Why is Quebec the only mainly “French” province?

[Dengler Avenue]

Uh what about Cornwallis and Amhurst? These are really controversial figures too.

[Hali87]

I meant historical figures from other parts of Canada. (ROC = "Rest of Canada"). Whether or not they're controversial wasn't the point.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Does this exist anywhere in the world? The closest thing that comes to mind is the former Yugoslavia, though that was still more of a linguistic patchwork geographically. And, uh, we all know how that turned out.

The more I think about it, the more I think that a "truly bilingual" society without regionally discrete linguistic strongholds is basically an impossibility.

Originally Posted by rousseau

Singapore is an interesting case in that English has been forced/promoted as a second language, but the first languages are still Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien and Tamil according to ethnicity. So it's language X + English, making it effectively bilingual overall in a sense, but with many languages participating, not just two.

Actually, China is like that, with Mandarin being universal while still sharing linguistic space with local dialects. Because schooling is in Mandarin and media in local dialects is sparse (or even nonexistent?) you now have hundreds of millions of people who speak Mandarin and their local dialect equally effortlessly.

What about India?

And also a decent portion of Africa (with many places like Nigeria, having a local language and then people knowing the colonial language, like English).

I actually read that bilingualism or multilingualism was historically not uncommon because back in the day, languages varied a lot more within a short distance (e.g. sharp borders where people speak one language only on one side of a border was actually enforced by modern nationalism, plus the standardization of dialects). In much of history, many European countries might have been more like India or China where dialects and languages blurred into one another gradually over distance (e.g. France, Italy and Spain etc. and its regional languages).

Originally Posted by misher

Mandarin for most of the nation, Cantonese for Hong Kong and Guangdong. Whats funny is that they both write the exact same so its just that you say the characters differently.

Written Cantonese is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese

It's just that the written standard as well as the spoken standard today is based on Mandarin (Before the 20th century, the standard was Classical Chinese).

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Right, but arguably Italy has a more benign climate than France and saw massive amounts of emigration to the Americas (esp. the US, Argentina, Brazil) particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite that, its population nearly doubled from 17 to 33 million during the 1800s. Again, the reason why there was very little supplementation of the French-Canadian population from France itself after 1763 is entirely demographic.

Yeah, I think even today (where wealthier people have the luxury of choosing more comfortable climates to live and work in) climate isn't a huge factor; likely climate was not the major factor in mass immigration (aside from disasters like famines, droughts) in those days. People were more than willing to move to unpleasant climates for all kinds of benefits (land, wealth, status etc.)

Plenty of people today would still love to move to Canada, Scandinavia etc. from warmer places all over the world.

Originally Posted by Hali87

Interesting. I should clarify that I don't know anyone personally who'd call him a traitor, more that most people here would readily admit that they don't know enough about him to have an opinion either way. I can't think of any streets in NS named after him, but then again I can't think of many streets (or buildings) in NS named for ROC historical figures at all. John A. Macdonald being the only exception I can think of offhand, and even then, there isn't a ton of stuff named after him here (there's John A. MacDonald High School, and that might be it).

Seems like there's a few high schools named after John A. MacDonald that I could find on Wikipedia -- besides in Nova Scotia, a few in southern Ontario, and one junior high in Calgary.

I'm not sure if the distribution of things and places named after John A. MacDonald shows a geographic trend or not in Canada.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Yeah, I think even today (where wealthier people have the luxury of choosing more comfortable climates to live and work in) climate isn't a huge factor; likely climate was not the major factor in mass immigration (aside from disasters like famines, droughts) in those days. People were more than willing to move to unpleasant climates for all kinds of benefits (land, wealth, status etc.)

Plenty of people today would still love to move to Canada, Scandinavia etc. from warmer places all over the world.
.

Millions of people from southern Europe moved to the NE US which is a lot colder in the winter, and millions of their descendants are still there.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Right, but arguably Italy has a more benign climate than France and saw massive amounts of emigration to the Americas (esp. the US, Argentina, Brazil) particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite that, its population nearly doubled from 17 to 33 million during the 1800s. .

Another reason Italy saw mass emigration is that while it has some excellent agricultural land, much of the country is hilly or mountainous and often unsuitable for agriculture.

France is also quite a bit larger than Italy, and more of it is flat and suitable for growing crops.

[CityTech]

Another factor is that Italy didn't industrialize as quickly or as thoroughly as France. While the UK was the first country to industrialize, that industrialization was concentrated mostly in England, and it was mostly Scottish and Irish emigration that filled up Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In Canada, people of Scottish and Irish descent combined outnumber those of English descent, whereas in modern day Europe, England has five times more people than Ireland and Scotland combined.

Ireland lost more than half its population in the 19th century despite a very high birth rate. It's estimated that there's 80 million people worldwide with Irish ancestry, compared to just 6 million living in Ireland today.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by CityTech

Another factor is that Italy didn't industrialize as quickly or as thoroughly as France. While the UK was the first country to industrialize, that industrialization was concentrated mostly in England, and it was mostly Scottish and Irish emigration that filled up Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In Canada, people of Scottish and Irish descent combined outnumber those of English descent, whereas in modern day Europe, England has five times more people than Ireland and Scotland combined.

Ireland lost more than half its population in the 19th century despite a very high birth rate. It's estimated that there's 80 million people worldwide with Irish ancestry, compared to just 6 million living in Ireland today.

There was equally heavy industrialization in the Scottish Lowlands, South Wales and Northern Ireland. At one time Glasgow alone produced fully one quarter of the world's locomotives and was the largest shipbuilding centre on the planet as well as one of the world's richest cities.

Emigration from Scotland, at least in the pre-Confederation years, was more a result of agricultural changes (ie. enclosures) rather than lack of industrialization.

[CityTech]

True. Strathclyde in Scotland and eastern Ulster in Ireland did industrialize with England. But it wasn't well distributed outside those two regions.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

What about India?

The topic was "truly bilingual" places where two languages share space somewhat equally without particular attachment to ethnicity. India has local dialects with Hindi and English both acting as lingua francas to varying degrees.

Originally Posted by Capsicum

I actually read that bilingualism or multilingualism was historically not uncommon...

The majority of people in the world are bilingual. Major countries with mostly one language are Russia, the anglosphere, Japan, arguably Germany and France, Portugal, Greece, Egypt, maybe a few other Middle Eastern countries, and arguably all of South America (including Mexico).

The rest have a lingua franca governing over mutually unintelligible local dialects.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by rousseau

The topic was "truly bilingual" places where two languages share space somewhat equally without particular attachment to ethnicity. India has local dialects with Hindi and English both acting as lingua francas to varying degrees.

Okay, what about Spanish and Guarani in Paraguay?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarani_language

"It is one of the official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population is monolingual."

...

"Guarani is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages of the Americas and the only one whose speakers include a large proportion of non-indigenous people. This represents a unique anomaly in the Americas, where language shift towards European colonial languages (in this case, the other official language of Spanish) has otherwise been a nearly universal cultural and identity marker of mestizos (people of mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry)."

[Capsicum]

My other thought was going to be English in Israel being fairly widespread, though Hebrew is official and Hebrew and Arabic are the two widest spoken languages. In fact, I'm wondering if there isn't a slight parallel with the previous dominance of Anglophones in Montreal and the gradual localization of Francophone identity in the city to the earlier (more American Jewish) presence of English when modern Israel as a nation-state was still fairly young, which slowly gave way and gave rise to a more local, Hebrew-dominant culture. Also, earlier on in modern Israel, many diasporic Jews brought their previous languages (e.g Yiddish, Russian, English etc.) which gradually gave way to Hebrew as a local identity grew.

But then that also doesn't quite satisfy the criteria of without "particular attachment to ethnicity" you mentioned.

That also raises another point -- what is the definition of ethnicity used in terms of connection to language?

For example, "Jewish" being both an ethnicity and a religion, but before modern Hebrew, Jews in diaspora spoke a variety of languages (e.g. Sephardic Jews speaking Spanish etc.). Are the different African diasporas (e.g. African Americans, African-Canadians, Afro-Latinos, Afro-Jamaicans) similarly different ethnicities on the basis of language, or different cultural experiences due to being separated by nation-state, versus ancestry?

Ethnicity (although often used popularly to mean "race" or "ancestry") often by many definitions incorporates cultural identity including language, but if we're going by "culture", Francophone Canada does have a distinct culture, even if you don't call it an ethnicity.

[mousquet]

Where is the "Great Canadian Learn French" thread? Some sort of pitiful anglosphere hater chanting Always blame the French! had it deleted?
You'll never know about anything but your sorry English, then. And you'll die from it, from poverty.
Ta gueule ouverte de torture et de souffrance dans le caniveau, t'en crèveras si tu n'y prends pas garde, petit anglo...

Ça, c'est pour toi, mon Jean-Jean !

• Video Link


Unparalleled Quebec accent.

You know what? The very last thing to keep the boring, either over-sentimental or gruesome mainstream Hollywood propaganda sort of cool here is our French dubbing.
We've been helping them very much, eh? Maybe a bit too much, after all...
I've never liked mainstream Hollywood directors/producers like Steven Spielberg for instance. That kind of guys is all about dumb propaganda and brain washing, not about art of any kind at all. They don't even know what art means any more than I do.

When we get pissed at your Always blame the French!, vous allez en chier du sang.
Google what I just said for fun. I like it when you chie du sang, petit anglo.

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by mousquet

When we get pissed at your Always blame the French!, vous allez en chier du sang.
Google what I just said for fun. I like it when you chie du sang, petit anglo.

Mes sympathies profondes à tous ceux que souffrent d'hémorroides.

[lio45]

As the Anglos would say, "you look off your meds"... :p

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Where is the "Great Canadian Learn French" thread? Some sort of pitiful anglosphere hater chanting Always blame the French! had it deleted?
You'll never know about anything but your sorry English, then. And you'll die from it, from poverty.
Ta gueule ouverte de torture et de souffrance dans le caniveau, t'en crèveras si tu n'y prends pas garde, petit anglo...

Ça, c'est pour toi, mon Jean-Jean !

• Video Link


Unparalleled Quebec accent.

You know what? The very last thing to keep the boring, either over-sentimental or gruesome mainstream Hollywood propaganda sort of cool here is our French dubbing.
We've been helping them very much, eh? Maybe a bit too much, after all...
I've never liked mainstream Hollywood directors/producers like Steven Spielberg for instance. That kind of guys is all about dumb propaganda and brain washing, not about art of any kind at all. They don't even know what art means any more than I do.

When we get pissed at your Always blame the French!, vous allez en chier du sang.
Google what I just said for fun. I like it when you chie du sang, petit anglo.

Ça va, mousquet?

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Ça va, mousquet?

Évidemment que je vais bien, pauvre enfoiré. Tu ne me crois quand même pas malade ? Bwaha, le putain de saut, on le faisait quand on n'avait même pas 12 ans en vélo dans les bois des Yvelines.

T'en fais donc pas pour moi. On s'en sort toujours ici. On est d'ailleurs trop gâtés maintenant que j'y pense... Occupe-toi plutôt de ta gueule et de ta famille.

Je suis juste d'humeur un peu violente. Ça fait aussi partie de l'éducation parfois, et il ne faut pas s'en plaindre.

[lio45]

"Malade", c'est général, mais insomniaque, ça oui.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Where is the "Great Canadian Learn French" thread? Some sort of pitiful anglosphere hater chanting Always blame the French! had it deleted?
You'll never know about anything but your sorry English, then. And you'll die from it, from poverty.
Ta gueule ouverte de torture et de souffrance dans le caniveau, t'en crèveras si tu n'y prends pas garde, petit anglo...

Comme ca?

The Great Canadian Practice your French Thread

Pour vous, M. Mousquet.

Avec amour,
Un Anglo-Canadian.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by wave46

Comme ca?

The Great Canadian Practice your French Thread

Pour vous, M. Mousquet.

Avec amour,
Un Anglo-Canadian.

Wow je le savais! J’avais l’impression que tu parles le français aussi.
Mais okay... donc tu n’es pas franco-ontarien.
En passant, j'essaie de chercher les franco-ontariens qui vivent au Nord-Ontario (sur SSP) depuis longtemps.
Et oui, c'est ça qu'il cherchait.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

Wow je le savais! J’avais l’impression que tu parles le français aussi.
Mais okay... donc tu n’es pas franco-ontarien.

I would never call myself fluent or even conversational in French.

As I once explained to a family member: Mon vocabulaire est très petit et ma grammaire est de la merde

I can get this gist of things if the conversation is slow enough but manage reading better as I have time to parse the sentence.