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The majority of Canadians outside of Quebec (and New Brunswick) have little or no knowledge at all of the French language, despite being an official language along with English.
In Quebec, most people are bilingual - how come not in other provinces too?
I understand that English is the main, and maybe the only language seen and heard everywhere outside of Quebec, but people should still have learned and study it at school mandatory for many years and have good knowledge of the language.
In nordic countries, as well as the Netherlands and many other countries where English is NOT the official language - almost everybody there still speak and understand English, despite the signs and everything else is in their own language.
Canada, being officially bilingual at federal lever, ALL students should have been educated the language from first or second grade until high school!
French is an important world language, spoken by close to 500 million worldwide and in around 35 countries. It's the second most widely taught language after English, and being the official language of UN along with English. So it's a big language and not unimportant one that people shouldn't care learning it.
Because French is irrelevant in places like Toronto or Vancouver.
Not all of Canadians live in Toronto or Vancouver. But even those who live there and went to school should have had good knowledge of French. I'm not talking about newly immigrants or those who never went to school in Canada
Canada instituted the officially Bilingual status to placate the French in Quebec.
There are a few places outside of Quebec that have some French speakers like very eastern Ontario or Northern New Brunswick, or St Boniface in Winnipeg but thats about it, the rest of Canada is English speaking and couldnt care less about Canadas official bilingual status.
Your statement that most Quebec residents are bilingual might not be that accurate. Outside of Montreal there are a lot of people who only speak French.
In other parts of Canada even if you take some French classes in High School you never get the chance to use it and it fades away. If you don't keep a language active the vocabulary starts to fade away. 2 People who know a small amount of French are not going to talk to each other in French. Unless you use it at work or use it regularly at home you will not retain it.
It would be helpful to be bilingual and keep it current because there are some occasions where it can help with a government job or a job for a company that deals with Quebec a lot. However other than that scenario there is little motivation to learn or maintain French in most parts of Canada.
How about we flip the question. Why do feel it is so important for people who don't ever need to talk French in their everyday life to know how to speak it?
Not all of Canadians live in Toronto or Vancouver. But even those who live there and went to school should have had good knowledge of French. I'm not talking about newly immigrants or those who never went to school in Canada
Tarp's point was that in much of Canada, there is neither the need nor to a large degree the opportunity to speak French. One may read it off one's groceries. I suspect that most Anglophone Canadians in Anglophone areas who pursue French do so for government employment, where it can be necessary. Expecting the broad mass of a people to adopt a second language simply because it would exemplify worldliness and wisdom isn't going to work any better in Canada than it does in the US, where people resist and resent learning Spanish (another major world tongue) even though in many places it would be directly relevant to their lives.
And if they passed it in school, well, think about how far that goes. To pass a class is not the same thing as absorbing the subject matter--witness the number of Americans in their thirties who took two years of a foreign language in high school and can now barely utter an intelligible sentence of it.
The majority of Canadians outside of Quebec (and New Brunswick) have little or no knowledge at all of the French language, despite being an official language along with English.
In Quebec, most people are bilingual - how come not in other provinces too?
I understand that English is the main, and maybe the only language seen and heard everywhere outside of Quebec, but people should still have learned and study it at school mandatory for many years and have good knowledge of the language.
In nordic countries, as well as the Netherlands and many other countries where English is NOT the official language - almost everybody there still speak and understand English, despite the signs and everything else is in their own language.
Canada, being officially bilingual at federal lever, ALL students should have been educated the language from first or second grade until high school!
French is an important world language, spoken by close to 500 million worldwide and in around 35 countries. It's the second most widely taught language after English, and being the official language of UN along with English. So it's a big language and not unimportant one that people shouldn't care learning it.
For starters (see highlighted text), if you mean by "most" the "majority", most people in Quebec are NOT bilingual. About 65% of the population in Quebec speaks only French.
To answer your can-of-worms question in broad terms, here are a few reasons:
1) Education in Canada is the responsibility of the provinces. Although Canada is officially bilingual federally, the provinces are generally not bilingual, at least not officially. Most of the English speaking majority provinces have always regarded French classes as bit of a joke. French classes are generally mandatory for all English-speaking students in Canada up to a certain grade (varies according to the province) and English classes are mandatory for all French-speaking students. But the quality of second language education varies greatly - and this is also true of English instruction in Quebec, which sometimes sucks as well. Of the provinces other than Quebec, New Brunswick is probably the best at teaching French to English-speaking kids, which is normal because NB has a 33% French-speaking minority and is the only bilingual province in the country.
2) The French-speaking population of Canada is highly concentrated in Quebec and in neighbouring regions of Ontario and New Brunswick. Aside from Ottawa (right on the border with Quebec but in Ontario), most of the big cities outside Quebec (Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Hamilton, Halifax, etc.) have very, very small French-speaking populations.
3) There is a lot of resentment of French among a fairly significant segment of the English-speaking population of Canada. They see bilingualism and French as an unfair and illegimate imposition on them and (usually) don't really understand the history behind the presence of French in Canada. They view Canada as an "English(-speaking) country" and think that French speakers should adapt to that reality, just like all of the other groups in Canada have done. There may be an underlying sense among some of them that French speakers in Canada are just another ethnic group like all the others (Italians, Ukrainians, Chinese, etc.) and that they too should adapt to the "English" character of Canada. Of course, French Canadians do not see themselves as an "ethnic" or "immigrant" group (since their presence actually predates that of the English Canadians) at all, so this leads to conflicts and misunderstandings.
Expecting the broad mass of a people to adopt a second language simply because it would exemplify worldliness and wisdom .
...or as hoity-toity as "being a better Canadian"!
Quote:
Originally Posted by j_k_k
isn't going to work any better in Canada than it does in the US, .
Really good point. Most people in Calgary don't learn French for the same reason that most people in Omaha don't know French or even Spanish. Linguistically and culturally, life in most of Canada (as soon as you get maybe 200 km from the Quebec border) is largely the same as it is in most of the U.S. If it is not a mystery to you why most Americans (except for the children of immigrants) don't know a second language, then you shouldn't be surprised at the fact that most English-speaking Canadians don't know French.
For me, I grew up in Ottawa and went to French Immersion school for a few years. I *should* be able to speak french right? The problem is that when you don't speak the language regularly, you lose it. I have now forgotten almost all my french I learned after living my entire adult life in non-French speaking areas.
I find it very hard to believe that French is the second most spoken language in the world...I would have thought that was Spanish. Plus the French spoken in Quebec is not the same as the French spoken in France.
Despite the huge number of Spanish speaking people living in the US, businesses are not required to provide service in Spanish as well as English, so I really don't see why it should be a requirement that everyone in Canada speak French.
While I understand the desire not to lose that second official language in Canada, I really don't think you can expect everyone to be able to communicate in both languages. Also consider the high number of people who come into Canada for foreign countries who are then expected to learn English as their second language...do you expect them to also have to learn French?
Thanks for the responds. My point was that people should have had knowledge of French language despite not using it at all, especially young people. In scandinavia, almost everybody speaks English even though they never use it and speak with each other.
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