Plante: The city can’t police language
Mayor Plante said Monday that the city can’t police language.
A west-end MP got herself in hot water recently by saying she didn’t think French was in decline in Quebec. Emmanuella Lambropoulos’s remark has been called contemptuous and she has been dogpiled on by the Bloc and (seeing an opportunity for a jab) the Tories. She has since humbly backed down.
Kevin 22:34 on 2020-11-16 Permalink
That’s because she’s under 40 and so actually knows the French language isn’t threatened by a reporter finding a dozen foreigners working retail in Montreal.
dmdiem 23:37 on 2020-11-16 Permalink
Just to reiterate:
“L’anglais est une agression”
“Ok boomer”
david132 02:58 on 2020-11-17 Permalink
Mme Plante n’a pas répondu directement à une proposition citoyenne qui souhaitait la création d’un comité de la langue française pour la Ville de Montréal et qui «proposerait des mesures structurantes pour le français».
Hmm . . .
Douglas 12:05 on 2020-11-17 Permalink
Emmanuella should have just dug in. Never apologize when they want to rip you apart.
paul 12:26 on 2020-11-17 Permalink
Census data shows that the number and % of french speakers has increased in the province since the 1990s, so she is 100% right that French is not in decline.
There are however less households that speak only french and a smaller % of unilingual francophones in the province over the same period. We are becoming more bilingual, which unilingual francophones view as a threat as opposed to seeing it as a successful result of language policies.
These stories are never based in fact, only in politics and populism.
Chris 21:22 on 2020-11-17 Permalink
>We are becoming more bilingual, which unilingual francophones view as a threat
I suspect there’s data to support that view. A fast googling shows a century ago most Māori were unilingual, then a shift to bilingual, then a big decline.
If most/all francos eventually become bilingual, and the rest of the continent speaks English, then there’s social and economic benefits for them to shift their focus to English, to pass that focus on to their offspring, and on and on for generations. It could end up similar to Native American languages, i.e. endangered.
Michael Black 22:08 on 2020-11-17 Permalink
French is spoken in France, and a bunch of other countries. It hasn’t disappeared, and it’s not going to disappear.
There is no one native language. So numbers were small to start with. Then came European disease, which decreased population a lot. Then a deliberate attempt to erase language and culture, including residential schools.
Something like 150 people are fluent in the Syilx language. It skews to elder. I suppose there’s a bonus since it’s a Salish language so other People speak languages in the same grouping. But it’s hard to sustain, not enough speakers even if people want to learn. Parents don’t teach their children to speak, parents have an inherent need to communicate with the newcomers. The relationship is the teacher. But that can’t happen if the language has been taken from the parents and maybe the grandparents. So it falls to the few teachers. And that’s never the same thing as parents talking to their children with love.
There’s a difference between some people losing their language, and a language disappearing