Language stats out today
Statistics Canada has released its latest language statistics showing French-English bilingualism is growing in Quebec (not good news for some) while shrinking in the rest of Canada. The Globe and Mail has an aperçu of other languages and their standing, as does the CBC.
Expect a lot of chatter to follow these stats, one way or another. The Gazette tries to pre-empt some panic by subtly sowing the notion that panic is a likely response.
The G+M piece has an arresting lede: “There is a reach diversity of languages spoken in Canada.” English, however, is beginning to look a bit rocky. The Postmedia piece in the Gazette has a sentence reading: “it also bothers him to see the B.C. government spending public money to translate official documents in Asian languages” – a translation of “en” in French which leads to a false implication that the documents started out in Asian languages, but actually should be “into” in English.
Ten minutes later: the “reach” was corrected to “rich”!
Steve Quilliam 09:29 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
This is good news for Montreal and the ”tourisme Montreal” as well as the city should play that card even more so. It is one of the city’s differences (at least in North America) and a definite strenght that to many people see as a weakness, unfortunately.
Let BC and other places fight about languages for a little while. We’ve done our part.
Kevin 10:00 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
Someone really needs to start an ex-pat Quebecers movement in Alberta…
Robert J 14:01 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
Someone needs to emphasize the final point in the CBC article: that regardless of French’s proportional decline in Canada, immigrants are increasingly choosing French and less often choosing English within Quebec. And the total number of French speakers has increased.
It’s a little bit misleading to say that French is declining, because in Quebec it’s on the rise. Quebec’s population is just not growing as fast as the rest of the country: it’s a proportional demographic decline, not a linguistic one.
Jack 12:47 on 2012/10/25 Permalink
“French in decline” is the go too meta narrative for almost all vested parties in this debate, except Andre Pratte ,who is vested somewhere else. In 1867 Quebec had 75% French ethnic origin, can anyone tell me whats changed for the french origin community?