There are many cultures around the world that are suppressed by majoritarianism. They have to face challenges like forced assimilation, language discrimination and refusal to acknowledgement of their unique identity. In fact, many cultures have been identified by UNESCO, that will soon cease to exist - either that they’re vulnerable, or completely extinct. How do you, as a minority, feel, knowing that your entire identity will cease to exist in a few decades? Do you have a sense of camaraderie towards other minorities from other parts of the world, say, the Ainu people, or the Brahui pastoralist?
I’m french Canadian from my dad and native from my mom. I truly feel like most of the country would be more then happy if we disappear. They openly hate on french canadians and publicly pretend ro care about first nations but they really dont. I expect both cultures to be completly gone in a century or two, sooner maybe.
I wonder if this will get me downvoted. I don’t care one way or the other about French/Quebecois culture. It’s kinda neat, they can do their thing in Quebec. What I really don’t like is the forced French language on the rest of the country. You want a federal job? Better learn French. You want a provincial (not in Quebec) job? Better learn French. Want to enter politics? You need French. Want to move to the head of the line for any job in any sector? You’ll get that if you speak French. I think I’m treated like a second class Canadian because I don’t speak French. The Premier of British Columbia simply pointed out that there are more Mandarin speakers than French speakers in BC, and he was crucified. I’m sorry but this French language thing on the rest of the country is absolutely bonkers and needs to go.
Francophones are not prioritized for employment or political opportunities. Do you know which linguistic group is prioritized for such roles?
Bilinguals.
Do you think a unilingual French speaker would have more opportunities in Canada than a unilingual English speaker?
Of course, people whose first language is French have much higher rates of bilingualism than people whose first language is English, for a myriad of reasons. But I find it illuminating that for all the whining I see from (some) Anglophones about “lack of opportunities because they don’t speak French”, their proposed solutions always focus on stripping Francophones of their rights instead of encouraging French language education for Anglophones. Many countries around the world have huge percentages of their population being able to speak two (or more!) languages, why shouldn’t we strive for that? I see no downsides to increased bilingualism.
I live in New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in the Canada, where our unilingual Anglophone premier repeats the same talking points you do about how difficult it is for unilingual Anglophones to advance themselves in our province. All while holding the highest elected title in the province without speaking a lick of French.
… Yes bilinguals *in French and English. I thought that was so obvious that I didn’t say it specifically. And that requires, wait for it, French.
[*Actually no, not bilinguals. If you are bilingual in English and Mandarin, you don’t meet the French criteria. Repeat all languages. It’s French that they want and require above all others. But you’re trying to misframe the issue by saying not Francophones unilingual, and saying bilingual (with what I see as you defaulting to include French).]
So you speak French and work in Quebec. Fine. Why do I need French to get a good job in the prairies? Do you see how this goes? The demand for English is market demand because it’s the dominate language in Canada, the US, UK, and dare I say the international language of business and science. The vast majority of demand for French in Canada (outside of Quebec) is an artificial construct forced on the rest of the country. It’s completely artificial. There’s no natural demand or desire. But it’s forced on everyone and on to job requirements. You’re trying to confuse it with all these other things trying to make it sound like ‘both sides’.
I know. It must be really hard being from the majority and constantly being reminded that a minority exists.
It’s not that it exists, as you say. It’s that the French language is forced on to the rest of Canada. You can see my other comment in this thread.
I’ve thought of a good analogy. In Alberta there used to be so many Ukrainians they thought about making it a provincial language. So in this hypothetical let’s say that AB was bigger and had the political sway that Quebec has. Suddenly Ukrainian is a national official language. If you want a federal job, you better learn Ukrainian. Want to enter politics? Better speak Ukrainian. We’re going to open Ukrainian immersion schools across the country so lots of Canadians speak Ukrainian and so Ukrainian speakers from AB can get service when they travel across the country. I wonder if you’d be a proponent of that. And if you say that makes no sense, I’ll say “It must be really hard being from the majority and constantly being reminded that a minority exists”. So again, it’s not that it exists. It’s that it’s forced on the rest of the country.
Lol, in what language are we having this conversation again? I personally don’t give a shit about you speaking french. It’s not us that “forces” french on you., we don’t care about your lack of interest about us, we don’t care much abour your culture either. French canadians are well aware that many of you guys would rather learn latin before a single word in french.
Now, for the jobs that requires you to be bilingual, well guess who needs to learn english to get them? Yet you don’t see french canadians crying all the time "it’s not fair, I don’t want to learn english to work for the governement of my billingual country. " You wanna do politic only in english, be my guest , but dont complain that can’t get votes in Quebec. Same would apply to a politician that only speaks french but that does’nt exist in Ottawa. Do you think english is no force on us lol? I speak 4 language, it’s really not that hard to learn when you try. So yeah, cry me a river.
Dude, french language is being forced. You seem to want to wipe your hands clean of it, but it is being forced.
I see you didn’t look at my other comment so:
This part mostly fits:
… Yes bilinguals *in French and English. I thought that was so obvious that I didn’t say it specifically. And that requires, wait for it, French. [*Actually no, not bilinguals. If you are bilingual in English and Mandarin, you don’t meet the French criteria. Repeat all languages. It’s French that they want and require above all others. But you’re trying to misframe the issue by saying not Francophones unilingual, and saying bilingual (with what I see as you defaulting to include French).]
This part really fits:
So you speak French and work in Quebec. Fine. Why do I need French in the prairies? Do you see how this goes? The demand for English is market demand because it’s the dominate language in Canada, the US, UK, and the international language of business and science. The vast majority of demand for French in Canada (outside of Quebec) is an artificial construct forced on the rest of the country. It’s completely artificial. There’s no natural demand or desire. But it’s forced on everyone and on to job requirements. You’re trying to confuse it with all these other things trying to make it sound like ‘both sides’.
And the new part:
Congrats on speaking 4 languages. But yes it is hard for many people, and more importantly it’s completely unnecessary. It’d be like requiring high level math for fields completely unrelated to math. And I’d just say math is easy, knowing full well some/many/most can’t do it for reasons. Then when you/someone says I can’t do this math I’d say “cry me a river” because I can do it and benefit from it. (I notice you didn’t comment on learning Ukrainian, likely because it’s so ludicrous that you don’t even entertain it. Well that’s what learning French is to us.)
You learn French, they learn English, you meet in the middle. I think that’s probably how that was meant to work. Sounds fair to me.
You seem to lack the ability to change perspective here: You learn a language and so do they. You just seem to be missing the fact that the other side is doing the exact same thing?
I never knew there was this much drama about the French language in Canada. Really interesting fact on its own.
Already covered
The demand for English is market demand because it’s the dominate language in Canada, the US, UK, and the international language of business and science. The vast majority of demand for French in Canada (outside of Quebec) is an artificial construct forced on the rest of the country. It’s completely artificial. There’s no natural demand or desire. But it’s forced on everyone and on to job requirements. You’re trying to confuse it with all these other things trying to make it sound like ‘both sides’.
I did entertain perspective. If I spoke Ukrainian (plus English), I would not demand the rest of the country learn it. It’s actually the other way around, he can’t entertain perspective. It’s bizarre that you think otherwise.
And they don’t need to learn English. This gets back to the main issue: they can do what they want in Quebec. But French language should not be forced on the rest of the country.
Pauvre.Petit.Coco Si le francais t’était imposé, tu pourrais articuler une phrase dans cette langue. Peux-tu ou est-ce que tu ne sais que te plaindre? T’es pas une personne, t’es une victime.
Sérieusement, c’est pas si diffiicile d’apprendre une autre langue! Genre 80% de la planète est billingue ou plus, c’est seulement les uniligues anglos qui pleurnichent .
So you’ve taken to insults in other languages. I think that says it all. Though I think you forgot google translate exists.
Don’t forget, just learn Ukrainian. It’s not that hard. And so many people are bilingual, so it’s good for you. (See how you refuse to engage on that scenario and I just use all your arguments against you. To which you have no reply, only insults lol. And of course no reply to my other points either.)
Cheers.
He has a point that if he has to learn your language, it makes sense that you have to learn his. You are not better or worse.
Also from my little understanding of French there are no insults there.
How privilege must you be to cry about seing french on your cereal boxes. This is beyond pathetic. I’m starting to think it’s not that you don’t want to learn french, but you just lack the capability to do so. I mean how come the vast majority of kids in QC are able to learn english in primary school, , most immigrants can speak 3 or more langague, but english canadian are thought french for years but can’t even have a basic conversation. That’s strange. Also, calling french (an official language of your country) “an other langague” show your how colonialist your mindset is. Typical Canadian shit. If you wanna create your party to kick Quebec out, I’ll vote for it I promise. But don’t use political powers to alter the results like you did in 95 this time!
How privileged must you be to be bothered simply by seing french on cereal boxes. A bit pathetic isn’t it? You wanna call you country’s official langage an “other langague”, because of course there’s the only one main language?
Dude, I’m starting to think you’re not learning french not because you don’t want to, but because you simply lack the capability to do so.
If you want to start you party to kick Quebec out of Canada I will 100% support it.
Also, Pauvre petit coco means Poor little egg. Not exactly an insult, you would get it if you could speak french but I guess learning another langague is out of your reach.
This one surprises me. I had always thought Quebec had a strong cultural identity. How do you see it happening?
Honestly a lot of Quebecois have a persecution complex from centuries of actual mistreatment. But the current situation is fine and their culture is definitely not dying. I live near the Ontario Quebec border and it very clearly feels like a meeting point of two distinct cultures. And neither of them is being dominated by the other. They exist alongside eachother
French is huge idk where they are coming from.
We do have a strong cultural identity. But even I, who is aware of the problem and think we should defend our culture, have stopped consuming it since the arrival of Netflix and streaming services.
Internet has a part in that as well. When I was a kid, you would start learning English in grade 4, meaning 10 years old, in school. My son could count to 10 in English at 2 years old. Because youtube. Because of all the diversity of content we have access to now, that we didn’t have access to back in the days.
It’s probably the same thing in most non English countries.
Is slow, it’s pernicious, and probably inevitable over time. We can probably slow it down… I’m not sure.
I think you maybe don’t see that there is push and pull between cultures. For example, I’m an Anglo, but I went to French immersion in school, studied french at work for the feds and got certified, and now I enjoy consuming Quebecois media from time to time. Like just recently I started watching 19-2 on Netflix and it’s a really fucking good show.
Keep in mind, when a culture puts up walls between itself and its neighbors, that will stop the flow of ideas in both directions. Better to just accept that both cultures will intermix, and it isn’t going to destroy either one.
Man, 19-2 is an amazing show. Personally I never felt hated like the original commenter said. And I’m glad some of our content attracts people who don’t live here. But, I’m merely stating how easy and accessible it is to learn English, which is a good thing, by the way.
However, like I said, about 90% is the culture I consume is American now. Like in most countries. I’m definitely not encouraging the local culture, and I’m aware of that, but I’m simply not interested in it now. I got rid of cable TV because the ads were making my IQ drop every time. It’s probably my fault this is happening in the first place. But now and more families are going steaming only.
All in all, the change in the way people consume culture is playing a lot against local culture.
If you think that a child counting to 10 in a second language is a cultural threat, you have a persecution complex.
I think you have a reading complex. They were comparing how they didn’t learn any English until they were in 4th grade, but their baby could count to 10 in English by age 2.
Which they then went on to flesh out the entire rest of their comment, that they don’t even consume French media anymore.
Whose fault is that? Their own. I could count to 10 in Spanish before I went to primary school and I don’t live in the US.
Persecution complex for sure.
I’m sorry you have a persecution complex, but I’m not sure Lemmy is the place to work on it.
“No u”
What a rejoinder lol
Read deeper into the comments in this thread, you may get it eventually buddy. Keep at it!
I’m a Tuluva, a minority group in the south of India. I am also a Tulu separatist for reasons mention here - I’m in agreement with most of them, but there are a few more reason I have this stance, including cultural appropriation and discrimination.
You can read about the recent efforts at digitization of my language in this article - although I’ve never met anyone who knows how to write. Maybe a few scholars are good at this? I tried to learn the abugida (the Indian equivalent of “alphabet”), but they’re pretty hard for someone like me who’s never learnt a Dravidian language before.
FWIW I love French Canadians and love the diversity and culture they add to Canadian life. I think Letterkenny gave a great example of what a singular culture it is and I really enjoyed them including them.
Almost all cultures disappear within a century or two. Do you think Canada is anything like it was 200 years ago? Shit, it’s probably not even what it was like 50 years ago.
45 years ago the US overwhelmingly voted Reagan into office. That asscunt would get so fucking rejected in primaries now for being a “RINO” based on his gun control policies alone. Things change. Everything changes. When I was a kid it was totally fine to run around with a Southern Loser Flag on your shirt. Should that culture return? Some people think so.
You can either be a troglodytic conservative dingus or you can contribute to the new culture and a better tomorrow.
Tell me you’re Canadian without telling me you’re Canadian.
Literally nothing in their comment makes me think they are Canadian WTF.
American. Texas, specifically.
Keep the good shit going, dispose of the cruft.