Mayor unveils plan to boost French
The mayor has unveiled the city’s plan to boost the use of French, with the city hiring more francophones, promoting cultural works in French, and ensuring that newcomers are aware of the importance of French and the availability of language learning options.
I wasn’t aware that the city ever hired anyone who wasn’t a francophone, but I guess it looks good on paper.
dmdiem 13:50 on 2021-03-22 Permalink
That moment when the narrative bumps up uncomfortably against reality.
steph 15:13 on 2021-03-22 Permalink
I work for the provincial government, we do EVERYTHING in French. Even English speakers from the public are forced to exchange with us in french even if we’d both easily have the exchange in English.
This week we also got the propaganda from Legault about the need to ‘promote to protect French’. The literature reads that French unilingualism is a richness we shouldn’t lose. PUKE. The anti-intellectualism is such a shame. I understand that immigrants don’t have a leg to stand on against these politics, but as someone born and educated in English here in Quebec, it’s plainly a waste of resources to oppress my English. It’s weak to see it as “either be the oppressors or be oppressed”. I wish the policies weren’t rooted in low brow politics.
Does anyone know a support group I could join? A pro-anglophone, or a Montreal-Separatist cause I could invest myself in?
dmdiem 15:56 on 2021-03-22 Permalink
It’s the zero sum mentality I just don’t understand. If a francophone learns an English word, it doesn’t just magically erase a French word in their brain. There is every advantage to not only being bilingual, but multilingual. Europe doesn’t seem to have this problem. In fact the attitude there seems to be “You only speak 4 languages? What are you, stupid or something?” Our attitude here is, well, provincial.