Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
It's not a war but English is always going to be seen as a threat. How can it not be given the demographics of the country we share, the continent and even global trends? The tough balancing act is to maintain the distinction between individual people and their language which is pretty much a natural predator for any other language. It's kind of like a "hate the sin but not the sinner" kind of thing.
Also, ROCers who don't live here may think certain things and respect or accept that Quebec is going to be French speaking but that doesn't always translate in terms of behaviour when many of them move here. It's also true of people from abroad, many of which are moving to "Canada, North America" which comes with the linguistic expectations and assumptions you can imagine.
It wasn't so much of an issue when Quebec wasn't seen as a desirable place to move to by most ROCers, but now that Montreal and even many parts of southern and western Quebec are increasingly popular with ROCers, it's a legitimate concern or challenge as to whether they are going to learn even a bit of French to live here - or not.
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I don't know what to say other than that this is kind of how the world works. People bring their lived and learned cultures to wherever they move to, just as the basis for Quebec culture originated in France. In most places, as decades and generations roll by, parts of the basic cultures remain but the collective culture evolves into whatever it becomes, as people interrelate with others around whom they live. This becomes the actual culture of the city/province/country, and it's not static, but a constant evolution. Of course, some direction comes from levels of government, some driven by the people on a personal level, but it evolves.
Quebec seems to have a tendency to be more insular than most places/cultures, which (I think) makes it a bit of an outlier in Canada. Sure, there are some positives to the people who can trace their lineage back to France, but the idea that somebody from Taiwan, or Italy, or Chile should have to learn the French language or somehow try to adopt Quebec's culture as their own seems a little twisted in the context of society in the twenty-first century. Even then, I completely understand it on a personal level - we all want to promote that which we personally hold dear, but in Quebec it is taken to another level of being institutionalized, which again seems odd to me, personally.
Good discussion. I know that none of this will change the world, but the exchange of ideas is always educational (for me, anyhow)...