Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by lio45

I'll distill down my point to its most basic form.

You have three guys. Each one has an Achille's Heel, they're horrible at languages so they are unilingual and will never learn anything else; they speak/read/write their own language fluently but that's it.

1) Young, very intelligent, very ambitious white guy who unilingually speaks French with a standard France accent, and is a citizen of France;

2) Young, very intelligent, very ambitious Han Chinese guy who unilingually speaks Mandarin and is a citizen of the PRC in great standing (high "social score");

3) Young, very intelligent, very ambitious South Asian guy who unilingually speaks [any language you pick, as long as it's only one], and is a citizen of India.


Which (if any) of these three guys has the best opportunities?
Which (if any) of these three guys has the worst opportunities?

I don't think that's a matter of opinion.

None of your 3 guys exist in the real world, because if they are young and intelligent, they have most likely learned English at school (mandatory subject in Chinese schools, not mandatory in France, but almost always picked as a subject), so they are not unilingual anymore.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by lio45

Meanwhile a Hindi-speaking guy from Delhi or Mumbai moving to Bangalore will feel alienated and won't like it at all, because they'll feel like an outsider

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

As for interactions in the street, yeah, I wonder how that works out in practice. Some years ago some Indian guys in the SSC forum had said language was really not an issue in Bangalore, but I have forgotten the details. Could be those Northern migrants pick up a few words in Kannada and mix them with English, or they use a mix of Bollywood street Hindi and English that local Bangalore people are able to understand.

I've had a look at some online forums, to see what locals think about it ("what language is spoken in Bangalore?" is a question that seems to be asked often). Here's what locals have to say (from threads 4 or 5 years ago, so today it might be even more diverse).

A North Indian guy who moved to Bangalore:

Kanaada is mostly preferred in Bangalore , but for the people coming from other places it is peaceful as the people in Bangalore are pretty good with English as well , all the venders cab or auto driver are pretty good at understanding English also few of them entertain Hindi , But according to me language is not a problem in Bangalore , I am staying in Bangalore since 4 years and I managed pretty well

A young guy born in Bangalore:

So according to 2011 census, 44.5% people speak Kannada in the city, 15% speak Tamil, 14% speak Telugu.

These 3 communities make close to 75% population of the city.

There are 6% of people who speak Hindi, 12% of people who speak Urdu.

So Muslims and North Indian Hindus are also other dominant communities in the city apart from Telugu and Tamil.

Muslims have historically been dominant in some places of the city like Shivajinagar and all.

North Indian Hindus came to the city to do education, to work and do business from decades.

Another native of Bangalore, bemoaning the fact the native Kannada language is declining in Bangalore:

Bengaluru is in Karnataka and the Language is Kannada.

But because of Growing Corporate Industry and even due to the Industrial Migration people from all over the country and even from abroad also migrated here.

So many languages are used to communicate here and 30 % people use Hindi because many are from North India and 20 % Telugu and 15 % Malayalam…

Finally there are more than 50% kannada people in Bengaluru but not all of them usually talk in kannada.

Kannada people usually talk to the other people as their language so thats the one reason.

Because of many Andhra People started PG over here , kannada people usually converse in Telugu to increase the sale and even to attract customer.

Most of the bakery are maintained by Kerala people..So people try to converse in their own language..So Its disappearing.

Where we learn that Malayalam (the language of the state of Kerala) is the language used in the bakeries in Bangalore (state of Karnataka). You learn something new everyday!

Another one:

Bengaluru is cosmopolitan city. So naturally one feels that one can manage with any language.Though Kannadigas love their language like any other Indian, but they also love other languages.Most of Bengalureans are bilingual.Most of them speak Kannada,Telugu,Tamil,Hindi and ofcourse English naturally. One can also learn local language easily. All in all languages is not a problem in Bengaluru.But beware of traffic.

Another one bemoaning the decline of Kannada language:

This is probably the only city in India that accepts all languages. Anyone who comes from any part of India, be it from Jammu and Kashmir or Kanyakumari gets to make his living without having to necessarily learn the local language.

This answer is not to force anyone to learn kannada, it is to ask you to have some respect towards Kannada.

The question is clearly asked by a non kannadiga. It is disheartening to know that one has to ask this question at all. Anyways, please find time to google the same. Yes you can survive in Bangalore with broken English and Hindi. Being a Metropolitan city, no one will ever force you learn Kannada.

[Luisito]

Malayalam would be cool to learn. I always wanted to visit Kerala. In particular the Kerala back waters. The place looks amazing.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by lio45

I think both Truenorth and New Brisavoine are firmly in the category “interesting contributors” and I figure that if they really want to call each other assholes, they’re adult enough to take it. Though I’ve been personally suspended for less than that

That said, I suppose I’m supposed to ask you guys to… try to refrain from gratuitous insults, if you can? Thanks in advance

i didn't see anything that stepped over any lines

[lio45]

Well, Truenorth did call New Brisavoine an asshole.

Though, a more interesting question is what you’d do now if rousseau called you an asshole, or if Chad mentioned he wanted to use your head as a drum on his way out of here, Homer Simpson-style.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

At the time, there were even some Chinese intellectuals who were calling for abandoning the Chinese language and adopting a Western language such as English for example, to save China, because they saw Chinese culture and even the Chinese language as the reason for the decadence and powerlessness of the country. This was also a time when Chinese elites loved to stuff their speech with English words.

To clarify...this idea was suggested by fringe elements. This idea was never seriously entertained or considered mainstream even amongst the Chinese elite at the time.

The bigger scandal at the time was the idea of abandoning Hanzi characters in favour of the roman alphabet, something to the effect of Katakana/Hiragana. But given the tonal nature of Mandarin Chinese, it was easier to form Chinese simplified characters by taking inspiration from Japanese kanji characters.

Nowadays, despite the fact there has never been more people able to speak English in China, the country is far less Westernized in its culture. Few people listen to Western music or try to mimic the West other than in dressing (but it's not seen as Western dressing anymore, it's just the modern way to dress, and even there, China is evolving towards its own fashion which can seem a bit strange or kitsch as seen from the West). There are also extremely few English words in the Chinese language nowadays (most words are given a Chinese translation, even "internet" has a Chinese translation, which is "hulianwang" in Mandarin). Only the people in Hong Kong still adopt English words in their Cantonese (a taxi is "taksi" in Hong Kong Cantonese, but "chuzuche" in Mandarin, a purely Chinese word that has now completely replaced the Mandarin reading of Cantonese "taksi" in Mandarin).

The Chinese language has never taken much cues from English nor any other western langauge. Rather, the main influence on Chinese is still primarily from Japan, and many modern terms like economics, television, or liberty are directly translated from Japanese Kanji. In a way you can say the Chinese language views western concepts through a Japanese lens.

[Kilgore Trout]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

The Chinese language has never taken much cues from English nor any other western langauge. Rather, the main influence on Chinese is still primarily from Japan, and many modern terms like economics, television, or liberty are directly translated from Japanese Kanji. In a way you can say the Chinese language views western concepts through a Japanese lens.

Huh? Do you have a source of any of this? According to Wiktionary the Japanese word for economics is derived from Chinese, not the other way around.

The word for television in Chinese is 電視 ("electric vision") whereas in Japanese it's テレビ (terebi – a transliteration of TV). The Chinese word for liberty is 自由 which dates back to the Han dynasty.

English influence on Putonghua and mainland standard written Chinese is very limited because of the Communist regime. There's a lot more English influence on Taiwanese Mandarin (eg the word in Taiwan for bacon is 培根 or pei gen, a transliteration from English) and in particular on Cantonese, because of Hong Kong's long history as a British colony. Hong Kong Cantonese is absolutely loaded with English loanwords, either used fully intact or transformed into something like 的士 (dik si, "taxi") or van仔 (minibus – pronounced "wan zai," literally meaning "little van"). The various Chinese languages spoken in Singapore and Malaysia have a ton of English influence as well for the same historical reasons.

You can't really talk about Chinese as a single entity because it encompasses many different spoken languages. Standard written Chinese is based on Mandarin and doesn't necessarily reflect the way people speak, even in Mandarin.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

Huh? Do you have a source of any of this? According to Wiktionary the Japanese word for economics is derived from Chinese, not the other way around.

The word for television in Chinese is 電視 ("electric vision") whereas in Japanese it's テレビ (terebi – a transliteration of TV). The Chinese word for liberty is 自由 which dates back to the Han dynasty.

English influence on Putonghua and mainland standard written Chinese is very limited because of the Communist regime. There's a lot more English influence on Taiwanese Mandarin (eg the word in Taiwan for bacon is 培根 or pei gen, a transliteration from English) and in particular on Cantonese, because of Hong Kong's long history as a British colony. Hong Kong Cantonese is absolutely loaded with English loanwords, either used fully intact or transformed into something like 的士 (dik si, "taxi") or van仔 (minibus – pronounced "wan zai," literally meaning "little van"). The various Chinese languages spoken in Singapore and Malaysia have a ton of English influence as well for the same historical reasons.

You can't really talk about Chinese as a single entity because it encompasses many different spoken languages. Standard written Chinese is based on Mandarin and doesn't necessarily reflect the way people speak, even in Mandarin.

There's many papers written on this phenomena:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23754127
https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/...nese-Loanwords-in-Chinese.pdf?sequence=1


But the easiest way is to look up Wasei-kango (和製漢語). A lot of these Japanese-originated terms have been adopted in modern standard Chinese, and this is mostly consistent across dialects:

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

To clarify...this idea was suggested by fringe elements. This idea was never seriously entertained or considered mainstream even amongst the Chinese elite at the time.

I know. But the mere fact that some intellectuals could think of abandoning the Chinese language back then speaks volumes.

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

The Chinese language has never taken much cues from English nor any other western langauge. Rather, the main influence on Chinese is still primarily from Japan, and many modern terms like economics, television, or liberty are directly translated from Japanese Kanji. In a way you can say the Chinese language views western concepts through a Japanese lens.

More than today (borrowing English words). Sometimes going as far as writing words in Latin characters. For example the title of this famous Chinese novel from 1922 is quite revealing, with its use of the Latin letter Q (which was meant to be read in English, and was meant to allude to the queue (hairstyle) that was ubiquitous among Chinese people before 1912).



Also, regarding Japanese influence, it's not so much Japanese words that are borrowed, or "translated". These are words coined in Japan with Chinese root-words. So it's akin to, say, Spain borrowing "television" coined in France with Graeco-Latin root-words. There's nothing "foreign" in these words to a Chinese. They are simply Chinese neologisms. And nowadays the neologisms are coined in China. Since 1945 Japan doesn't coin neologisms using Chinese root-words anymore, they simply adopt English words pronounced their own way ("suppa" for example, which is just "super" in English, whereas the Chinese use a fully Chinese word here, "bang").

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Also, regarding Japanese influence, it's not so much Japanese words that are borrowed, or "translated". These are words coined in Japan with Chinese root-words. So it's akin to, say, Spain borrowing "television" coined in France with Graeco-Latin root-words. There's nothing "foreign" in these words to a Chinese. They are simply Chinese neologisms. And nowadays the neologisms are coined in China. Since 1945 Japan doesn't coin neologisms using Chinese root-words anymore, they simply adopt English words pronounced their own way ("suppa" for example, which is just "super" in English, whereas the Chinese use a fully Chinese word here, "bang").

They were foreign at first because these neologisms didn't exist in China prior to the introduction from Meiji Japan. If you were to present these terms to an educated mandarin from Qing Dynasty China, it would still look like jibberish to them. But yes, utilising characters made it much easier for a republican Chinese reader to bridge the meaning of western concepts, versus adopting a completely foreign phonetic spelling of the same concepts.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

Huh? Do you have a source of any of this? According to Wiktionary the Japanese word for economics is derived from Chinese, not the other way around.

It's the Japanese who massively translated European concepts in the 19th century, but they didn't use Japanese words to translate them, they used Chinese root-words. 经济 is a word coined in Japan to translate "economics"/"économie". Yes 经济 appears in some ancient Chinese texts from the Tang dynasty, but it didn't have the same meaning as "economics". This is a modern coinage invented by the Japanese with Chinese root-words.

China adopted most of these newly coined words because they were there, already created by Japan, so no need to try and invent new ones, and because Japan exerted a strong influence on Chinese modernizers at the time, and also because these were fully "Chinese words", so it was no problem for a Chinese to use them (China would probably not have borrowed these words if they were Japanese words).

As for 电视 (television), that one was apparently coined in China and not in Japan. The Chinese Wikipedia says it was coined by Yang Jianchu at the science department in the Nanjing University in 1934. This is not surprising because this is already late (1934), by this time China had already stopped looking at Japan to import Western concepts (plus anti-Japanese feelings were becoming quite high), so they created their own words, and the Japanese nationalists in Japan were less keen to coin Chinese-based words than had been the case in the 19th century, so Japan did not coin a Chinese-based word for "television".

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

They were foreign at first because these neologisms didn't exist in China prior to the introduction from Meiji Japan.

They were foreign the same way "télévision" was foreign to a Spanish speaker, but not so foreign because all educated Spanish speakers knew what "tele" and "vision" meant, so it's not like they felt they were adopting a "foreign word". Same for China.

PS: The Germans insisted on "Fernseher", because German nationalists back then didn't like the Franco-Latin origin of "télévision". Portuguese, Spanish, Italian speakers didn't mind, because they are Romance languages based on Latin like French, so it's not so foreign a word to them. English speakers also didn't mind because English is already so full of Franco-Latinate words, it's perfectly natural in English to adopt Franco-Latinate words. German was also at some point full of Franco-Latinate words, but back when television was invented, there was a nationalist reaction in Germany. They triumphed with "Fernseher", but failed with "Fernsprecher" (which failed to replace French "téléphone", spelled "Telefon" in German).

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

More than today (borrowing English words). Sometimes going as far as writing words in Latin characters. For example the title of this famous Chinese novel from 1922 is quite revealing, with its use of the Latin letter Q (which was meant to be read in English, and was meant to allude to the queue (hairstyle) that was ubiquitous among Chinese people before 1912).

Interestingly enough .. if I recall correctly the author intended Q to stand in for either 桂 or 贵, which is closer to Gui in pinyin than the English pronunciation of Q.

But nowadays in places like Cantonese Hong Kong, the Q is read like English Q.

[New Brisavoine]

Regarding 自由 (liberté/freedom), there is still a debate raging as to whether this is an ancient Chinese word that can be found in ancient Chinese texts, or whether this is a word coined in Japan in the 19th century with Chinese root-words. This debate is important in the context of whether freedom and democracy can exist in China, or whether they are just Western concepts that are foreign to China.

I once read a 3 or 4 pages long article that was devoted to just that one word, 自由, giving many examples of its use in ancient Chinese texts, but I'm still unable to decide who is right and who is wrong.

I think the use of 自由 in ancient Chinese texts does not exactly correspond to what Europeans understood as liberté/freedom (two words that in any case evolved in their meanings... in the Middle Ages libertés/liberties, in the plural always, referred to the privileges enjoyed by the various organizations/bodies that made up Medieval societies, such as cities, universities, corporations; in the 17th century for example, France was called "le pays des libertés", by which people meant that each city, university, corporation, court of justice, convent, religious association, etc had its privileges that the king could not infringe upon, and enjoyed its own specific tax regime and exemptions). The word was understood the same in English ("the liberties of [such and such city]" for instance, which was the municipal territory over which these privileges and tax exemptions applied). In the 18th century these words evolved into the modern meaning of liberté/freedom under the Enlightenment movement.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Interestingly enough .. if I recall correctly the author intended Q to stand in for either 桂 or 贵, which is closer to Gui in pinyin than the English pronunciation of Q.

Don't know. I've always heard it was meant to be hinting at the Chinese queue, which the author saw as a symbol of China's backwardness.

[DirectionNorth]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Regarding 自由 (liberté/freedom), there is still a debate raging as to whether this is an ancient Chinese word that can be found in ancient Chinese texts, or whether this is a word coined in Japan in the 19th century with Chinese root-words. This debate is important in the context of whether freedom and democracy can exist in China, or whether they are just Western concepts that are foreign to China.

I once read a 3 or 4 pages long article that was devoted to just that one word, 自由, giving many examples of its use in ancient Chinese texts, but I'm still unable to decide who is right and who is wrong.

I think the use of 自由 in ancient Chinese texts does not exactly correspond to what Europeans understood as liberté/freedom (two words that in any case evolved in their meanings... in the Middle Ages libertés/liberties, in the plural always, referred to the privileges enjoyed by the various organizations/bodies that made up Medieval societies, such as cities, universities, corporations; in the 17th century for example, France was called "le pays des libertés", by which people meant that each city, university, corporation, court of justice, convent, religious association, etc had its privileges that the king could not infringe upon, and enjoyed its own specific tax regime and exemptions). The word was understood the same in English ("the liberties of [such and such city]" for instance, which was the municipal territory over which these privileges and tax exemptions applied). In the 18th century these words evolved into the modern meaning of liberté/freedom under the Enlightenment movement.

If you pick apart the characters,《自由》literally means "self-determination."

The post-Tang/Song references do not reference "liberty/freedom" as the philosophical concept that is at the centre of our Western democratic systems, but as a more individualistic sort of reference. Free from earthly burdens, I guess.

Keep the discussion going, it's very interesting!

[Luisito]

Wish I could speak and read Chinese.

[Kilgore Trout]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

They were foreign at first because these neologisms didn't exist in China prior to the introduction from Meiji Japan. If you were to present these terms to an educated mandarin from Qing Dynasty China, it would still look like jibberish to them. But yes, utilising characters made it much easier for a republican Chinese reader to bridge the meaning of western concepts, versus adopting a completely foreign phonetic spelling of the same concepts.

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

[Docere]

Re: identity, interesting to see how many different origins groups the French Canadian population reports in the Census.

Canada, 2021

Canadian 5,677,205 15.7%
French 3,985,945 11%
Quebecois 981,635 2.7%
French Canadian 906,315 2.5%
Acadian 305,170 0.8%


Quebec, 2021

Canadian 2,412,040 29%
French 1,778,900 21.4%
Quebecois 931,940 11.2%
French Canadian 588,805 7.1%
Acadian 83,945 1%

Adding French, Quebecois, French Canadian and Acadian together plus all Canadian (Canadien) responses in Quebec yields a population of 8,591,000, or 23.6% of the population.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Docere

Re: identity, interesting to see how many different origins groups the French Canadian population reports in the Census.

Canada, 2021

Canadian 5,677,205 15.7%
French 3,985,945 11%
Quebecois 981,635 2.7%
French Canadian 906,315 2.5%
Acadian 305,170 0.8%


Quebec, 2021

Canadian 2,412,040 29%
French 1,778,900 21.4%
Quebecois 931,940 11.2%
French Canadian 588,805 7.1%
Acadian 83,945 1%

Adding French, Quebecois, French Canadian and Acadian together plus all Canadian (Canadien) responses in Quebec yields a population of 8,591,000, or 23.6% of the population.

Interesting but I think there are some likely breakdowns that merit some caveats.

In Quebec itself there are probably anglophones of various origins (say English-Scottish-Irish or even English-Irish-French Canadian origins, who simply mark down "Canadian" as their ethnic origin. These people are not francophones culturally.

Also, outside Quebec about half of the 2 million people who list "French" as their ethnic origins aren't francophones, as the francophone population outside Quebec is only about 1 million people. Probably even higher as there are no doubt quite a few francophones outside Quebec who checked off "Canadian" as ethnic origin.

My guess as well is that Cameron Deladurantaye who lives in Medicine Hat and speaks no French is extremely likely to identify as an unhyphenated "Canadian".