true the fastest way to get service on government phone lines is by requesting service in French , when they answer just pretend hitting the wrong key .
Trudeau thinks anyone earning $40,000/year is rich
- Thread starter B00Mer
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That's a big negatory. Official Bilingualism all but ensured that our PMs would come from Quebec, or be Quebec symps from Ontario. Since OB only Harper and Joe Clark weren't from Quebec and Clark only sat as PM for 6 months or something goofy like that.
Even more insidious than that. "Maintaining one's cultural identity" is racist code for, "Fuck all foreigners and everyone else who is different from us".
That's inherent to ghettoizing. As a casual stroll through the 'hood or the barrio will prove.
Ah, c'mon! How hard is it to say "La plume de ma tante" or "Le stylo est dans ma poche?"
Kidding. Official bilingualism can be (but is not necessarily) a trap. Sounds like y'all have successfully made it a trap.
Officially all of Canada except for Quebec is supposedly bilingual. Out here on the prairies we had a French teacher, that I’m assuming nobody from either Quebec or France would be able to understand, teaching us French.
i’m assuming most of us can read and follow for the most part written in French (due to bilingual labeling on food, like the back of a cereal box). I can count and I can read menus, and that’s about the extent of the usefulness of French so far in the first 50+ years of my life.
i’m assuming most of us can read and follow for the most part written in French (due to bilingual labeling on food, like the back of a cereal box). I can count and I can read menus, and that’s about the extent of the usefulness of French so far in the first 50+ years of my life.
I find very little more amusing that watching a Parisian react to Acadian "French."
Ain't nuthi'n...you ever been to Louisiana?
The only reason I could understand the chef who came from Louisiana in a Nashville hotel one time is because I had a brother in law that came from New Brunswick.
I regard Cajun as a distinct language from French. Or Quebecois. Or. . . pretty much anything.
I remember back in the early 70's my mom mentioning Trudeau's "Great Canadian Mosaic". She said it was a pretty fancy way of saying "ghettoization".
Yes she was. She could smell bullshit from a mile away.
Grandmother could smell MY bullshit from another galaxy. And the woman had a black belt in wooden spoon.
Maintaining one's culture has serious drawbacks when that culture is hating the country next to you when their former citizens are now your neighbour in Canada. For some reason our government likes hyphenated citizens too. When my wife became a citizen she had to fight with immigration to drop her German citizenship.
We also have a lot of Canadians of convenience, who come long enough to get landed and maybe leave some offspring here, then head back home to live and use Canada as a bolthole when things go wrong, or they need free medical care. I don't know how long this has been going on, probably forever, but we noticed it when Hong Cong was handed over to China.
That's true! When hubby was in the Military, he went overseas on some UN deployments. On leave, they would often go to Germany for R&R and do some traveling - sometimes to France. One of his buddies was a Frenchman from Quebec who decided he'd be the "interpreter" for his friends while in France. It turns out apparently NO ONE could understand his French! The guys got a real laugh from that and the Frenchman was furious - likely because he was embarrassed.
We have experienced the same in Canada in that we went to a football game in Montreal with another couple; "Lucy" was French but from B.C. The football game was between Montreal and the B.C. Lions. We lived in Petawawa, Ontario and drove up to Montreal the day before the football game so we had booked hotel rooms. Lucy decided she'd "check us in" at the hotel desk because, after all, she spoke French and she thought she'd be able to move things along. You need to know that Lucy was 5' nothing, a little bit of a woman - very petite. She started speaking to the desk clerk who simply stared at her with a puzzled look on his face. Lucy continued to speak to the guy and still, nothing. When we asked what was wrong, she said that the clerk was pretending not to understand a word that she said. She was furious!! She was hopping up & down - it was actually quite funny in retrospect. We eventually got our rooms - using English.
It turns out that in Montreal, (or perhaps Quebec?) if you don't have the correct "accent" they'll pretend not to understand anyone who is at least trying to speak the language. I experienced it at the football stadium when asking where the restrooms were - that I knew in French - and was totally ignored. The stadium was huge so to wonder around looking for the sign that said bathrooms was quite the feat.
So for the French whether in Quebec or France, they'll ignore you if you don't speak the "right" French apparently. Hopefully, things are better now.
Old joke: What will a Parisian do if you ask him the time?
A: Correct your grammar, laugh at your accent, sneer at your tie, and walk away.
They have to be more than landed. If they are landed and leave Canada for more than 6 months, their status is revoked.