English “not so dominant” at French universities
A study has found that English has not contaminated Quebec’s French-language universities as much as was feared. However, the general dominance of English as a common language in many fields is still to be lamented.
“The study concludes that offering English-language training at French-language universities in Quebec is a phenomenon that needs constant observation.” And, I hope, firm suppression. You can’t go letting university students learn a second language.
Meezly 13:00 on 2021-07-30 Permalink
God forbid that francophone graduates will find jobs outside of Quebec, like in Ontario, Europe or the U.S., if they learn some English. Or attend international conferences where English is the common language.
“The authors of the CSLF study point out there is a trend in many western countries where English is not the national language to offer bilingual training, resulting in its dominance in the economic, social and cultural worlds.”
Like no shit, it’s common sense and the current reality. Are Quebec universities so anti-English that they can’t or won’t offer this? Are other non-English universities in the world complaining about the English language? Or is this an unique Quebec phenomenon?
It’s fine if they “lament” the lack of French support and recognition, but the reality is that there had to be one language, and it sucks that it ain’t gonna be French, so deal with it. Would they have preferred Mandarin?
JP 20:08 on 2021-07-30 Permalink
Do people also forget that bilingualism/multilingualism is also simply good for the brain in terms of aging and all that?
And, yeah, I think many places accept that English is, for instance, the language of science. It doesn’t mean other languages have no value, no worthy literature, songs, books…whatever. It has just worked out that way. As global citizens, it makes sense to be able to efficiently communicate science using a universally(?) understood language.
vasi 04:53 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
I wonder if the study counts keywords like “if” and “else” in programming languages as English content? Thankfully, it shouldn’t be much work to migrate all computer science courses to a new, linguistically pure programming language used only in Quebec.
Uatu 07:41 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
That would be a great example of le Leadership! 😛
jeather 12:12 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
The government did actually considering writing a new programming language and something for CSS/html/whatever the tech of the day was so that the tech people could work in French. But apparently no one was willing to do that.
This really shows that the idea is not to protect French but to protect the ability to be successful in any field, unilingually. And there are jobs here where that is possible, but it’s never going to be true for every job.
Raymond Lutz 14:55 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
@jeather I don’t remember (and can’t find) any ‘in house’ effort for developing any new programming language. The nearest I can imagine is the PQ government asking Logo Computer System Inc to translate and port their LOGO interpreter to the MATRA MAX 20e from Bytech-Comterm-Matra circa 1983 (http://www.ti99.com/exelvision/website/index.php?page=axel)
JoeNotCharles 08:44 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
LISP for everything!
Raymond Lutz 09:51 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
(LOGO
(is
(LISP
(without
(parenthesis!)))))
.Forth reversed is LOGO and ref