La Fête nationale du Québec: The Languages of Quebec

Today is the National Holiday of Quebec, or La Fête nationale du Québec as it is called in French, Quebec's only official language. It is also the Catholic holiday of St. John the Baptist Day, and it's no secret that there's a good historical and cultural significance of Catholicism when it comes to the Québécois, French Canadians, and French Americans.

Despite the legal status of the French language, Quebec has had its fair share of controversy when it comes to the influence of English. Around 80% of the population speaks French as their first language, and over 97% of those in the province can speak the language.

The Parliament Building in Quebec City

Even though English is clearly the minority language with less than 8% of those in Quebec speaking it as a first language, many concerns have arisen as it is believed by some that the French language is at risk from the ever-encroaching English language that represents a tiny minority. The "pastagate" scandal has raised some eyebrows, but that's not what Quebec is about.

After the battling between Canada's two most prominent languages is over, Quebec is left with a respectable number of Arabic, Spanish, and Italian, speakers. After that, there's Chinese, Berber, Portuguese, Romanian, Vietnamese, and Russian, though none of these languages have huge numbers of speakers in Quebec.

The native peoples in Quebec account for around 71,000 people, of which nearly half speak an Aboriginal language as their first language. The languages spoken by this group are mostly from the Algonquian language family, a group of languages that originally covered a large portion of North America, from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains through what is now Canada and the northern states of the US.

A smaller number of natives speak Iroquoian languages, which originally were found in areas around southern Quebec, Ontario, and in the US, from what is now Upstate New York to further afield, including modern-day Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Of course, this was all before European contact and the colonisation of North America, so the distribution of these languages has changed quite considerably since then.

On the Northern side of the province one can find, unsurprisingly, Eskimo-Aleut languages. Currently there are relatively few speakers, while the pre-colonial distribution of these languages reads like a map of places you wouldn't want to go if you prefer to spend your holidays on the beach sipping a margarita.

The Best Multilingual Cities In Canada

Since we covered the best multilingual cities in Europe last week, we felt it was only right to look at some North American cities this weekend. Today we're covering Canada, and tomorrow we'll head south into the US. Let's start our visit with Vancouver.

English Bay, Vancouver

Vancouver, British Columbia - If you leave Vancouver heading west you'll end up in "the East". Vancouver's proximity (it is only a few thousand miles, after all!) to Asia has helped cultivate some of the immigration that has left one of the World's Most Livable Cities with a huge Asian population and, as a result, Chinese and Cantonese as very popular languages within the city.

Aside from Mandarin and Cantonese, Punjabi, Persian, Tagalog, Korean, Italian, German, and French can also be heard in Vancouver. Despite French also being an official language of Canada, Mandarin and Cantonese are more popular in this area.

Toronto, Ontario - Given that Ontario borders Québec, Canada's principally French-speaking province, you can expect Toronto to have a fairly mixed bag when it comes to languages. Often confused as being the capital by ignorant foreigners (and a few poorly-educated Canadians), Toronto has very multicultural surroundings which can be found leaking into the city and government.

Ottawa, Ontario - Sitting right next to Québec, Canada's actual capital city has its own motto in both English and French. Advance-Ottawa-En Avant represents the country's two official languages, and the University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual university in the world.

Olympic Stadium in Montréal, which features
the tallest inclined tower in the world.

Montréal, Québec - As you could guess by the accent on the letter e, Montréal, or Montreal when Anglicised, is the largest city in the province of Québec. Recently the city has been in the headlines as a centre of controversy following multilingual political upheaval and the language debate within Québec. The famed Pastagate scandal following the over-Francofication of the city and tensions between French-speaking and English-speaking communities has been tarnishing Montréal's reputation.

That said, Montréal is a wonderful melting pot of French and English cultures, not to mention that Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and Arabic can also be heard around the streets of the world's second largest French-speaking city.

That concludes our quick trip across Canada. Are than any multilingual cities you feel we may have missed? Tell us about them in the comments below! Tomorrow we're heading south into the US.

Should We Protect Languages As They Are?

The discussion of language protection policies always leads to interesting debates. For those who love languages, it's easy to say that all languages should be protected. Others prefer a laissez-faire approach and say languages should be treated like living organisms and allowed to evolve naturally.

Certain languages have regulatory bodies, such as the Real Academia Española (Spanish) and the Académie Française (French), amongst many others. English, despite its apparent dominance has no regulatory body and as a result several variations exist... UK and US English, anyone?

The people here decide whether or not you've passed your Spanish test.

Of course, all languages have geographical variants. A regulatory body could settle arguments between the residents of the many English-speaking countries as to who speaks the language correctly. However, there are more reasons to have regulatory bodies than just settling arguments on YouTube.

French in Québec (or Québécois) is an interesting example of seemingly parallel language protection and evolution. If you talk to the Office québécois de la langue française you would think they're completely against the influence of the surrounding English language. However, if you chat with the French-speaking locals (and you will have a lot of fun if you do) you will quickly realise that they're not as against using loanwords as one would expect. It's a good example for seeing how protected language can coexist with an ever-changing language.

Arrêts are becoming a serious problem on Canadian roads.

One of the main reasons to protect languages in their current state is that you could maintain clarity in terms of historical texts, literature, music and the arts. That way everyone in future generations will be able to enjoy them, instead of only the scholars who study "Old Modern English", or whatever they decide to call it. You can't prevent people from speaking as they like in everyday life, but there's nothing to stop them from learning a "standard" English (or French, Italian, German, Spanish, etc...) in the classroom.

When we do have cool robot friends in the future, I'd like to be able to watch Star Wars with them, wouldn't you?
 

In The News: Are There Separatist Languages?

Montréal, Québec: The victory rally for the Parti Québecois was cut short when a gunman opened fire, killing one and wounding another.

Just after the event the mass-media was scrambling for information.

Currently the facts aren't particularly clear. The important facts, one dead, one wounded are confirmed by most news sources.

Certain facts, however, are open to interpretation... literally. Upon reading CBC I was informed, when arrested, the suspect said in French, "the English are waking up", making me think "les anglais se réveillent" were his actual words.

When I made my way to the BBC (usually my preferred site for news) I was told he had said, "the English are rising" leaving me to reconsider my initial opinion. Perhaps he said "les anglais se lèvent". Anyone who had studied French in high school would probably be familiar with both verbs and how easy it is to confuse them.

When I returned to the French language site, Radio-Canada, I was told his words were either: "les Anglais se réveillent" or "les anglais sont arrivés" [The English have arrived]. If it was the first option then CBC got it right, if not, why had nobody mentioned this? How could three different news sources give me three different answers?

"Les anglais se réveillent" or "les anglais sont arrivés"?

I also started thinking about how two languages (English and French) have shaped this event and indeed the political landscape of Canada.

The Parti Québécois is seeking to make Québec an indepedent nation. Most of Québec is Francophone, although there are large numbers of English speakers as well.

Language is often a major argument for Québécois independence

The gunman was reported to be speaking accented French (we can assume they are referring to a non-native accent, i.e., English-speaking Canadian) and talking about "the English". I doubt he is referring to the English (people from England) but rather the English-speaking people in Québec.

The large number of separatist movements spearheaded by groups who do not speak the main/official language of a country is no coincidence. Language, culture and history are all connected and it's very difficult for a group of people to associate themselves with only one without the other two.