have no language I’m trying to preserve, don’t live there, and haven’t visited in decades, so I’m willing to let them make their own decisions.
It’s the same thing
It’s not. I’ve had colleagues in Hungary who had not learned Hungarian in five+ years and were doing just fine
And they never bothered to learn the local language?
Man, I’ve taken some basic Japanese, Italian and Spanish for going on vacation for three to four weeks and these guys never even learned Hungarian after five years living there???
You don’t think this was wrong of them?
Not everyone has an ease with language, unfortunately.
You and I do, but I know francophones who are incapable of learning English no matter how hard they try, and anglophones who are incapable of learning French, or any other language for that matter.
It works out for some people, but others will never learn anything beyond their native tongue, especially if they migrate as adults.
European countries and their citizens tend to understand and speak English pretty well, with some exceptions, and most of them offer services in English upon request
I disagree with your argument and here’s why.
In Canada, Québec is the most bilingual province in the whole country, followed by New Brunswick. Nearly half (46%) of the population in Québec and about a third (34%) in N.B. is English-French bilingual. Whereas the rest of Canada is about 10% or below. And, outside of Québec, between 2001 and 2021, bilingualism has decresed in most provinces except for the N.W.T and Yukon. (Source from Stats Can)
This means one thing. Francophones in Canada had no choice but to learn English, mainly for work, as we are in a continent where the vast majority of the countries have English as an official language and it is the most widespread language on the continent. (Source)
Meanwhile, anglophones have the privilege of having as a first language one of the most widespread official language in North America, the most spoken language on the continent and the de-facto language of commerce, the Internet and the most popular culture on Earth. Why should they even bother to learn a second language? Right? That’s what we call a privilege. What I noticed in Québec is that anglophones are very entitled about that privilege. And I think that the fact that Québec is denying them this privilege and really upsets them. They will say it’s discrimination, that they are treated as second-class citizens or that it’s xenophobia. This is equivalent to a white cis male saying they are being discriminated against when a company doesn’t hire them because they use positive discrimination to have more diversity.
And regarding European countries, you’d be surprised how much the majority of people actually DON’T know English. The moment you step outside of Paris, Rome or any other major metropolis or big tourist destinations, you will find out that people don’t speak a lick of English. They’ll know more than one language though, but not necessarily English. One example I can give you is in France, while French is the official language, people also learn and speak Chtimi, Breton Gaelic, Basque, Corsican, Dutch, German, Italian, Creole, all depending on the region. (source) If you try to speak to them in English in those regions, most people won’t understand or won’t be able to respond. I know because I’ve travelled quite a bit in Europe and if I hadn’t taken a language course for the country I was visiting, I would’ve been stuck because they couldn’t understand English at all.
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Your comment was deleted but I was somehow able to see it in my app?
Did you see the examples in the article? They seem egregious.
I’ve read a bit about the bill. As a franco québécois, I agree with the majority of it except on two points. The limit applied to English colleges (cégeps) where they can only allow 17.5% of the overall college students in Québec and the six month limit for new immigrants to communicate in a language other than Franch with the provincial government. Those two points are ridiculous.
Otherwise this bill’s intention is to cement French as the sole official language of the province and define it as the language of its nation, the language of integration and the language that will bond society together and the language of the legal system in Québec. It has several points that require people to learn French sufficiently to be able to fully integrate into the francophone society. I think this is really important for equality and to enable everyone to have the same opportunities in Québec. For far too long francophone québécois have been treated like second class citizens by the anglophone elite up until the 80’s, and even afterwards still required to know English to get pretty much any kind of job in the province from minimal wage jobs to upper management jobs or even to become a supreme court judge in a francophone society.
As far as I can tell, there are two real problems with Quebec’s language policies in general:
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Too many sticks and not enough carrots: the Quebec government can’t seem to find a way to make anyone want to learn French for its own sake. They can only force people to learn it against their will.
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They’re solving the wrong problem: Whether adults arriving from outside of Quebec learn French doesn’t actually matter much. You measure the health of a language by seeing how many children are learning it as a first language, or one of their first languages. French is not in danger in Quebec by that measure. French is not in danger in Ontario by that measure, even though the Ontario government’s policies regarding the French language for at least the past fifty years have wobbled back and forth between “lukewarm tolerant” and “weakly supportive”.
Thing is, I’d bet the politicians in Quebec know they’re solving the wrong problem. Like ultraconservatives, they’re playing to a fear that they’ve carefully instilled into their base.
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