[PRCo] Re: PRCo] Re: Europa (Foreign Languages)

[Fred Schneider]

Sorry about that.   I was quoting a rather upset member of the  
Canadian diplomatic service who I met at the Baltimore Streetcar  
Museum.   When I asked him about politics, we went ballistic.

But within your commentary I feel a certain dissatisfaction too.    
Sad isn't it that politicians in any country feel that they can only  
get support from their constituents if they are running someone else  
down.   Sort of like the newspapers which can only make money if they  
print bad news.   And the churches who are always right ... my church  
that is, your church is always wrong, or so it seems.   <BG>


On Nov 9, 2007, at 6:12 PM, Joshua Dunfield wrote:

>
> Fred Schneider wrote:
>> And then we have 12 million people in Quebec and some others in New
>> Brunswick and Nova Scotia who would like to break away from Canada.
>> And if they do, then there is another group of Canadians in the
>> prairie provinces who think more like the USA to the south.   Crazy,
>> isn't it.
>
> Quebec doesn't have 12 million people, much less 12 million
> separatists; they got two chances to pass a referendum and
> failed both times.
>
> Language is certainly a political issue here (I moved to Montreal
> a few weeks ago).  One of the former Parti Quebecois governments
> even banned commercial signs in English.  Eventually it was struck
> down by the courts, but they allowed a "reasonable compromise":
> now French just has to be at least twice as big on signs.  And despite
> having caused an exodus of English Canadians from Montreal in the  
> '80s,
> so that English is now definitely a minority language in the city,
> the separatist politicians still rant and rave about how if they don't
> do this, that and the other to support French (which really means
> suppressing English), French will vanish instantly.  The latest threat
> that will magically destroy French in Quebec is immigrants, who are
> supposedly all learning English and not French.  There's no data
> to back this up, but who needs facts?
>
> -j.
>