Why not? In BC you can choose from seven languages:
Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, German, Japanese, Spanish, and French. So why not Ontario?
Do we need this language law?
- Thread starter Machjo
- Start date
Why not? In BC you can choose from seven languages:
Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, German, Japanese, Spanish, and French. So why not Ontario?
How well do I know Ontario? On what front. That's a wide open question. Some points I know, some I don't.
I know that here in Ottawa knowing French and English is highly useful to get a job. I'm lucky in that sence. But I'm not sure of the object f your question so I can only guess. And I'm guessing that what you're getting at is that French is by far the most useful second language in Ontario. I'm not disputing that. If that is what you were getting at, then I must counter that French is useful only for those who can learn it well, and statistics are not too promissing on that front.
Now as for the claim that few Ontarians would go with the idea, I'm inclined to agree with you, and on that point I'm perplexed. On the one hand, I'm inclined to agree with you that most Ontarians would rather maintain the current policy of compulsory French across the board and accept the majority failure rather than seek out alternative options to increase the rate of success in bilingualism by offering alternative language options. On the other hand, I can't understand why they would believe that it's a wise investment of taxpayers' money.
The most perplexing thing to me is that if so many view spending years to learn a smattering of French rather than another language well, then clearly there is something I don't understand. I could be wrong (and please correct me if I am), but it would seem to me to be more useful to learn a less spoken language well than to speak a widely spoken language poorly. After all, how far can we get if all we can do is introduce ourselves and that's it?
My Dear Machjo,
You unfortunately missed my first point.
Ontario is a large province .
You cannot restrict yourself to the Ottawa area.
You have to have travelled the entire province to get a good take on what you are trying to promote.
Quebec and New Brunswick have English and French as their official languages.
I would say that since federally the official languages of this country are English and French. French is your choice. It is not an introductory language. It is spoken widely across the country.
Ontario does not like it because they claim it is too difficult to learn and if they did what purpose what it serve.
Poor Ontario, yours to discover and you had better!
You unfortunately missed my first point.
Ontario is a large province .
You cannot restrict yourself to the Ottawa area.
You have to have travelled the entire province to get a good take on what you are trying to promote.
Quebec and New Brunswick have English and French as their official languages.
I would say that since federally the official languages of this country are English and French. French is your choice. It is not an introductory language. It is spoken widely across the country.
Ontario does not like it because they claim it is too difficult to learn and if they did what purpose what it serve.
Poor Ontario, yours to discover and you had better!
There are some notable exceptions. If you head to eastern Ontario, you'll find many French only speakers. Same if you head to the western part of Montreal (the West Island), it's full of English only speakers. Folks learn the langauge based on the area they live in, plain and simple. There is no need to force learning a second language if you will not use it.
I'd suggest you step beyond Quebec before you pass your judgements. There are a great many French communities in Ontario - all of whom receive services in French or English. Northern Ontario is of predominantly French character. See - we don't have to force a language or culture on anyone and that's why we don't have the English/French animosity that seems to be the driving force elsewhere.
Language, Heritage and Religion - People and Culture - About Ontario (Government of Ontario, Canada)
Interesting statistic.
French is spoken at home by almost 490,000 people, and Chinese by 409,000. Wouldn't this sugest that Ontario would depend on a much wider field of internaitonal tade than Quebec? Certainly allowing students to choose their second language could help to increase the rate of bilingualism in the province (instead of learning poor French at school and only colloquial Chinese at school, neither of which would be extremely useful to him, an Onarian of Chinese descent could learn colloquial Chinese at home and ideographs at school, of much greater usefulness), and thus allow Ontarians to build new international commercial, scientific, cultural, and other relations.
I'd lived in Toronto and Kitchener years ago, and found that French is of practically no use in Kitchener and highly useful for certain jobs in Toronto. But even in Toronto, I never heard French on the street; it seemed to be limited to my working environment, dealing with customers from across the nation.
But what about international companies? While I was working for pan-national companies (where French is particularly useful), certainly international companies would need a much wider range of language skills, no?
By the way, I don't see why this could not apply to Quebec too.
After all, a French-speaker living in Quebec city and whose parents know Arabic but no English, for example, would probably have a higher chance of success if he could learn Arabic as his second language at school instead of English.
After all, a French-speaker living in Quebec city and whose parents know Arabic but no English, for example, would probably have a higher chance of success if he could learn Arabic as his second language at school instead of English.
Sorry,
Big time wrong.
Stay away from Quebec or go there and stay for six months or more and see how well you do.
I am all for your quest and I understand what you are attempting to do, get all your facts and actual experiences together and then plead your case.
I sincerely wish you the best.
Regards,
scratch
Big time wrong.
Stay away from Quebec or go there and stay for six months or more and see how well you do.
I am all for your quest and I understand what you are attempting to do, get all your facts and actual experiences together and then plead your case.
I sincerely wish you the best.
Regards,
scratch
Sorry Scratch. I didn't mean that many in Quebec would go for it (I think they're quite convinced of the value of English even if all they can do is say hello in the language), at least not in the near future. What I meant was simply that it would seem to make more sence. That's all.
Now this is interesting. I'd lived in Charlevoix for one school year. Yes, I know. By now you're probaly thinking 'Where the hell hasn't he lived?'. Well, why I've moved around so much like a ping pong ball is a story for another day, and no I'm not wanted by the police, before you ask.
Anyway, from my experiences there and in other places that I'd visited, including Quebec City and Robervalle, I'd have to disagree with you. Yes it's true that the rate of success for English is better in Quebec than for French in Ontario, probably owing to more investment in this field, both in time and money, on the part of Quebec society in general. However, this does not mean that they all succeed in learning English. I can only count myself lucky that I was fluent in French, otherwise I'd have had lots of difficulties in Quebec. Outside the Vieux Quebec, few in the city were truly functional in English beyod giving me instructions to get somewhere in extremely broken English. yes, that might be better than the average for French in Otawa, but still not particularly useful beyond the mundane, like giving directions to a place.
In Charlevoix, unless you went to the Casino de Charlevoix, you could kiss English goodbye. About the only people in town who knew English well were some workers at the Casino and the local English teachers (and except for two of them, yes, their English was impressive to say the least). But as for the rest of the community, beyond a few phrases to show off their English, not much. And certainly you're not going to tell me that millions of dollars in government investment and possibly just as many millions of hours in time is a wise investment of society's time and money just so that they can show off, but not really communicate!
In Roberval, same as Charlevoix, except for a few persons in the tourist industry because many hunters went up there from the US and other parts of Canada.
I'm more travelled than you might give me credit for, and I will tell you that the bilingualism in Quebec is not much more impressive than it is in Ontario. Just as Ottawa doesn't represent Ontario, so Montreal (and I lived there too for over a year by the way) doesn't represent Quebec. And I'll tell you that most fail to learn English (again Montreal is an exception because it truly is a bilingual city where you pretty well need to be bilingual to work as a burger flipper at McDonald's). Here are the statistics (Population by knowledge of official language, by province and territory (2006 Census)):
Out of 7,435,905 persons living in Quebec (2006), 4,010,880 know French but not English. Yet when we consider that English is compulsory acros the province, we can reasonably assume that those who do not know English have failed to learn it. This would mean that about 54% know French but not English. That would be a 46% failure rate! Now of course these are rough estimates because not all in Quebec have finished their highschool, and some might have studied outside of Quebec, etc. But this still gives a rough idea, and it's not an impressive report card to say the least: seems to confirm my own observations on the ground.
Son Ontario and Quebec are not that different after all, as far as statistics tell. And remember, these statistics are based on self-assessment, and not rigid tests, and also that Quebec has many native English-speakers too, like ontario French speakers, and that helps in learning the language too.
Anyway, from my experiences there and in other places that I'd visited, including Quebec City and Robervalle, I'd have to disagree with you. Yes it's true that the rate of success for English is better in Quebec than for French in Ontario, probably owing to more investment in this field, both in time and money, on the part of Quebec society in general. However, this does not mean that they all succeed in learning English. I can only count myself lucky that I was fluent in French, otherwise I'd have had lots of difficulties in Quebec. Outside the Vieux Quebec, few in the city were truly functional in English beyod giving me instructions to get somewhere in extremely broken English. yes, that might be better than the average for French in Otawa, but still not particularly useful beyond the mundane, like giving directions to a place.
In Charlevoix, unless you went to the Casino de Charlevoix, you could kiss English goodbye. About the only people in town who knew English well were some workers at the Casino and the local English teachers (and except for two of them, yes, their English was impressive to say the least). But as for the rest of the community, beyond a few phrases to show off their English, not much. And certainly you're not going to tell me that millions of dollars in government investment and possibly just as many millions of hours in time is a wise investment of society's time and money just so that they can show off, but not really communicate!
In Roberval, same as Charlevoix, except for a few persons in the tourist industry because many hunters went up there from the US and other parts of Canada.
I'm more travelled than you might give me credit for, and I will tell you that the bilingualism in Quebec is not much more impressive than it is in Ontario. Just as Ottawa doesn't represent Ontario, so Montreal (and I lived there too for over a year by the way) doesn't represent Quebec. And I'll tell you that most fail to learn English (again Montreal is an exception because it truly is a bilingual city where you pretty well need to be bilingual to work as a burger flipper at McDonald's). Here are the statistics (Population by knowledge of official language, by province and territory (2006 Census)):
Out of 7,435,905 persons living in Quebec (2006), 4,010,880 know French but not English. Yet when we consider that English is compulsory acros the province, we can reasonably assume that those who do not know English have failed to learn it. This would mean that about 54% know French but not English. That would be a 46% failure rate! Now of course these are rough estimates because not all in Quebec have finished their highschool, and some might have studied outside of Quebec, etc. But this still gives a rough idea, and it's not an impressive report card to say the least: seems to confirm my own observations on the ground.
Son Ontario and Quebec are not that different after all, as far as statistics tell. And remember, these statistics are based on self-assessment, and not rigid tests, and also that Quebec has many native English-speakers too, like ontario French speakers, and that helps in learning the language too.
...which would indicate they who ignore an Anglais because he dared to speak it in their presence are twice as arrogant as I first thought them. I certainly prefer the mannerly Francophone here.
Nothing worse than hearing someone elses voice over the original.Said again and again and again.....Babblin' on and on!!...Voice overs are annoying except in ol' japanese movies!//lol...Sorry what was the question??/I was babblin!...
I don't think anyone should be forced to learn a language if they do want to learn a language if they don't want too. They should also be allowed to choose the language instead of being forced into learning french.
When i was in high school I had to take 2 years of Foreign Language to graduate, but at least I was able to choose the language I wanted to learn, which made it easier for me to learn. (note I went to school in the states and i'm from the states, but I'm living in Canada).
When i was in high school I had to take 2 years of Foreign Language to graduate, but at least I was able to choose the language I wanted to learn, which made it easier for me to learn. (note I went to school in the states and i'm from the states, but I'm living in Canada).
Im from ontario and the only reason i know some french (enough to get by) is because everyone around me is french lol
I support anything that will make our kids learn more languages. Heck if my kids can learn 4 to 6 of them I encourage them. I hope my ex follows thru in putting our son in French emersion in BC as I am French but as he is most of the day with Mom I hardly get to speak French to him. Hopefully this will be the push to get him talking to me in French.
I have yet to see a person die from knowing too many languages..
I have yet to see a person die from knowing too many languages..
And giving schools the freedom to choose which second language to choose could help increase, not decrease, the rate of bilingualism in Ontario. THis way, schools can take advantage of co-operation with their pupils' parents to exploit the home language in the classroom.