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A French America
>>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?
""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.
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.
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.
Great so we got to compare colonies with colonies. Is this some form of European way of pride?
>>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.
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.
<<...source of sources of the Kingdom>>
Shit, well I basically mean that the Spaniards couldn't get enough gold or money... lol
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.
"How many Vancouvers are there?"
There's also a Vancouver in Oregon. And a West vancouver in New Zealand.
On the subject of New France versus the British colonies of North America, it was a numbers game: the French (for a variety of reasons) were never able to match the numbers of colonists in their territories with those of the British.
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