Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
I think you're underestimating how difficult it is for an adult unilingual anglophone to change this fact; it's possible of course but it requires a huge amount of time and effort. Learning a new language as an adult is always difficult (ability to learn languages declines sharply after about age 12), and this is especially the case for those who didn't learn any second languages as a child (research has shown that children who learn multiple languages will have an easier time learning new languages after adulthood, while those who remained uni-lingual throughout childhood find the "after-12" barrier much more difficult to overcome).
On top of that, anglophones get very little exposure or need for other languages because of the status of English as the global lingua franca. When we travel, everyone generally speaks to us in English, all the media we consume is all in English, all the people we interact with all speak English, etc... This is unlike people who speak other languages, who generally will have some degree of natural English exposure or at the very least, some necessity of other-language exposure in general. (ie. a francophone who travels around the world is far less likely to find people able to speak French, so to some extent they'll be forced to use English as an intermediary language or pick up a phrasebook, which gives them some practice in multilingualism.. whereas an anglophone will just expect everyone to speak to them in English and it generally works if they stick to the more touristy areas--this is true even in countries like China and Hungary where overall English fluency is low).
Even in Europe, anglophones (living in the UK and Ireland) are far less likely to learn second languages than continental Europeans.
It's certainly possible for a 40 year unilingual anglophone to learn French but the amount of time and effort required would be huge.. especially given that they can get a job literally anywhere else and not have to ever worry about putting in said time and effort.
The federal language requirements are a big part of the federal government's inefficiency and general bureaucratic incompetence, IMO, because they effectively shut out the majority of Ottawa-Gatineau's workforce from wanting to work there thus severely limiting availability of talent (note: I'm not saying there aren't talented francophones and bilinguals.. it's just that they only make up a fraction of the population, so the chance that the "best talent" is among that group is simply mathematically smaller). The feds talk a lot about the things they have to do to attract better talent.. well giving an actual career path for unilingual anglos would be one of the biggest ways to do this. Separating the departments linguistically like was proposed in Laurendeau-Dunton is the best way to do this without being unfair to francophones.
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Not sure I agree with this take. It isn't harder for Anglophones to learn other languages than any other group - we are just less inclined as a general rule, and we use the dominance of English as an excuse. Speaking French really is a job-related skill in a lot of cases. I have no idea how separating departments into linguistic silos could possible increase efficiency.
In any event, this bilingual/not bilingual theory is a false dichotomy. Federal government jobs require varying levels of French, depending on the nature of the job. I don't have numbers, but in my experience, the number of jobs that are English essential or require no more than a B level of French would constitute the majority of positions. And to be clear, a B level of French is very attainable for the vast majority of anglophones. Almost all of us took French in school - if you went to grade 9 and put in any kind of effort, you would be at a B-level. Is it really an insurmountable challenge for most to get back to a grade 9 level of French?
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