National language(s)

[Nurvingiel]

[EDIT: This thread is split off from the "North American Relations" thread and can be used to discuss the pros and cons or specifics of having one or more national languages.]

With Puerto Rico incorporated, America would be well on its way to becoming a bilingual nation. Ask the Canadians how splendidly that works.

It works just fine, thanks all the same. Solely due to our two official languages, I had the opportunity to learn French through elementary and secondary school. It's also part of our culture, from the origins of the country.

That being said, the USA doesn't have the same reasons to want an (or two) official language. Plus, you do not currently have one, so why should you have an official language if Puerto Rico became a state? Everyone can still speak whichever language you want (this applies to Canada too) and government documents can still be written in whatever language is decided - English. Puerto Rico also won't have a language forced on it because of that.

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

It works just fine, thanks all the same. Solely due to our two official languages, I had the opportunity to learn French through elementary and secondary school. It's also part of our culture, from the origins of the country.

Actually - by Quebec and Ontario - It does NOT work very well. There wasn't as many anti-Qebec graffiti on the road signs in Ontario as there was in previos years I've been up there. Trish said that the anti-Quebec feelings have died down a bit. But anyway - no one really speakss french any better in Canada than Americans except for the people in Quebec or right around the edges of it. People take french in Canada - just like they take it here - but the majority of Candanians don't have an oppurtunity of using it at all.

So - to put it bluntly - no - I don't think that the bilingual situation has worked out very well for you guys. Quebec thinks of themselves as being seperate from the rest of Canada and would still like to seperate (although the feeling seems to be less strong now). The less anti-Candadian feelings in Quebec might have to do with the fact that the last PM was a Quebecois.

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

Actually - by Quebec and Ontario - It does NOT work very well. There wasn't as many anti-Qebec graffiti on the road signs in Ontario as there was in previos years I've been up there. Trish said that the anti-Quebec feelings have died down a bit. But anyway - no one really speakss french any better in Canada than Americans except for the people in Quebec or right around the edges of it. People take french in Canada - just like they take it here - but the majority of Candanians don't have an oppurtunity of using it at all.

I doubt the French Immersion program would have existed in BC (a distinctly non-French province) if it weren't for our two-language history. Though I have less chance to use it now, my vocabulary is decent, and I am still fluent.

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

So - to put it bluntly - no - I don't think that the bilingual situation has worked out very well for you guys. Quebec thinks of themselves as being seperate from the rest of Canada and would still like to seperate (although the feeling seems to be less strong now). The less anti-Candadian feelings in Quebec might have to do with the fact that the last PM was a Quebecois.

I think Jean Chrétien might have been part of the solution (though that funding scandal who's name escapes me was responsible for some bad feeling). I think the new immigrants into Québec, who aren't part of the separatist history, have helped the most.

I know it's not a perfect system (I just wasn't going into details before), but it's part of our history. What else would we do - tell Québec not to speak French? There still is quite a feeling of wanting to preserve their language and by extension, culture. If we did away with official languages (which ensures the protection of the language), Québec would be pretty mad about it, even though there is less of an anti-Canadian feeling. Quite a bit less actually.

I can understand them wanting to preserve the language, though I think some of the language laws go too far.

Before I wasn't going to get into it, but this is as good a thread as any to talk about it, and this is very interesting too.

Perhaps it's part of American history to not have an official language, as it's part of Canada to have two.

Also, technically Québec does not want to separate anymore, because less than the majority of the population wants to now.

There are a lot of cultural aspects that I don't understand as a western Canadian, and someone who hasn't actually been east of Alberta. But I think I have a decent picture of it. There are many positive aspects to dual-lingualism in our country, and without it, the problems that exist wouldn't go away.

[Nurvingiel]

By the way, people other than JD and I are allowed to join the current discussion.

[Earniel]

I couldn't resist splitting the posts into a new thread.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I know it's not a perfect system (I just wasn't going into details before), but it's part of our history.

Coming from a country that has three (!) national languages, I hear you. Having been created as a bit of patchwork-nation, Belgium still carries the inheritage of 3 national languages: Flemish, French and German. It's indeed not a perfect system - you don't even want to go into the different laws that hold the equitity of the three languages in place! But it's part of our history, and our future as well because I don't think there is a way we can ever switch to one language. Apart from creating our own esperanto-like language, that is.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

i can see it both ways, in uk we only have english, whilst in ireland it is gaelic and english. i am only fluent in english, tho would like to learn more gaelic than pogue mahone

kiss my a**

, but i dont see whether there would be any fuss. surely i would have thought that americas official language was english, as IIUC, more people speak english as a first language than any others. [EDIT]in the united states[/EDIT]

[Nurvingiel]

Nice split Eärniel. I was a bit surprised... "I didn't start that thread..."

You could combine them into one super language called Gerlemmian. Heh.


I don't think English is the most common first language. Friendly bet that Chinese is. Unless you mean in the UK.[EDIT]Oh.[/EDIT]

Speaking of the UK, how does it work with Wales? They are their own nation, but they're part of the United Kingdom. The reason I bring it up is Wales and English are both national languages - whether they are officially protected I'm not sure. Care to shed some light on that Chrys?

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

because wales has a devolved gov't,
welsh is an official language within the principality
although the same doesn't apply to scotland, for some reason,
although fewer and fewer people speak scotch gaelic than they formerly did

[Hemel]

Welsh is a protected and promoted language, and even over here in England there's quite a bit of documenation from the government that will include translations in Welsh (along with other languages, like Urdu!) We have a surprising number of indigenous languages over here - many come under the linguistic category of 'Celtic'. Cornish is now too a protected and promoted language - that happened in 2002, and although there aren't that many fluent speakers yet (in terms of the population of Cornwall) and there's a debate on which version is 'best', it's already possible to see signs using Cornish. Which I think is

[sun-star]

I think it's too

To add to the above, this promotion includes the teaching of the Welsh language in Welsh schools. According to my Welsh friend, this means that the younger generation now speak more Welsh than their parents and older relatives do, especially if their families weren't originally from Wales (she finds this useful for discussing secrets with her friends in front of her family...). All signs have to be in Welsh as well as English. Even my NUS* card has more Welsh than English on it!


*National Union of Students

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by sun-star

I think it's too

To add to the above, this promotion includes the teaching of the Welsh language in Welsh schools. According to my Welsh friend, this means that the younger generation now speak more Welsh than their parents and older relatives do, especially if their families weren't originally from Wales (she finds this useful for discussing secrets with her friends in front of her family...). All signs have to be in Welsh as well as English. Even my NUS* card has more Welsh than English on it!


*National Union of Students

and my nus card

[Nurvingiel]

That totally rocks! I absolutely love Welsh, I even know a few words, and can pronounce the elusive "ll".

How different are the different versions of Cornish? What does it mean for a language to be protected, and which ones are besides Welsh? I was on a train that terminated in Cardiff and the signs were in English and Welsh.

It is .

[Elemmírë]

So Welsh is still fairly common! That's good to know. I started trying to learn it last year. Really hard, but I liked it a lot. Now I can go continue.

I wish that the US had a two national languages, but that's mostly because of the way language is taught here. In my hometown you don't start learning a second language until 7th grade. From what I've heard so far, that's pretty common. It's the attitude that no other language counts, I suppose.

People in high school found my obsession rather weird.

[Embladyne]

I really wish that each elementary school would just choose a language other than English to teach the children, and teach it. I wasn't able to take a foreign language until 9th grade (even thought the option starts in 6th) because I was in Orchestra, and didn't have the extra elective to use for a language.
This was in washington..(the state)

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

That totally rocks! I absolutely love Welsh, I even know a few words, and can pronounce the elusive "ll".

How different are the different versions of Cornish? What does it mean for a language to be protected, and which ones are besides Welsh? I was on a train that terminated in Cardiff and the signs were in English and Welsh.

It is .

a protected language is a native language that is seen to have gone into a decline, or summat, and the gov't tries to revive examples are
cornish
manx
welsh
gaelic (scots)
gaelic (irish)

[Elemmírë]

All I can say in Scots Gaelic is "Ciamar a tha thu"

And I'm only sure about the spelling of three of those words.

[Nurvingiel]

What about Scots, the Scottish language that developed from Middle English?
Robert Burns wrote in Scots... "O wad some pow'r, the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us..." (I think I misspelt some of that.)

Cornish is very cool too. I used to know one word, but I forgot it. It was the name of a racing boat, meaning "black rocks" I think.

Foreign languages are much easier to learn and way more fun when you start at a young age. The kids who started French Immersion at 5 tended to like French in high school a lot more than the kids who could only start in grade 7 or 8 (age 12-13). You were required to take at least two years of another language I think. For a while our school also offered the language of the local native people. That's another interesting agea - there must be 100s of different languages in British Columbia. There were 7 different language families, which is a big deal.

Finnish, German, Russian, and French are all in the same language family (Indo-European, it's huge), and they are all very, VERY different from each other.

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

What about Scots, the Scottish language that developed from Middle English?
Robert Burns wrote in Scots... "O wad some pow'r, the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us..." (I think I misspelt some of that.)

Scots is not a separate language, it's a dialect of English. I don't know how far two languages have to deviate before they become separate languages... but dialects can be quite far from standard English while still being 'English'. Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish, on the other hand, are indigenous languages, much older and further from Modern English than Burns' Scots dialect.

Canada has 7 language families?

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by sun-star

Canada has 7 language families?

Not exactly, anymore. The native languages of British Columbia fell into 7 different families, but most are no longer spoken.

[Hemel]

Originally Posted by Elemmere

So Welsh is still fairly common!

Yes, it would seem so. I've heard it a lot when I've been in Wales

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

How different are the different versions of Cornish? What does it mean for a language to be protected, and which ones are besides Welsh?

There's Unified Revised, Common, and Modern/Trad - and I have a feeling there might be variations too. Unified Revised and Common are the ones most used ... speakers of different versions can understand each other, even though when written the versions in some cases can look wildly different.

Being protected means it's recognised under a European charter, and must be protected from extinction, and there's some funding now for its promotion too. There're some five or six languages protected this particular way - I'm not sure about Manx, although it is used as an official language, alongside English, on the Isle of Man