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Language in Canada
"O, Canada", now also in Tagalog, Mandarin and Hindi
EVER since the British victory on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, which led to New France becoming a colony of Britain, French-speakers in what is now the province of Quebec have fought to keep their language alive. Tough laws requiring the use of French in the workplace, in schools and on signs, enforced by a vigilant language police (Office québécois de la langue française), have kept French from being obliterated by the tide of English from the rest of Canada and the United States. However, a linguistic breakdown of Canadians published on October 24th by Statistics Canada, a government agency, indicates there has been some erosion.
While the number of Canadians who said French was their mother tongue rose to just over 7m out of the total 33m, and those claiming they could conduct a conversation in French was up to almost 10m in 2011 compared with the 2006 census, both categories have declined slightly as a proportion of the population, in Canada overall and in Quebec. Those able to have a conversation in both English and French in what is officially a bilingual country now number 5.8m, or 17.5% of the population, a slight rise. But closer look at those figures shows that it was mainly a result of Quebeckers learning English rather than the other way round.
Statistics Canada says international immigration is having the strongest effect on what it politely calls “the evolution of French in Canada". Over the last 20 years, Canada has accepted an average of 235,000 immigrants a year, and more than 80% of them have neither French nor English as their mother tongue. About 5% of the total move to Quebec. They are mainly from countries where French is already spoken, such as Morocco, Algeria and Haiti. The good news for the language guardians in that province is that an increasing number of immigrants to Quebec report speaking French in combination with their mother tongue at home. But most immigrants move to provinces where English is overwhelmingly predominant, and that is the language they learn. While French is just about holding its own in Quebec, it is slipping elsewhere in Canada.
Bilingualism is growing at a healthy rate in Canada, and just not the French-English variety. Immigrants are mixing one of the 200 languages reported as a mother tongue in the census with English in the home. Tagalog was the fastest growing language in Canada between 2006 and 2011. It leapt an astounding 64% in the five-year period, a reflection of the Philippines’ status as the top source country of immigrants to Canada. The four fastest growing languages—Tagalog, Mandarin, Arabic and Hindi—all had growth rates of more than 40%. The immigrant languages losing ground—Greek, Polish and Italian—reflect the shift in immigration to Canada away from the former source countries in Europe to Asia. Canada's 60-odd aboriginal languages are now spoken by just over 200,000 people.
In a country where multiculturalism is seen as a virtue, the language revelations in the census were mostly noted as a positive sign. The exception was Quebec, where the Parti Québécois government, which supports the eventual separation of the province from the rest of Canada, is preparing to toughen its language laws with new legislation expected this week. The bill proposes to eliminate loopholes in the existing law used by parents to send their children to English-language schools, would bar students graduating from a French-language secondary school from attending an English-language college, and would extend a requirement that French be used in the workplace to cover more businesses. “French is losing ground,” said Pauline Marois, the Quebec premier. “We have to correct that situation.” The battle continues.
Just discovered this wonderful gem of a blog. I don't often feel the need to comment but I hope you realise how important this space you have created is. This will be on my daily blog round up now.
ReplyDeleteGreat work my friend!
Thank you for your kind words. I'll be regularly updating with a mix of satirical stuff and serious articles hoping to set the world to rights!
Deletehi, i second anonymous, u have brought up interesting topics for discussions and highlight the absurdities when govts try to impose conditions.
Deleteand i always thought u were about the middle east, because of your blog name but glad that u are including all the world's quirks as well.
quebec is under seige, trying to stem the tide of being engulfed by the english speaking part of canada. u can see it is economics too, jobs will be lost if they succumb, as it is they are able to maintain a close shop with their strict french requirement.
i was reading a blog from the balearics, that says the insistence of catalan in schools is limiting the children there from the international job market that requires english.
in malaysia, the govt has realised their mistake in making malay the medium of instruction in schools. they are doing a drastic about turn to include english now. they realise that there are more jobs for people fluent in english.
english has become the de facto language for business.
Sri Lanka realised they had the same problem a few years ago. After independence they wanted to assert their native languages and there is nothing wrong with that. However they virtually banned teaching English in government schools. So what happened is the rich families sent their kids to English tuition in the evenings so when they graduated they got the best jobs. The poor kids job prospects suffered. Now English is back in schools as a second language and all kids now have an equal chance.
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