Quebec’s image gets uglier with each new language-based attack

Three times in two months since the election of a Parti Quebecois government, English-speaking Quebecers have been confronted with the fact they’re not welcome by a segment of the French-speaking population.

Three incidents is not a tidal wave, but none of the incidents was minor. In September, forty-eight-year-old Alex Montreuil had a sandwich thrown at him in a cafe at the Jewish General Hospital after speaking English to a woman behind the counter. As it happens, Montreuil has a severe allergy to tomatoes, and the tomato in the sandwich set off a dangerous reaction.

A few weeks later, a couple in Vaudreuil-Dorion, just outside Montreal, called paramedics when their two-year-old suffered a seizure. Mark Bergeron speaks French, but says he had trouble understanding the medical terminology used by the attendants and asked if they could have the conversation in English.


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Quebec’s image gets uglier with each new language-based attack | Full Comment | National Post

More incidents like these that make the news will generate a backlash from the public outside of Quebec. A pretty pathetic attitude from Canada's most adolescent province

QUebec could become the first case of ethnic cleansing without a shot being fired.

I'm tempted to start a petition to the UN to gradually deofficialize French and English there and gradually replace them with Esperanto or some other auxiliary language. Besides, the way we have behaved towards indigenous language communities in Canada, do we really deserve to have our languages be official at the UN? Ditto UNESCO, aeronautical and maritime communications, etc.

If you're going to the UN, why limit this to English/French and FN culture? There is a deep and rich history of cultural invasions going back to the Mongols, Germanic tribes, Romans, Moors, etc.

Makes for a messy situation, but you may as well go right to square 1 if you truly want to tackle this.

Then a simple solution would still be to adopt an easy-to-learn common second language. Considering the advantage English and French speakers have in the private sector, why then discriminate in their favour at the UN to boot?

I'll never know why but for some odd reason French never really took off in SK.

Having the globe develop and new one universal language is an easy solution?

If done gradually, yes. Since the language would be designed to be easy to learn, anyone could be fluent in it after about 150 hours of instruction or 300 hours at absolute most, meaning they could easily be fluent in it by the end of high school even if they learnt the language for only 2 hours a week or 50 hours a year over a period of no more than 6 yers if not 3. This would mean that an average student learning it for 50 hours a year starting at the age of 8 (which would be possible owing to its ease of learning) could be fluent in it by the age of 11; a somewhat below average student could achieve the same by the age of 15. And a particularly struggling students would still have a few more years to do so before the end of high school. Son in fact it would be far easier than the learning of difficult languages like English and French. Besides, immagine the savings in interpretation costs worldwide.

there are pockets of it, much like alberta. I have scads of French family from Sask. But it is funny to get down to southern Sask and hear the names of the towns and rivers and such pronounced so English it hurts. The southern regions really seem to have nixed the French as much as possible.

Assiniboia, Monmatre, Redvers, Gravelbourg and oodles up around PA.

lol
Funny thing is that French is diminishing in Canada. And in fact, even English is as well. The growing language demographic are the Asian languages. Kind of makes entrenching any particular language to be a foolish issue when language demographics are always changing.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/dominance-of-french-and-english-languages-shrinking-census-shows/article4633786/

lol Hasn't been overly big here either. According to BC stats in 2006 it didn't even register in the top 5 and it's had a negative growth rate since the early '50s..
3 ,995,990 English [83.6%; 3,341,285] | Chinese (All) [6.7%; 267,905] | Panjabi (Punjabi) [3.0%; 119,475] | Korean [1.0%; 39,990] | Tagalog (Pilipino, Filipino) [0.6%; 23,630] |

Persian (Farsi) [0.5%; 19,900]French is down to something like 0.35%

Personally, I find it quite difficult to assume languages. It takes a long time. But, if I were to learn different languages, it would be much easier to grasp the Latin languages than any other as I did take 3 or 4 years of Latin. Ego sum iuste volubilis in Latin.
My father-in-law is fluent in Anishinaabemowin and English, also has a good grasp of Cree, Dene, Tlingit, and a couple Inuit, and some French.

Last edited by L Gilbert; Oct 31st, 2012 at 04:36 PM..

I like the ethnic cleansing without a shot. Good line. The sad reality of the whole thing is
because of a real bad case of ethnic cleansing by the British in the Eastern seaboard.
Cape Breton and other areas were cleansed and the French forced out. The backlash is
now in Quebec and has been for some time. Defending their right to exist has a meaning
to them and they somehow don't realize an impact from say three hundred years ago is
over. These things never seem to die. the MacDonald's and the Campbell's still surface
from time to time. Look at all the blood in Northern Ireland and that was not that long ago.
It is unfortunate that the squabbles around the world in our history come down to
unresolvable conflicts in our present day lives.
I understand why French didn't really catch on in Saskatchewan. To me its simple, the French
speak their own language at home perhaps but I think over all they just accepted one another
and formed an equal society of their own. When people make the effort on all sides as there is
a combination of ethnic backgrounds, decide to have one society and accept each other as
equals there is no need for language and cultural rules that place restrictions and old biases on
each other. They found a way to get past all that. Too bad we are not there yet in the rest of
the country