Quote: Originally Posted by cdn_bc_ca
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here's a quote from the article:
"I don't accept being a second-class citizen" Coderre told a talk show on LCN network.
As far as I'm concerned, at the venues I've been to so far, French has always been spoken along with the English when announcements are broadcast.
WHAT IS THE DEAL?
Let's put things in perspective here ()and Ihave plenty of right to criticise French-speakers seeing that I'm a native French-speaker myself). According to statistics, about 1% of the world's population knows French (bearing in mind that this statistic includes everyone, including infants, the deaf, etc.). Yet, a French-speaker can attend any Olympic event in the world at any time and be served in French!
Now to be kind, let's suppose that infants, the deaf, etc. comprised 50% of the world's population, and we counted them out of the statistic. That would allow us to double the percentage of French-speakers in the world to a whopping 2%! So essentially, about 2% of the world's adult population that knows at least one spoken language knows French, and yet the International Olympic Committee chooses to give preferential service to this 2% over all others, at every Olympic event in the world, and yet Canada's French-speakers are complaining about this?! If you're a Persian Speaker or an Arabic speaker, good luck getting any service in your language at any Olympic event other than in a city where your language is predominant. French-speakers needn't worry about that. They were served even in Beijing. Even Russians got no service in their language even though their own country borders China. Nor did Japan or Korea get any service in their languages either. But French-speakers from across Eurasia did! And French-speakers are now complaining that giving French preferential treatment is not good enough, that it mustn't just be given preferential treatment, but royal treatment too? Hey, I thought most French-speakers were ardent republicans.
Now before any English-speaker here gets too excited, I did my research on English speakers in the world too. As it turns out, about 5% of the world's population speaks English, again including infants, the deaf, etc. So again, to be kind, let's double that to 10% of the world's population. English being the IOC's second official language means that English is also presented next to French in all Olympic events worldwide. So just as French was presented in Biejing for instance in the absence of Russian, Japanese, Korean, etc., so English was likewise presented in their absence too. So while 88% of the world's adult speaking population would have been able to understand nothing of the Olympic events in Beijing unless he should watch them dubbed or subtitled on TV, The 12% (and likely less seeing that there is some overlap with English-French bilinguals being counted twice)of the world's adult speaking population that knows French or English would have been given a special privilege that excluded the other 88% or more of the world's population. Yet, instead of being thankful for their primary privileged position, French-speakers complain that they're not privileged enough, and English-speakers complain because they're only number 2, ignoring the fact that the rest of the world is excluded completely. Talk about national self-absorption. Sickening, really.
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