French use on the decline: OQLF
Another hefty report from the OQLF says French use is on the decline in Quebec and this wouldn’t be a job security maneuver from the OQLF employees, now would it.
The CAQ also wants to stop young people using English on social media.
Ian 09:16 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
Well. I guess if they really want to be sure to seem hopelessly out of touch to 18-35 year olds, that’s one good way to do it.
PatrickC 09:24 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
I notice one of the slogans at the UQAM encampment is “Love la résistance.” A case in point?
Paul 09:26 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
Once again, I wish the media would not take these statements at face value, and ask the bias of the report writers. The news story states:
“According to the report, only 58 per cent of Quebecers in 2023 between 18 and 34 used French almost exclusively at work, compared with 64 per cent in 2010.
The findings also reveal that 25 per cent of students who graduated from French high schools in 2021 enrolled in English CEGEPS — in 2011 it was only 18 per cent.”
This could be framed as French is in decline by some. Others may frame this as Francophones are increasingly bilingual. One induces fear, the other implies progression.
Blork 09:46 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
What Paul said. Is “using French exclusively at work” the benchmark? If so that’s very parochial. The world is shrinking and companies regularly deal with customers, suppliers, partners, employees, etc. that are based in the ROC, US, and elsewhere in the world. Personally, I have never worked at a company in Quebec that did NOT have employees and partners elsewhere.
If the OQLF wants Quebec businesses to only be inward-looking, that’s a whole other discussion.
Kate 09:59 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
With one hand the government tries to get foreign investment in Quebec and create links with industry elsewhere, and with the other it tries to squelch any language but French.
Daniel 10:24 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
Agreed. It was hard to ignore that with the giant Boeing announcement this week.
Also the CAQ may find more success with its goal by telling the youngs NOT to use French on social media. Voilà, forbidden fruit! Problem (?) solved.
carswell 10:42 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
“This could be framed as French is in decline by some. Others may frame this as Francophones are increasingly bilingual. One induces fear, the other implies progression.”
Back in the ’80s, toward the end of my fresh-outta-uni career as a teacher of ESL to adults, one of my students, a VP at Hydro-Québec and a PQ official, who was finishing an MBA at a conservative US university, wanted me to revise/translate/write his thesis as his written English wasn’t up to the task. In an effort to convince me, he invited me downtown for dinner and a tour of the offices, including the luxe board room but, of course, not the premier’s suite beyond the entrance to it.
During the tour he confessed he was frustrated by his struggles with English. He wanted to speak it better but found it so hard. In my naiveness, I mused that it was strange that in this franco but bilingual city, where English was mandatory to interact with the rest of the continent, ESL in primary and secondary schools was such an afterthought, whereas in places like Sweden, where I’d lived a year, it was considered an essential skill, with the result that just about everyone with a mind and education could speak it brilliantly.
He was horrified. Teaching ESL to franco children was immoral, he said. In fact, he was sending his pre-teens to private school partly because they wouldn’t be exposed to it, would be like him when they were adults. The disconnect was breathtaking.
Ian 12:06 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
Well c’mon, everyone knows that bilingualism is a conspiracy to destroy Quebec.
What are you, some kind of Westmount Rhodesian? /s
jeather 13:57 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
I’m curious which of the private schools that are of the caliber a HQ VP would send their kids there teach minimal English. I grant I mostly knew people who went to them in the 90s, but they had older siblings, and part of the draw was always that they taught more English than public schools.
carswell 15:08 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
@jeather No idea. If he said so — and I doubt he did — I’ve forgotten.
I’ve also wondered whether an unspoken reason was to keep his kids away from non-Québécois kids. Mutatis mutandis, it’s the part of the line of thinking that’s driving the US rightwing’s attempt to kill the public school system by giving parents taxpayer-funded mandates to send their kids to private, often religious schools where conservatives control the curriculum and blacks are effectively excluded — segregation by the back door. The South is rising again!