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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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