mardyarse

No, I'm not a troll, nor am I after a fight!! However, I'm very interested in peoples opinions. Heres the question - whether or not sustaining 2 official languages in a country is all really just a waste of tax payers money or whether there really is a place for 2 languages running side by side in a modern, business world???

Example: OH says that his French Canadian boss has to speak english when in Switzerland or France as the French don't understand him. The modern, business language of the world (Western world) is English. However, as everyone knows living in Ottawa I have apparently made the worst choice for my children's futures by not putting them into French immersion. I was told by one teacher it gets them away from the other riff raff and you stand more chances of getting a job with the City (good payers apparently). I'm very interested to know if this is just because of Ottawa's unique positioning next door to Quebec and being the capital of Canada it has to show willing. But I have heard upteen stories about wasting tax payers money on translation and yet annoyingly Quebec don't translate anything and are not bi lingual. I've only been here 2 years perhaps some seasoned posters can enlighten me.

Whats it all about?????

dbd33

It's abaht education for its own sake. It's a beautiful thing to have kids what dream in multiple languages.

savefuel

Having married a French Canadian, I have seen the advantages for the two languages she speaks. She worked for a large Dutch/UK company in the Calgary oilpatch and was sent many times to Montreal and Quebec to see companies working with hers.
Not all the french speaking Canadians live in Ottawa and Quebec and once again, when her company worked with sub contracting companies that had French owners or workers, she was dispatched. Having two or more languages certainly has its advantages here and a child growing up with more than one language under their belt would have a better start in life (only my opinion).

dbd33

I think that's absolutely the case, if you're bilingual in English and French then, I'm reliably told, Spanish is a breeze to pick up. I don't think there's a cost argument against official bilingualism because, in practice, governments need to use many more languages than that (getting on for a hundred for the transit and garbage disposal instructions in Toronto).

The only harm in it I can see is that it's a subject for bureaucratic nonsense within government jobs but government jobs are always subject to some form of nonsense and I can't get worked up about that.

PeterF

Our kids when they are born are going to be brought up bi-lingual, English/Japanese

The thing that odd here is if they say bi-lingual, its automatically meant as English/French (or Francais/Anglais if in Quebec).

When my wy wife looked for bi-lingual jobs in the UK, she would search through the different 'bi' languages to find the ones she wanted. Here the search only came up with English/French, full stop.

dbd33

Only in the context of employment. A huge proportion, I'd guess a third, of the population of Toronto is bilingual in English and another language.

Novocastrian

Mes Kinder sind trois-spraechig. Canna dee them any harm like.

dbd33

German - the language the kids spoke once they knew I could do some French.

Novocastrian

Bastards.

dbd33

Indeed. It's peculiarly British though to object to being polyglot, their mother speaks English, French, German and "shopping Italian" just because where she comes from everyone does. In Toronto we're surrounded by people who speak three languages, some of them very difficult combinations. Those of us who can manage only English, and dialect English at that, wanna give our heads a shake, we could do better.

Novocastrian

Well, she would, wouldn't she? But I entirely agree about the British (and I have to say American) aversion to second /third /fourth languages. Narrow mindedness apparently comes with Empire.

dbd33

American? Surely America is a bilingual country, even my sorta-mother-in-law is taking Spanish lessons. I think that's another example of how an official policy of multiculturalism gets you the same result as an official policy of a melting pot; regulate all you want but people are going to use the language that works for them.

shelley748

There is'nt any point in it- the language of business world wide is English.

I had clients who moved to Ottawa from Paris , they were French and they said that they too had to speak English because the French over here could'nt understand them.

It is in my opinion a huge waste of Canadian Taxpayers money- you cannot find out the true cost of bilingualism, and we all know its costing us in health care shortfalls etc..

dbd33

Chinese, innit?

Can you show that bilingualism affects health? As best I can tell my bilingual children are in thunderingly good health while the one without language suffers occasional colds. My unilingual health seems unaffected by the gibbering in many languages all around me.

montreal mike

Are you sure it isn't the other way round?

I came over in 1962 having been schooled in hoighty-toighty Parisian French. I had no problems.

However I know that a Quebecker going to France might find it more practical to converse in English simply because of the inherent elitism and arrogance that tends to be displayed by some of the locals towards their 'backward North American cousins'.

I can still converse in Parisian French if I absolutely have to.