DrCaleb DrCaleb:
Guy_Fawkes Guy_Fawkes:
I wonder how many Bloc MPs are bilingual?
Most of them, I'd lay odds. Because out east in places where French is used most often, they still get exposure to English.
Out west, we get exposed to French hardly at all. We're more likely to hear German or Ukrainan. Which is why the Liberals will always be irrelevant in the west, because they discriminate against us like this because we aren't exposed to French. And that won't change anytime soon.
Like Dan says, he can just get some underling to translate for him. The same as a Supreme court judge could. Blackballing a qualified person from a job because they aren't fluent in French to me is counterproductive.
Perhaps, but it's not like your exposure to non-French languages like German and Ukrainian pushes you in any way to learn those languages either.
I don't care where you are in Canada, the opportunities to learn French if you want to are abundant. I know plenty of people out west who have learned how to speak French quite well. People in China learn it, people in South America learn it, peaople all over the world learn it despite having even less exposure to the language than English Canada (where there are French calsses, French immersion schools, French language television and radio, etc.).
When will people just admit that the reason they don't learn French is not beacuse they can't, it's just because they don't really want to and are not motivated to learn French or any other language really (with statistically rare exceptions). It's only when they want an important job in Ottawa that they realise they shat the bed on all the opportunities they had to learn the languge and then they cry no fair.
I started learning French in high school in the southern United States. I paid attention and learned it. Peeriod. Today it's my second language that I read, write and speak in every day. Motivation.
If one doesn't see the utility in something, and more so if his judgement is clouded by generations of bad blood between English and Frnch speakers in this country, then he will most likely blow off French class and treat it as just a hassle he has to put a minimum of effort into. From my understanding, that's how most students treat the subject.