Greater influence from "overseas" -- Miami (Latin America) or Vancouver (Asia)?

[Acajack]

And that country would absolutely, positively have been called....

(drum roll)

CANADA!

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yeah, those Walloons. Totally francophone but they have names like Elizabeth Vanbiesbrouck!

Actually she was using her married name, so, American husband's family name. And since our family name looks Italian (like all truly "local" family names from the Nice area), which in the USA isn't anything out of the ordinary for unilingual English-speaking Americans, there was initially no indication at all that we were in fact all francophones.

It's been years, but I'm pretty sure I recall that the way the cat got out of the bag is that dad and I exchanged a few words privately while she was around. Thankfully it was nothing she couldn't hear

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Actually she was using her married name, so, American husband's family name. And since our family name looks Italian (like all truly "local" family names from the Nice area), which in the USA isn't anything out of the ordinary for unilingual English-speaking Americans, there was initially no indication at all that we were in fact all francophones.

It's been years, but I'm pretty sure I recall that the way the cat got out of the bag is that dad and I exchanged a few words privately while she was around. Thankfully it was nothing she couldn't hear

So your real name is "Lio Grimaldi"?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

So your real name is "Lio Grimaldi"?

Nope, although as I pointed out a couple years ago I am pretty sure I have said enough about me over this past decade on SSP that if you really wanted to, you could likely locate me in real life.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Nope, although as I pointed out a couple years ago I am pretty sure I have said enough about me over this past decade on SSP that if you really wanted to, you could likely locate me in real life.

Hey, my real name is Jacques Aznavourian! Or maybe it could be Jacques Soleimanov!

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by Acajack

So your real name is "Lio Grimaldi"?

It's true that as Corsica, the County of Nice itself has been a later part of France. I think they've been French for only 150 years, which is relatively recent given the long long story of our country.

So many of their last names have an i suffix, just like in Italy. And their historic town looks very much like Genoa. It's only something regional, and France is actually hugely diverse in its historic regional traditions.

Nice is culturally both French and Italian. When they had their choice, they chose the unitary French state that was thriving more than Italy whose unity is more questioned by the Italians themselves.

But it doesn't make much of a difference anyway. It's just located where it lies, right on the French-Italian border.

My paternal grandparents are from the County of Savoy. They never cared very much about the French, Italian or Swiss borders either.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Hey, my real name is Jacques Aznavourian! Or maybe it could be Jacques Soleimanov!

Well, I do know there's a rare, foreign family name in your family tree, among other little clues...

[lio45]

Originally Posted by mousquet

It's true that as Corsica, the County of Nice itself has been a later part of France. I think they've been French for only 150 years, which is relatively recent given the long long story of our country.

So many of their last names have an i suffix, just like in Italy. And their historic town looks very much like Genoa. It's only something regional, and France is actually hugely diverse in its historic regional traditions.

Nice is culturally both French and Italian. When they had their choice, they chose the unitary French state that was thriving more than Italy whose unity is more questioned by the Italians themselves.

But it doesn't make much of a difference anyway. It's just located where it lies, right on the French-Italian border.

My paternal grandparents are from the County of Savoy. They never cared very much about the French, Italian or Swiss borders either.

158 years. (1860.)

Nowadays the area is pretty firmly French culturally, it's just that whenever someone is curious to know where my not-from-here family name comes from, if I reply "France" they always find it unsatisfying (usually the reply is "but it sounds Italian"). So, I'm used to adding a bit of history in the explanation. My grandpa never spoke any Italian, nor did his dad (and now I wonder how many generations till we find people speaking the patois Niçois), despite the Italian-sounding name. FYI, my grandpa has lived in Quebec for over 60 years now and never lost his Provencal accent. He can get mistaken for a recent French arrival.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Well, I do know there's a rare, foreign family name in your family tree, among other little clues...

Yeah, though my own surname is about as classic French Acadian as they come, like Cormier, Thériault, Robichaud, Dugas, Boudreau, Landry, Thibodeau, etc.

[Northern Light]

Back to the original point of this thread, just for a moment.

So I went and looked up the stats.

Vancouver's population is about 45% foreign born. (the vast majority of those, Asian)

Miami is 37%

Roughly 50% of the population of Vancouver reports speaking a language other than English or French at home, with the majority of those speaking a variant of Chinese, or Punjabi, followed by Korean, Tagalog and Hindi.

As best I can discern only 58% of residents of Miami claim to be able to speak Spanish, and I don't believe over 80% of those are speaking primarily Spanish at home.

These are not the only criteria by which one might judge the thread question; however, they appear to be the most debated, so I offer the facts in lieu of conjecture.

[Docere]

The Miami MSA is huge and includes Palm Beach which is about 75 miles away. Miami-Dade and Greater Vancouver seems to be a more reasonable comparison.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Back to the original point of this thread, just for a moment.

So I went and looked up the stats.

Vancouver's population is about 45% foreign born. (the vast majority of those, Asian)

Miami is 37%

A majority of Miami-Dade county residents are foreign-born. That's a county approaching 3 million people, so a crapload of foreign-born.

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The descendants of France's colonial experiment in North America number between 18 and 20 million people today. With the exception of about 5000 of them on St-Pierre-et-Miquelon this population hasn't been under any form of French governance for over 200 years.

I suppose that under an alternative history scenario where a truly French country would have emerged somewhere in North America (by remaining a French colony for a while longer and then obtaining independence sometime in the 1800s or the 1900s) a lot more of those 18-20 million would be French speakers today. At this point, a good 60% of them no longer speak any French and of those who do just under 8 million live in Canada and of those some 7 million are in the province of Quebec.

So assuming the French country held onto to most of those people as both residents and francophones, and that even a decent trickle of migration from France continued for another century, we might be looking at 30 million people or so? Then add on some immigrants of various origins (assuming we'd have followed the typical new world pattern) who would have become Franco-North Americans...

I am pretty sure we're still looking at maximum population that wouldn't be more than half that of France.

Wandering a bit from the primary topic, but something I find intriguing is the substantial growth in French in Toronto.

Its often overlooked in the sea of colours and languages from around the world.

But Toronto's French school board is busting at the seems and looking to add new High School(s) plural.

Toronto's French immersion programs are all over-subscribed.

To top it off the Ontario government has deemed there is sufficient demand for a full-on French language university in Toronto; that's in addition to York's French campus at Glendon.

While the French fact here will almost certainly always be modest in scale when compared with Quebec. Its becoming a significant city for Francophones.

Something in the range of 40,000 in Toronto report French as the language of the home.

While the number of fluent speakers is much greater.

Interest among anglophones and immigrants in French is also spiking.

[Capsicum]

In terms of "overseas" connection, Miami has the advantage that it is geographically far closer to its source of immigration (and the overall cultural region it's connected to) than Vancouver.

The Caribbean sea is much smaller than the Pacific.

But the trans-Pacific influence can still be seen in situations like the fact that Hong Kong is one of the places, after the US, with the most Canadian citizens (mostly probably returnee immigrants, many who probably lived in Vancouver).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadians_in_Hong_Kong

"In February 2011 research from the Asia Pacific Foundation, conducted with Hong Kong Baptist University, suggests there are at least 295,000 Canadians in Hong Kong, which is more than the population of places like Regina or Saskatoon. Near 85% of Canadians in Hong Kong are Canadian-born, a figure higher than in Canada itself (80.2%).[1] This represents the third largest community of Canadians, after Canada itself and the United States. A large portion of these are ethnic Chinese."

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Roughly 50% of the population of Vancouver reports speaking a language other than English or French at home, with the majority of those speaking a variant of Chinese, or Punjabi, followed by Korean, Tagalog and Hindi.

City or Greater Vancouver? I'm not seeing 50% even using the more generous "mother tongue" question (which the US doesn't ask, so not directly comparable).

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Back to the original point of this thread, just for a moment.

So I went and looked up the stats.

Vancouver's population is about 45% foreign born. (the vast majority of those, Asian)

Miami is 37%

Roughly 50% of the population of Vancouver reports speaking a language other than English or French at home, with the majority of those speaking a variant of Chinese, or Punjabi, followed by Korean, Tagalog and Hindi.

As best I can discern only 58% of residents of Miami claim to be able to speak Spanish, and I don't believe over 80% of those are speaking primarily Spanish at home.

These are not the only criteria by which one might judge the thread question; however, they appear to be the most debated, so I offer the facts in lieu of conjecture.

There's the claim that Vancouver is the most "Asian" big city outside Asia.

http://vancouversun.com/life/vancouv...-ramifications

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Docere

City or Greater Vancouver? I'm not seeing 50% even using the more generous "mother tongue" question (which the US doesn't ask, so not directly comparable).

City proper has about 275k out of 622k speaking non-official languages at home.

Metro is a lot lower than that of course. (In share of non-official anyway.)

Tables:

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-re...nguage&TABID=1

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-re...nguage&TABID=1

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Wandering a bit from the primary topic, but something I find intriguing is the substantial growth in French in Toronto.

Its often overlooked in the sea of colours and languages from around the world.

But Toronto's French school board is busting at the seems and looking to add new High School(s) plural.

Toronto's French immersion programs are all over-subscribed.

To top it off the Ontario government has deemed there is sufficient demand for a full-on French language university in Toronto; that's in addition to York's French campus at Glendon.

While the French fact here will almost certainly always be modest in scale when compared with Quebec. Its becoming a significant city for Francophones.

Something in the range of 40,000 in Toronto report French as the language of the home.

While the number of fluent speakers is much greater.

Interest among anglophones and immigrants in French is also spiking.

Yes, I've noticed that too. Not just in Toronto but in other places like Halifax, Charlottetown, Fredericton, Calgary, Vancouver. Francophones there used to be simply fodder for assimilation but now they have bona fide communities.

On the other hand, places that once had very solid (*almost* like Quebec) francophone communities have weakened considerably. I am thinking of Ottawa and Winnipeg for example.

Anyway... that's another topic entirely.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

In terms of "overseas" connection, Miami has the advantage that it is geographically far closer to its source of immigration (and the overall cultural region it's connected to) than Vancouver.

The Caribbean sea is much smaller than the Pacific.

As expected, there is more air traffic from Miami to Latin America than Vancouver to Asia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_...p_destinations

In 2016, the top busiest international destinations for MIA airport were London-Heathrow at 992,530, followed by Buenos Aires-Ezeiza at 861,429, São Paulo–Guarulhos, at 848,356, Mexico City at 762,079, Lima at 719,240, Panama City at 689,504, Bogota at 679,376, Cancun at 601,357, Madrid at 599,028 and Caracas 529,896, rounding out the top ten.

Vancouver's airport, on the other hand, has about 3-4 million for all the Asian-Pacific region combined.

http://www.yvr.ca/en/about-yvr/facts-and-stats

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Acajack

City proper has about 275k out of 622k speaking non-official languages at home.

Metro is a lot lower than that of course. (In share of non-official anyway.)

Tables:

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-re...nguage&TABID=1

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-re...nguage&TABID=1

So in other words, it's a comparison between the City of Vancouver and Dade/Broward/Palm Beach?