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"It has also been proposed that if the French had driven the British out of North America entirely, the United States today might even be a country ruled by Indians and speaking one of their languages like Huron or Cherokee."
So a loss by Britain in the short term may have saved the language?
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>>So a loss by Britain in the short term may have saved the language?<<
And just what do you mean by that exactly? That North American English dialects are somehow "incorrect" English?
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It's not clear to me what language Guest is actually refering to.
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Ignore my previous comment, as I misread part of a previous post.
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""Some people think that even if the French had managed to fight the British to a stand still in North America and hold on to Quebec, English would still have eventually replaced French there (say in three or four hundred years) because it was the dominant language of the North American continent being based on the Atlantic seaboard which is strategically more important than the St. Lawrence River Valley where Quebec is located.""
You're dreaming. As long the Quebecker people live, the French language will never disappear from North America.
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Poisson,
I have seen the decline of Canadian French within my lifetime both in Canada and the U.S.. I grew up in a neighborhood near Seattle in the 1950's which had many French Canadian speakers. However French is heard nowhere there today. Don't get me wrong however. I still like the Québécois or French Canadian language and consider it to be just as "North American" as American English, Canadian and Newfoundland English, New Mexican and Mexican Spanish etc.
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Ça ne me semble pas étonnant que le franco-américain de Seattle soit moins bien établi que le franco-américain du Québec ! C'est parce qu'ils sont conscients de cette réalité que les francophones américains du Québec, du Canada ou d'ailleurs n'ont nulle envie de rester les bras croisés. Le processus d'accession du Québec à la souveraineté est à replacer dans ce contexte.
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Greg,
Re: "Ça ne me semble pas étonnant que le franco-américain de Seattle soit moins bien établi que le franco-américain du Québec !"
("It comes as no surprise to me that the Canadian French of Seattle is not as well established as the Canadian French of Quebec!")
La langue française a vraiment une longue tradition dans le Pacific Northwest. Les premiers colons européens dans la Columbia britannique et le territoire d'Oregon (Seattle) étaient des trappeurs en fourrure Franco-Canadiens qui ont travaillé pour la Compagnie de Baie d'Hudson et leurs femmes indiennes. Ces trappeurs voyageaient quelquefois comme le sud lointain comme Utah et Colorado. Beaucoup de leurs descendants vivent toujours ici.
Le jargon de Chinook utilisé par les marchands américains pour communiquer avec les indiens du territoire d'Oregon était une mixture de mots anglais, français et indiens. Il y a toujours beaucoup de noms d'endroit ici du jargon de Chinook et du Canadien- Français comme 'Coupeville' et 'LaPush' (la Bouche) etc.
Malheureusement, l'Amérique devient un pays où de même différents accents et des dialectes d'anglais disparaissent. Vous devez presque être une copie carbone maintenant pour réussir. Chacun dans les Les États-Unis commence à parler "général American" en incluant les Canadiens français. Pourtant il y a toujours environ 20,000 parlants français à Vancouver, Canada et ils ont leur propre station de radio aussi. On l'a dit que "bien qu'ils soient une minorité, ils sont une minorité vocale."
The French language actually has a long tradition in the Pacific Northwest.
The first European settlers in British Columbia and the Oregon territory (Seattle) were French Canadian fur trappers who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company and their Indian wives. These trappers sometimes traveled as far south as Utah and Colorado. Many of their descendants still live here.
The Chinook jargon used by American traders to communicate with the indians of the Oregon Territory was a mixture of English, French and Indian words. There are still many place names here from the Chinook Jargon and Canadian French like 'Coupeville' and 'LaPush' (The Mouth).
Unfortunately, America is becoming a country where even different accents and dialects of English are disappearing. You almost have to be a carbon copy now to succeed. Everyone in the U.S. is beginning to speak "General American" including the French Canadians. However there are still about 20,000 French speakers in Vancouver, Canada and they have their own radio station too. It has been said that "even though they are a minority, they are a vocal minority."
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If the 13 opriginal colonies of the US got their independence from France rather than Britain, then the US would today be a poor country rather than a rich one.
Compare former British colonies (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore) with former French colonies.
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Great so we got to compare colonies with colonies. Is this some form of European way of pride?
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>>Unfortunately, America is becoming a country where even different accents and dialects of English are disappearing. You almost have to be a carbon copy now to succeed. Everyone in the U.S. is beginning to speak "General American" including the French Canadians. However there are still about 20,000 French speakers in Vancouver, Canada and they have their own radio station too. It has been said that "even though they are a minority, they are a vocal minority."<<
The matter is that what you have said above is purely an urban myth. This is shown by how, around the end of WW2, something rather close to "General American" was spoken throughout much of the Midwest (the most northern extremities of it aside) and the West, California included, but today significant dialect differentiation has taken place throughout such. Fewer people actually speak something like the notional "General American" today because their own dialects have since then diverged from the original Midwestern dialects of before WW2. This is shown by a number of new vowel system changes such as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the California Vowel Shift, and broader shifts in vowels before nasal and lenis velar consonants than in many more eastern dialects being present in many dialects along the Pacific coast. I could go on further about this, but I will not because I know you will not listen and actually drop stupid urban legends like the one you are parroting above.
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May I just point out something??
I honestly don't know much about North American history. But I can tell that if there was an Empire big and powerful enough like to take over North America, That would have been the Spanish-Portuguese Kingdom.
At a moment one of the Spanish monarchs had the chance of unify all the Portuguese and Spanish colonies, just by marriying the Portuguese monarch, however he decided to take someone else. Which in turn increased the political problems of Spain, especially with the arrival of the King Charles V of Flandes, who became Carlos I of Spain, who didn't even speak Spanish but German.
Then English pirates would assault lots of Spanish ships containing treasures brought back from The Peru and the Mexico Viceroyalties, which severed the main source of sources of the Kingdom. Hence, the monarchy wasn't able to afford a counter attack when Peru and Mexico stood up and fought for their liberty.
What I'm trying to say is this, if the French had, somehow, managed to stop the English control in the area, The Spanish Empire would have inevitably become more powerful since there would have been no other big power to handicap its actions in South America.
Nowadays, there would be no commonwealth. Maybe the whole of Ireland and Scotland would be separate countries and here in South America, there wouldn't be so many countries here but a big confederation of Spanish-Portuguese speaking countries depending on the power of the Spanish kingdom.
But such a thing would have been unworkable, really.
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<<...source of sources of the Kingdom>>
Shit, well I basically mean that the Spaniards couldn't get enough gold or money...
lol
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Source of REsources, Pete. Very close!
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Brennus : la description du fait francophone dans l'Ouest nord-américain que tu brosses est très intéressante. Cela dit cette région ne s'est pas avérée être un solide foyer de peuplement — au contraire de l'Est nord-américain.
Adam-le-géographe : la principale différence entre les colonies françaises et britanniques est que les premières ont rarement été des déversoirs de populations étrangères aux régions conquises. Même dans le cas de l'Algérie, la population arabo-berbère est fort heureusement restée majoritaire et ce pays a pu reprendre sa destinée en main. Ce n'est malheureusement pas le cas des colonies de peuplement anglo-saxonnes où les populations autochtones ont été soit décimées soit rendues numériquement et/ou politiquement insignifiantes.
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