Association of Canadian Studies complains Ottawa not sufficiently bilingual

Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association of Canadian Studies, is disappointed that Ottawa has fewer bilingual speakers than does Gatineau. “I’m kind of surprised that Ottawa would be dragging down Gatineau so much in terms of the level of bilingualism.”

Mr. Jedwab apparently sees the Canadian albatross of bilingualism through the prism of Francophones, a view that requires Canadians to learn French because it is our official duty to do so. It says so in the constitution.

Fortunately, Canadians generally have other ideas of what is  important in the life of our nation and speaking French out of a misplaced sense of duty (or sense of guilt at having not lost in 1759) is not one of them.

People learn a second language when it is their interest to do so. Europeans and Asians speak English, not because England demands they do so, but simply because speaking English makes it easier to function in the modern world. The reason most Americans, British, and Canadians don’t speak a second language is because we don’t have to; most of the rest of the world speaks English.

Mr. Jedwab’s maudlin complaint that “… efforts to promote official bilingualism were not going much further than jobs within the federal government.” ignores two salient factors:

1. our very human inclination to learn only that which satisfies our curiosity or that which gains us an advantage

2. our very human inclination to resist learning French because they demand that we do so and because we find their whine unpalatable.

The global spread of English is a seismic event in Man's history

(I found a link to an article, “The global spread of English is a seismic event in Man’s history“, in the newsletter published by Canadians For Language Fairness Inc.

What follows is excerpted from the article, which was written by Matthew Parris after visiting some Ethiopian schools in 2005. Mr. Parris describes the extent to which the English language has permeated into some of the most impoverished and remote regions of the world.

I include it in FrenchWhine to emphasize the futility of the Quebecois in pursuing their irritating and tiresome efforts to force the French language upon the Rest of Canada even while the English language is being so eagerly sought by the Rest of the World.  -–JGP)

by Matthew Parris
Times Online
January 15, 2005

At Digum school, I also sat through a Grade 8 class of 56 students. Here in the top form boys and girls aged between 10 and 20 were being coached by the excellent Mr Hailay. He was teaching the uses of “just”, “already” , “up to now”, “yet”, “ever” and “never”, and, astonishingly, most of them had a pretty good grasp. Over the shoulder of the boy in front I read his battered computer-printout English textbook, instructing the reader in the correct tenses to use in reported speech. I asked Mr Hailay if I might ask his pupils a few questions.

Did they want to learn English? Yes, replied everyone. Why? “It is the language of the world, and I want to know the world,” replied one boy.

I asked what other languages they would acquire if they could. Spanish, Chinese and Arabic were cited in reply, but none had any plans to learn these. To my surprise, one of the boys asked me afterwards what language I spoke — was I Italian, he wondered? I saw that knowledge of English was not regarded as an indication of nationality, but as a possession, a philosopher’s stone: one which anyone could get. At Digum, they were struggling to get it.

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The spread of English across the globe is a seismic event in our species’ history. It is one of the biggest things to happen to mankind since the dawn of language. Speech is fundamental not just to communication but to the process of thought itself. No single language has ever before approached universality. English is now doing so. No other language has ever advanced as far, as fast, as ours. This is the first time in history that it has been possible to denote one language as predominant.

Within the lifetimes of Times readers, every other serious contender for that status has been eliminated. French is dying outside France. “Francophone” Africa is turning to English. Portuguese Africa is abandoning Portuguese. German made a small, temporary advance across emergent Eastern Europe but elsewhere outside Germany it is dead. Russian, which we once thought we would all have to learn, is finished. The Japanese are learning English - and developing their own pet variant. China will resist, but Mandarin and Cantonese are not advancing beyond their native speakers.

More of the world’s new Muslims are learning English than Arabic. Spanish alone is raising its status and reach — but among Americans, who have English already. India is making an industry out of English speaking, as call-centers daily remind us. A quarter century ago, as the dismemberment of our Empire neared completion, we might have thought that the predominance of our language had passed its zenith. It was, in fact, only the dawn.

It is imponderable what may be the consequences of the advance of this linguistic tide. Within a few generations and for the first time in the story of Homo sapiens, most of our species may be able to communicate in a single language.

The advantage lent to us British by our fluency (and that of the Americans) in this world language, should not be exaggerated. The number of native English speakers may not grow much; our relative influence may decline. They know little of us in Ethiopia. Yet all over that country street signs and business billboards are appearing in English, beneath the Amharic. English is cool. The very lettering confers status.

There will be no point in fighting this or regretting it. We should just take pride in what we have started. It gives us no mastery and nor should it, but it gives us a link. All the world will have an open gate into our story, our culture, our ideas, our literature, our poetry and our song. And we into theirs.

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Canadians for Language Fairness is a group that “Advocate(s), on behalf of the vast majority of Canada's Citizens, against the damage being caused to them by enforced bilingualism. In particular, Canadians for Language Fairness (CLF) is concerned about the growing trend in meaningful jobs being denied to Canadians simply because they do not speak French.”

clf1@sympatico.ca