Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by acottawa

It might not be rocket science, but it is not particularly easy for a normal person. Most people who speak other languages well learned them as children, either from family or their surrounding community, or in some cases they have a very high aptitude for languages (and usually music). For people without that aptitude or exposure as children it is very rare to achieve a high level of fluency.

Fully agreed. I don't mean to put it on the individuals, except in the indirect sense of having political will. But yes, it is a challenging task in some respects and will involve changes to education policy and even some other things possibly, like subtitling things on CBC.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Vorkuta

I have not been able to find a source to corroborate that. It sounds a bit fishy... I suspect the "level" of French they'd claim to know would be the same as what every anglophone Canadian would be at after taking regular French classes through primary-middle-high school... I don't imagine they speak it in the home at all.

Idk how reliable, but this source gives 15.8%

https://languageknowledge.eu/languages/french

But looks legit

https://languageknowledge.eu/about

Also has the % of Finns speaking Swedish, just play around with it

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by rousseau

What percentage of Canadians desire jobs in the public service where being bilingual is needed?*

Many? This is a common concern among many in Anglophone Canada; that it is difficult to join the public service because many positions require knowledge of French, and that this requirement favors Quebec and adjacent bilingual regions of Canada. It's also a concern for the public service itself, in the sense that it can limit talent pool, and they have invested in language training programs for some.

I don't think Anglophone Canadians have any sort of American-like aversion to the government; Canada has a fairly large government; our private sector wages are low anyways -- why wouldn't Anglophone Canadians care about the public service?

Originally Posted by rousseau

What percentage of Canadians outside of Quebec take vacations there?

Many, many. Montreal is one of the premiere destinations in Canada. Quebec City is one of Canada's most popular tourist destinations, alongside places like Banff and Niagara Falls. There's a lot of untapped tourism potential in Quebec too.

I don't know anyone in my age group in Ontario that hasn't vacationed in Quebec and loved it. It might be low though among those out west, but even then many people in Calgary / Vancouver make their way for a Quebec trip at some point in their life.

Quebec ain't France but within the context of Northern America it's a pretty cool place to visit!

[esquire]

What is the point of pulling out our hair over bilingualism stats when people learn the languages that they need to? The invisible hand does a good job of motivating people to learn languages for various reasons, most commonly economic ones in the modern world.

Not to be too flippant about it, but if you came up with a way to boost the bilingualism rate to 50%, my response would be: who cares?

[YOWflier]

Everything you wrote is bang on. Most people learn what they need, when they need, to the extent they need.

As for who cares? The agenda pushers care. That’s about it.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

What is the point of pulling out our hair over bilingualism stats when people learn the languages that they need to? The invisible hand does a good job of motivating people to learn languages for various reasons, most commonly economic ones in the modern world.

Not to be too flippant about it, but if you came up with a way to boost the bilingualism rate to 50%, my response would be: who cares?

Maybe because some people want to scale things back because it's apparently too hard for one segment of the population to learn another language?

[Hali87]

Anecdotally, I would say that from a client perspective (particularly Francophone/Quebecois clients of pan-Canadian businesses and institutions), more bilingualism within the workforce would be a very good thing. In practice there are many nominally bilingual pan-Canadian organizations that operate (internally) almost entirely in English and really struggle with the ~20% of their clients who are Francophone. In practice this tends to result in a substandard experience for those Francophone clients (the phrase "second-class citizens" comes to mind).

This probably wouldn't be apparent to people who aren't bilingual and/or haven't worked in those environments.

[Acajack]

I mean I can live with the status quo but if people want to do a hatchet job on our rights based on bullshit arguments...

Maybe it's time to let us do our own thing a bit more?

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I mean I can live with the status quo but if people want to do a hatchet job on our rights based on bullshit arguments...

Maybe it's time to let us do our own thing a bit more?

We kind of do?

I mean, it's not 1950s Anglo-Canada imposing its will on unwilling Quebec today.

Aside from Bill 21 and the various chirping that goes with that (but have the feds actually done anything about it?), Quebec mostly gets to be Quebec.

I'm trying to think of another sub-sovereign entity that gets the same relative latitude in its writ. Scotland, maybe? One could argue the EU and its member states, perhaps, but those states were always independent entities. Some weird principality of Europe I suppose.

Mostly, if one gets most of the benefits of being in a larger entity aside from minor irritants, I'm not really seeing the issue?

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by esquire

Not to be too flippant about it, but if you came up with a way to boost the bilingualism rate to 50%, my response would be: who cares?

Our country would run a lot more efficiently and there would probably be a lot less inter-provincial animosity. It would also be advantageous at the international scale. I would definitely see it as a good thing and probably even something we should aim for.

In the current timeline though I think Indigenous languages are going to be in the spotlight for the next while, and English/French bilingualism not so much.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

Quebec ain't France but within the context of Northern America it's a pretty cool place to visit!

Sure, I agree. I'm just talking about numbers and the motivation to learn French. Clearly there are far more British people travelling to France on holiday who would feel motivated to know a little bit of French for the inevitable encounters with people who don't speak English than there are Canadians going to Quebec who worry about finding themselves stuck outside of the two big cities where few people speak English.

Montreal is half bilingual, and perhaps more importantly, 80 percent of Montrealers believe that it is a bilingual city. Being a monolingual English speaker in Quebec is easy. In France, not so much.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Our country would run a lot more efficiently and there would probably be a lot less inter-provincial animosity.

I think this is lazy conjecture without historical evidence. Hundreds of civil wars have occurred between people who speak the same language. Liberals in the GTA speak the same language as conservative Alberta hicks.

Also, I don't see where efficiencies would be gained with more bilinguals. The translation budget would remain the same, it's not like you could start putting official notices and internal communications in only one language or the other just because more people speak both.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I think this is lazy conjecture without historical evidence. Hundreds of civil wars have occurred between people who speak the same language. Liberals in the GTA speak the same language as conservative Alberta hicks.

Also, I don't see where efficiencies would be gained with more bilinguals. The translation budget would remain the same, it's not like you could start putting official notices and internal communications in only one language or the other just because more people speak both.

Some may disagree, I think there is a slight difference in the pronunciation of "what aboot". I think if everyone became bilingual, eventually it would all blend into one language.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Also, I don't see where efficiencies would be gained with more bilinguals. The translation budget would remain the same, it's not like you could start putting official notices and internal communications in only one language or the other just because more people speak both.

Actually, come to think of it, if absolutely everybody were bilingual then it's conceivable that you would never have to translate anything. Theoretically, you could stick with French only in Quebec and English only everywhere else, because nobody would be left out linguistically.

Though that might not really jibe with the spirit of bilingualism.

[Hali87]

The comment about efficiencies was based on my experiences working in the (bilingual) Halifax office of a national ("bilingual") financial corp. Most of the company's other offices (roughly 10 major ones in the ROC, plus a handful outside Canada) were not bilingual - so a lot of the "problem resolution requiring communication in both languages" ended up getting funneled through our office. I don't think any of the executive or even people higher-up at the insurance claims or product design departments were fluent in French. This results in things like French-language insurance policies that say they cover certain things, but they don't, because it turns out that word can mean a few different and overlapping things in French but if you look at the English version of the policy you can clearly see that we specifically mean... etc. On average, the Francophone clients tended to have to put in more effort, wait much longer for things, and deal with considerably more "fine-print" and "computer says no" type BS - it was no contest.

I'm not sure if that's a typical setup for that type of corporation in Canada but I get the impression that it is. Do people have the option of going with Desjardins or whatever instead? Of course. It would be better for the other (Anglo) financial corps if they didn't, though, and having a more bilingual workforce would be a big step in the right direction. There are just so many practical things that would be smoothed out by ensuring English/French competency at every level of the company (or at least most), in every department, and ideally spread out across a large number of physical offices (back-end stuff, not necessarily branches). Even just things like a single person being able to take calls/read and write emails in both languages vs. having to "get someone else to do that and get back to me" - it adds up quickly.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by thewave46

We kind of do?

I mean, it's not 1950s Anglo-Canada imposing its will on unwilling Quebec today.

Aside from Bill 21 and the various chirping that goes with that (but have the feds actually done anything about it?), Quebec mostly gets to be Quebec.

I'm trying to think of another sub-sovereign entity that gets the same relative latitude in its writ. Scotland, maybe? One could argue the EU and its member states, perhaps, but those states were always independent entities. Some weird principality of Europe I suppose.

Mostly, if one gets most of the benefits of being in a larger entity aside from minor irritants, I'm not really seeing the issue?

I don't think we can honestly say that the division of powers in the federation is optimal.

The fact that the main complaints ROCers seem to have are generally related to Quebec would suggest I am right.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Hali87

The comment about efficiencies was based on my experiences working in the (bilingual) Halifax office of a national ("bilingual") financial corp. Most of the company's other offices (roughly 10 major ones in the ROC, plus a handful outside Canada) were not bilingual. I don't think any of the executive or even people higher-up at the insurance claims or product design departments were fluent in French. This results in things like French-language insurance policies that say they cover certain things, but they don't, that word can mean a few different and overlapping things in French but if you look at the English version of the policy you can clearly see that we specifically mean... etc. On average, the Francophone clients tended to have to put in more effort, wait much longer for things, and deal with considerably more "fine-print" and "computer says no" type BS - it was no contest.

I'm not sure if that's a typical setup for that type of corporation in Canada but I get the impression that it is. Do people have the option of going with Desjardins or whatever instead? Of course. It would be better for the other (Anglo) financial corps if they didn't, though, and having a more bilingual workforce would be a big step in the right direction. There are just so many practical things that would be smoothed out by ensuring English/French competency at every level of the company (or at least most), in every department, and ideally spread out across a large number of physical offices (back-end stuff, not necessarily branches).

Ironically, the niche of providing effective customer service in French has probably led to more development of Quebec Inc. to serve its local customers (and to a lesser extent other Francophones).

Why deal with inept translation from an outside company when you can get competent language service with a local one? It's one of the ways that actually would be pretty effective in keeping money within an economy.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Ironically, the niche of providing effective customer service in French has probably led to more development of Quebec Inc. to serve its local customers (and to a lesser extent other Francophones).

Why deal with inept translation from an outside company when you can get competent language service with a local one? It's one of the ways that actually would be pretty effective in keeping money within an economy.

Agreed.

Although a surprising number of people still seem to opt for the outside company/inept translation. Maybe this will change over time.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I don't think we can honestly say that the division of powers in the federation is optimal.

The fact that the main complaints ROCers seem to have are generally related to Quebec would suggest I am right.

The bleating masses will complain about all, triviality be damned. I distinguish between the moaning of inveterate whiners to the legitimate criticisms of how the federation works.

Quebec just gets special attention for being different, because that's how people operate. We'd find somebody new to blame (insert province here) once the circle got smaller.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by thewave46

The bleating masses will complain about all, triviality be damned. I distinguish between the moaning of inveterate whiners to the legitimate criticisms of how the federation works.

Quebec just gets special attention for being different, because that's how people operate. We'd find somebody new to blame (insert province here) once the circle got smaller.

None of which proves we are set up the best way we can be.

We are not really in "If it ain't broke don't fix it" territory.

More like "where there is smoke there is at least some fire".