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From: dharris@watarts.UUCP (Dave Harris)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame
Subject: Re: To DAVE BROWN re. bi-lingualness
Message-ID: <8317@watarts.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Mar-85 07:50:44 EST
Article-I.D.: watarts.8317
Posted: Mon Mar 11 07:50:44 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 23:44:32 EST
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Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
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> 
> Hi DAVE:
> 
> How are you?  I am fine.
> 
> I have some friends from up in our next state who made some interesting
> comments about the "french language" problem.  You may notice that the
> separatists are melting away up there?  Anyway, their kids are in the
> language immersion program in the public schools (learning french) and
> they see what has happened as another stupid self-shafting by those
> frenchmen who insist on maintaining two languages up there.  That is, now
> that english speaking kids are coming up (fast- the first classes are starting
> to graduate) and into the business world, THEY are the ones who will profit
> by being able to move into the better jobs in the business world where French
> needs to be spoken.  Know why?  Well, it's because they have learned French
> correctly!!!!  Not the mongrel patois the 'French' up there speak!  And the
> French 'speaking' kids are not doing so well learning to speak their own
> language correctly.  The French know this and are upset.

Whoa!!!  Kindly allow me to correct a few errors:

1)  Frenchmen live in France (and they mostly spell it with a capital F).
    In Canada, we have francophones.  Similarly, Englishmen come from
    England.  Canada has few Englishmen.  We call them anglophones.

2)  Not everybody in Quebec is thrilled about being educated in French.
    In fact, many are not.  The new language laws are forcing a lot of
    parents who would normally have their children educated in English
    to send them to French schools, no disussion.  These people are not
    amused, and many have chosen to leave la belle province.

3)  (from the Canadian Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the
    English Language):  PATOIS:  A dialect differing from the standard
    language of the country; a provincial or illiterate form of speech;
    the jargon of a social or professional group.
    
    What exactly is a `mongrel patois'?  That would seem to be redundant.
    In any case, Canadian French is a dialect, not a patois.  In fact,
    it is far closer to the French spoken in France in the XVI and XVII
    centuries.  It is not illiterate.  It does not differ from the standard
    language of the country, because it IS the standard French of Canada.
    It is not the jargon of any one social or professional group.  Ergo,
    Canadian French is *NOT* a patois.  Q.E.D.

4)  All the Canadian francophones I know are not too upset about not
    speaking whathey call `francais francais'.  They make fun of it,
    In fact, they make more fun of the way Frenchmen speak than Frenchmen
    do of the way Quebecois speak.

By the way, PLEASE do not EVER refer to standard French as 'Parisian'
French.  That's one of my pet peeves.  Parisian French is one of the
most God-awful accents I've ever heard, and NOBODY teaches it (except
perhaps Parisians in Paris).  The world standard is, of all things,
called `francais standard', and the region that comes closest to that
is Tours, in France.  So if `standard French' bothers you, at least
call it `Touraine French'.  It would make me very happy.

-- 
                                - Dave Harris, Arts Computing Office
                                  University of Waterloo
                                  Waterloo, Ontario, Canada