Reddit Reddit reviews Sorry, I Don't Speak French: Confronting the Canadian Crisis That Won't Go Away

We found 2 Reddit comments about Sorry, I Don't Speak French: Confronting the Canadian Crisis That Won't Go Away. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Sorry, I Don't Speak French: Confronting the Canadian Crisis That Won't Go Away
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2 Reddit comments about Sorry, I Don't Speak French: Confronting the Canadian Crisis That Won't Go Away:

u/joerussel · 5 pointsr/montreal

why surprised dude? law 101 is basically a non-issue now and in many ways can be credited with lowering the immediacy of the sovereignty movement (at least according to Graham Fraser ). Its reached political normalcy in Quebec. Because of it, something like 90% of anglos under 35 are bilingual. You are never going to repeal it, most people or politicians should move on and focus on more important/relevant issues effecting Montrealers/Quebecois.

u/sibtiger · 3 pointsr/canada

For anyone interested in learning some things about bilingualism in Canada, I highly recommend the book Sorry, I Don't Speak French by Graham Fraser. A lot of very good information and arguments in there.

One of the things I remember most clearly is that to some degree, our institutes of higher education are a significant contributor. Most people probably don't know this, but knowing a second language used to be mandatory for attending university. They took that out just as the government started providing more funding for French language classes, removing a huge incentive for students to actually care about learning French.

And then at university, French is taught like it's any other foreign language, with no incentives to choose to continue it. Take my major, political science. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have your Poli Sci graduates know French? Wouldn't that be a big help for them in their future careers, especially if they want to join the civil service, or maybe do some journalism in Canada? And yet there were no french courses offered through the political science program, no credits given for taking french classes, nothing. Even graduate courses that purport to train you for the civil service rarely include French- How bizarre is that?

The main problem for bilingualism in Canada is how far away two of the most populous provinces (Alberta and BC) are from Quebec. If that geographic distance weren't there, it would be a lot easier to do things like encourage exchanges (of students and teachers). Because I really don't think you can learn French well without some degree of actual immersion in a French-speaking society. I took French immersion from Grade 1 to Grade 8, and continued taking classes for most of high school, and the first two years of university to boot. I still consider myself only decent at French, because I've never been anywhere that actually speaks the language for longer than a week.