French language-related stuff

[vanatox]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Also, as for most of Quebec's culture being Acadian in origin and "stolen" from them, this is completely false. I say that as an NB-born Acadian BTW.

Maybe he meant that many Acadian artists move to Montreal and have successful carrier outside of NB in Quebec and elsewhere and that these artists are not always recognized as Acadian artists but more as Quebec artists? Like Canadian artists going south and recognized more as American than Canadian? (un de tes sujets préférés...)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by vanatox

Like Canadian artists going south and recognized more as American than Canadian? (un de tes sujets préférés...)

Qui ça, moi????

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by vanatox

Maybe he meant that many Acadian artists move to Montreal and have successful carrier outside of NB in Quebec and elsewhere and that these artists are not always recognized as Acadian artists but more as Quebec artists? )

It is true that they do this with Acadian artists, but only a small proportion of Quebec's entertainment industry is made up of Acadians. The vast majority of the artists are from Quebec.

Although all of this does irritate people, it begs another question: if they are included as Québécois and not treated like outsiders, what does this say about the allegations about francophones from outside Quebec being excluded and not part of the gang there?

Do people (who move there of their own free will) want to be part of the gang or not?

I also should add that the Acadian origins of many of theses artists are not entirely ignored. For example Annie Blanchard toured with the Star Académie gang all over Quebec and sang Évangeline with a huge Acadian flag on a screen as a backdrop every single night.

Acadians get way more recognition for being Acadians in Quebec than English Canadians ever get as Canadians in the States.

[vanatox]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It is true that they do this with Acadian artists, but only a small proportion of Quebec's entertainment industry is made up of Acadians. The vast majority of the artists are from Quebec.

Although all of this does irritate people, it begs another question: if they are included as Québécois and not treated like outsiders, what does this say about the allegations about francophones from outside Quebec being excluded and not part of the gang there?

Do people (who move there of their own free will) want to be part of the gang or not?

I also should add that the Acadian origins of many of theses artists are not entirely ignored. For example Annie Blanchard toured with the Star Académie gang all over Quebec and sang Évangeline with a huge Acadian flag on a screen as a backdrop every single night.

Acadians get way more recognition for being Acadians in Quebec than English Canadians ever get as Canadians in the States.

Je suis totalement d'accord avec toi. Last year, Star Académie had three Acadians from NB as contestant and one of them won.

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by Acajack

NOW... there are some French-speaking Canadians (native speakers) who do run into these communication problems in France.

Bringing the discussion full circle - most of these would precisely be speakers of Chiac, and also of certain forms of Franco-Ontarian.

Which is exactly why I think Chiac is a dead end.

And that I don't believe people here when they say that most Chiac speakers can effortlessly make the switch to a more standard form of French if they have to.

That's fine. I don't believe you either. This conversation is nearly prompting me to go on a statistics hunt to back my personal findings.

My Acadian friends and family members speak Chiac amongst themselves, and then switch to a more formal dialect when meeting francophones from out of town.

Anglophones do this as well, by the way. When I'm around familiar faces, I tend to drop the consonants at the ends of my words. I use more plain language (Old and Middle English words). When I'm around people I've never met before, I tend to use higher diction vocabulary (Latin/French-derived vernacular).

Perhaps the sample of local Acadians I've encountered are unusally educated? Or maybe New Brunswick's duality is doing its job properly? Over recent decades French schools in New Brunswick have tightened their rules: for example, English is not permitted, even during recess. While on school grounds, using French is expected.

In Champlain Place, which is the mall in Dieppe, you can hear the school kids switching back and forth between French and Chiac. They use Chiac when joking around, showing off, and to add emphasis to something they just said completely in French.

[worldlyhaligonian]

Originally Posted by brannelford

For what it's worth, back in the 1990's I was travelling in France with this girl I knew who was originally from Sept-Iles, but had moved to Toronto, where we met.

So, here we are in the north of France, and out of the two of us, the anglophone (me) and the francophone from Sept-Iles, guess which one of us was asked by the locals to speak English in order to be understood better? Yep, Sarah from Sept-Iles... she was so pissed off, and I couldn't stop laughing at that one!

But yeah, I guess to be honest, I think it was also a little bit because my anglophone French was being spoken in such a slow, somewhat halting and deliberate fashion, that it allowed the locals a chance to adjust for my accent.

Very accurate. French also varies significantly within France, Belgium, and Switzerland.

I don't think its fair to comment how long a Quebecoise girl has been living in Toronto... adults don't tend to lose their accents. I think people are misconstruing that I'm not making this judgement, I've just seen a million people make it.

Just like Brits tend to look down on Canadian or US english. If you don't believe that then you are simply ignorant.

"Also, as for most of Quebec's culture being Acadian in origin and "stolen" from them, this is completely false. I say that as an NB-born Acadian BTW."

^ Completely correct. Two completely different cultures and Quebecois culture is not homogenous itself, very regional, but with common traits.

[worldlyhaligonian]

Also, some of you that think various versions of languages are "wrong"... that's just ignoring the evolution of language.

Regardless of this fact, the originators of most languages view theirs as superior. I'm not making this stuff up!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by RyeJay

That's fine. I don't believe you either. This conversation is nearly prompting me to go on a statistics hunt to back my personal findings.

My Acadian friends and family members speak Chiac amongst themselves, and then switch to a more formal dialect when meeting francophones from out of town.

Anglophones do this as well, by the way. When I'm around familiar faces, I tend to drop the consonants at the ends of my words. I use more plain language (Old and Middle English words). When I'm around people I've never met before, I tend to use higher diction vocabulary (Latin/French-derived vernacular).

Perhaps the sample of local Acadians I've encountered are unusally educated? Or maybe New Brunswick's duality is doing its job properly? Over recent decades French schools in New Brunswick have tightened their rules: for example, English is not permitted, even during recess. While on school grounds, using French is expected.

In Champlain Place, which is the mall in Dieppe, you can hear the school kids switching back and forth between French and Chiac. They use Chiac when joking around, showing off, and to add emphasis to something they just said completely in French.

It's probably impossible to find stats on this.

One thing I know is that hostility to Chiac is not just an NE and NW NB phenomenon. It is verboten in many SE NB families as well. Probably for the reasons I have cited here, and because it evokes a certain subservience among a lot of people.

Assimilation rates in SE NB are around 20-25% for francophones, which is double the province-wide figures and several times the rate in the NE and NW. It's hard to say if people who speak Chiac are more likely to assimilate to English, but... it's not to imagine that it might be a factor.

Anyway, as I have said before I am open-minded about Chiac organically becoming the main language of SE NB, but will wait until there is at least some evidence of little Aitkens, Smiths and Wilsons chatting in Chiac at recess at Riverview Public School before getting too enthusiastic.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian

I don't think its fair to comment how long a Quebecoise girl has been living in Toronto... adults don't tend to lose their accents.

It's no so much a question of accent as it is of vocabulary and grammar.

Many francophone Canadians when they move to very ''anglo'' environments for some reason tend to let their French lapse and it can become very bad anglicized and colloquial. And I fully include Québécois people in this.

I've met Québécois from the Saguenay who moved to Toronto after university and five years later their sentence structure is totally anglicized and laden with anglicisms and ''false friends'' (English words that sound French but don't mean the same thing.)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian

Also, some of you that think various versions of languages are "wrong"... that's just ignoring the evolution of language.

Regardless of this fact, the originators of most languages view theirs as superior. I'm not making this stuff up!

I don't hate Chiac or even think that it is wrong.

I am just not under any romantic illusions about where it is leading the Acadian population of SE NB. It's a slow march, but the direction is clear.

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's probably impossible to find stats on this.

One thing I know is that hostility to Chiac is not just an NE and NW NB phenomenon. It is verboten in many SE NB families as well. Probably for the reasons I have cited here, and because it evokes a certain subservience among a lot of people.

Assimilation rates in SE NB are around 20-25% for francophones, which is double the province-wide figures and several times the rate in the NE and NW. It's hard to say if people who speak Chiac are more likely to assimilate to English, but... it's not to imagine that it might be a factor.

Anyway, as I have said before I am open-minded about Chiac organically becoming the main language of SE NB, but will wait until there is at least some evidence of little Aitkens, Smiths and Wilsons chatting in Chiac at recess at Riverview Public School before getting too enthusiastic.

Acadians who speak Chiac don't need consent from anglophones to validate their dialect -- nor do they need it from anyone else.

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I don't hate Chiac or even think that it is wrong.

I am just not under any romantic illusions about where it is leading the Acadian population of SE NB. It's a slow march, but the direction is clear.

So long as anglos speak it too, eh?

These Acadians aren't deluded about the dialect's usefulness. They fully realise it's a language that can only be fully understood locally. That's the entire point...

[worldlyhaligonian]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's no so much a question of accent as it is of vocabulary and grammar.

Many francophone Canadians when they move to very ''anglo'' environments for some reason tend to let their French lapse and it can become very bad anglicized and colloquial. And I fully include Québécois people in this.

I've met Québécois from the Saguenay who moved to Toronto after university and five years later their sentence structure is totally anglicized and laden with anglicisms and ''false friends'' (English words that sound French but don't mean the same thing.)

uhh, les faux amis? I can't believe that.

Only a non-french speaker would do such a thing. For example, the verb "rester" in the infinitive. Nobody would start saying that in french as meaning "to rest", its obviously "to stay". My french is half-decent for somebody who learned it mostly in quebec and english canada and I would never make mistakes with faux amis

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I know you said hyperbole but seriously, native French-speaking Canadians learn the vous (vs. tu) form around the time they are five years old.

Once again, a lot of this seems to come from being a native speaker vs. a non-native speaker.

It's burned into my brain through thousands of repetitions throughout public school... I guess colloquially it isn't as common in Canada? But yeah I think even non-immersion French students get bombarded with conjugation exercises which invariably include je, tu, il/elle/on, nous, vous, ils/elles.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian

uhh, les faux amis? I can't believe that.

Only a non-french speaker would do such a thing. For example, the verb "rester" in the infinitive. Nobody would start saying that in french as meaning "to rest", its obviously "to stay". My french is half-decent for somebody who learned it mostly in quebec and english canada and I would never make mistakes with faux amis

I beg to differ. Faux amis are highly common among French-speaking Canadians who don't have a good mastery of standard French.

For example, Nova Scotia Acadians will say ''quitte-moi tranquille''. Quitter is the French verb for ''to leave''. Quitte-moi tranquille makes no sense in standard French, (where you would say ''laisse-moi tranquille''), but it makes sense when you think it is ''leave me alone'' with French words that they are saying.

I once had a Franco-Ontarian relative talk to my kids about ''le conducteur de l'orchestre'' (orchestra conductor). My kids actually thought he was referring to the guy who drove the orchestra's bus!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Hali87

It's burned into my brain through thousands of repetitions throughout public school... I guess colloquially it isn't as common in Canada? But yeah I think even non-immersion French students get bombarded with conjugation exercises which invariably include je, tu, il/elle/on, nous, vous, ils/elles.

You are right that ''vous'' when speaking to a single person (to be polite) is not as common in Canada as in Europe. But you still hear it very frequently and it's far from unfamiliar. Kids in school generally use ''vous'' with their teachers, and if you go to a restaurant there is a 90% chance the waiter will use ''vous'' with you. Just two examples.

Having service staff use ''tu'' with you is more common in Quebec than in France, but it's still a minority usage I'd say.

[worldlyhaligonian]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You are right that ''vous'' when speaking to a single person (to be polite) is not as common in Canada as in Europe. But you still hear it very frequently and it's far from unfamiliar. Kids in school generally use ''vous'' with their teachers, and if you go to a restaurant there is a 90% chance the waiter will use ''vous'' with you. Just two examples.

Having service staff use ''tu'' with you is more common in Quebec than in France, but it's still a minority usage I'd say.

Good point about service staff.

[Hali87]

In an effort to create some more relevance within this thread...

The French language in HRM. Thoughts?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Hali87

The French language in HRM. Thoughts?

It's hardly a bilingual city but it seems like there French language school system there keeps getting better and people there seem to be more pro-bilingualism (in the abstract sense) than people here in BC. In Western Canada there is still pretty strong knee-jerk anti-Quebec, anti-French sentiment (kids in Vancouver and Calgary should be learning Mandarin because French is useless etc.).

I'm not sure what the full-on French schools (not just immersion -- places like Beaubassin) are like now. Back when I first moved to Halifax you had to prove that your family was Francophone in order to enroll in certain schools. I started school in French and have an obviously French last name but it was still a big rigmarole (believe it or not, at one point they suggested that I had to have Acadian ancestry specifically), and ultimately I ended up switching into immersion and going to a school closer to where I lived. The kids there didn't have nearly the same level of French skills.

There are a ton of false cognates and changes in phrasing can be very subtle. It's interesting how language skills go rusty. Native speakers don't tend to lose their accent or their ability to understand their mother tongue. It's the extended active vocabulary and complicated phrasing and idioms that go first.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's hardly a bilingual city but it seems like there French language school system there keeps getting better and people there seem to be more pro-bilingualism (in the abstract sense) than people here in BC. In Western Canada there is still pretty strong knee-jerk anti-Quebec, anti-French sentiment (kids in Vancouver and Calgary should be learning Mandarin because French is useless etc.).

I'm not sure what the full-on French schools (not just immersion -- places like Beaubassin) are like now. Back when I first moved to Halifax you had to prove that your family was Francophone in order to enroll in certain schools.

I've heard that about BC as well, although I haven't really witnessed it (I should add though that I have not met a single person out here who speaks French as a second language). One thing I have noticed is that French labelling on products is often absent or full of grammatical errors. French is very much an afterthought here while in NS and Ontario there is an obvious effort to include French translations on things, especially marketable products, even in areas without many Francophones. Another thing to consider is that many schools out west do (or at least used to) allow students to study a second language other than French (meaning that French was not necessarily a mandatory course). My dad grew up in Edmonton and took Ukrainian instead of French in public school (and in retrospect always seemed to find the French language kind of trivial). I'm not sure if that is still the case and in which provinces this applies.

I have several Anglophone friends who attended Beaubassin so they must have loosened their restrictions significantly (most of them started out in immersion but I don't think any of them had a chance in hell of convincing the Conseil Scholaire that French was their first language). There is also a large new Franco- High School in the Ravines area (Sommet).

I'd like to see the city take steps to become more attractive to Francophones. I think that declaring the municipality "officially bilingual" would be a bureaucratic nightmare but the city could look at making certain essential services available in French or even just encourage the creation of a small district with businesses and services that cater to Francophones. Doing so would open Halifax up to a lot more immigration from French-speaking countries as well as migration from Quebec and other Francophone regions of Canada. It would probably also be good for tourism, and in a way, would be a nice symbolic gesture (Halifax having been originally created as an adversary for the French North Americans, etc.) I'd kind of hoped that the Ravines might develop along these lines (since they have the two Francophone schools) but the opportunity is probably long gone by now.