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Who are growing faster in Canada? Anglophones or Francophone
Who are growing faster in Canada? Anglophones(English speakers) or Francophone(French speakers)?
When new immigrants arrive in Canada, which language would they eventually pick?
From what I've heard from here and in some news articles, it's English. Remember that French is not widely spoken thoughout all of Canada. There are more English speakers and the ol USA is right next store so it seems natural that English would grow faster.
Check page 3 in the "Presence of English in French business" thread. It has a bunch of info and studies about the trends of French.
The number of Chinese speakers is growing faster than that of English and French speakers in Canada.
Check the pages in the "Presence of French in English Education" thread. It has a bunch of info and studies about the trends of English.
Please shiz. Are you trying to imply that French is some threat to English or has any kind of lead over English in this day in age? Keep smokin the ganja.
The English descents' percentage is shrinking in Canada while that of the French is growing slowly. Immigrants particularly from Asia are supplementing the population growth in English Canada. But those immigrants are not totally loyal to English. With the implementation of French immersion in English Canada and its success along with the approval pf th English Canadian parents to enroll their children in it, there's a truth that French is indeed threat to English in Canada.
There is <p><a href="http://theworldwidedeclineoffrench.blogspot.com/">overwhelming evidence</a></p> that most immigrants to Canada choose to learn English rather than French. French fluency is even receding among young Anglophones everywhere in Canada except Quebec, the 2006 census revealed, in spite of the federal government spending huge amounts of money to save French from oblivion throughout the country. French is living on borrowed time.
SPANISH LANGUAGE IS RECEDING IN THE WESTERN HEMIPHERES
Language policy in Spanish-speaking Latin America deals with challenges to the status of Spanish as the official language, a status inherited from the colonial administration of the New World. These challenges come from several sources: the assertion of the rights of indigenous groups, the ‘danger’ of fragmentation of Spanish into a multitude of local dialects, the growing prestige of English and influence of the United States, and along the southern border of Brazil, contact with Portuguese. In the initial phase of colonization, the Catholic Monarchs and later Charles V required all of their new subjects to learn Spanish, just as their predecessors had imposed the learning of Castilian on the conquered Arab territories in order to bind them more closely together in the nation governed by Castile. However, it soon became clear that the linguistic diversity of the New World was too great to allow for the immediate implantation of Spanish, and some allowance had to be made for the usage of indigenous languages in teaching and evangelization. In 1570 Phillip II reluctantly authorized a policy of bilingualism in which instruction could be imparted in ‘the’ language of each Viceroyalty: Nahautl and in New Spain and Quechua in Peru, with the consequent extension of these two languages into territories where they were not spoken natively. Even this measure was not enough, however, and in 1596 Phillip II recognized the existent multilingualism: Spanish for administration and access to the elite, and a local indigenous language for evangelization and daily communication in indigenous communities. This policy lead to a separation of colonial society into a minority of Spanish/creole Spanish-speakers governing an indigenous majority speaking one of many indigenous languages. The separation became so great that it all but halted the Hispanization of rural areas and created local indigenous elites with considerable autonomy from the central adminstration. A reassertion of central authority commenced in 1770 when Carlos III declared Spanish to be the only language of the Empire and ordered the administrative, judicial and ecclesiastic authorities to extinguish all others. After Independence, the new nations and their successors maintained the offical status of Spanish as a means of strengthening national unity and pursuing modernization through education. This tendency was reinforced at the turn of the century through the 1940’s with notions of Social Darwinism, in which the vigorous hybrid groups of Latin America would eventually overcome the ‘weaker’ indigenous groups. It is only since World War II that this policy has suffered any substantial change. Several processes converged in the post-War period to shake the linguistic status quo. One is the growth of industrialization, which requires an educated workforce and thus lends urgency to effective education. Another is agrarian reform, which raises the social status of the farmer while increasing his need for vocational training. These two processes create a growing pressure to learn the language of technology and mechanization, Spanish. As a counterpoint to this pressure, there was an understanding among policy makers of the failure of the pre-War incorporationist policies to acheive their goal of Hispanization. The confluence of these tendencies was a shift towards the usage of indigenous languages in primary schools to ease the transition to Spanish. Moreover, the dynamic of questioning the entire model of development grew, a dynamic that was reinforced by the emergence of indigenous activists educated in the new national schools. These contradictions came to a head during the labor and peasant movements of the 1950’s and 60’s, where calls for the preservation of indigenous languages served as a vehicle for the preservation of entire indigenous societies. The subsequent official response to these movements had diverse outcomes throughout Latin America. In Mexico, the new indigenous consciousness continued to grow unabated, as it did among the Bolivian Aymara and Ecuadorian Quechua, and to a lesser extent among the other Quechua speakers of Bolivia and Peru. Elsewhere, many organizations were driven into marginality or outright armed resistence, with the paradoxical result that often the only officially-tolerated supporters of indigenous languages were foreigners: scholars pursuing linguistic or anthropological fieldwork, linguists trained by the Summer Institute of Linguistics for the translation and dissemination of Christian texts, or members of other non-governmental organizations engaged in aid or relief work. Only recently have indigenous defensors of indigenous languages found any standing on the national stage. This new tolerance has been said to reflect the neo-liberal reforms required as conditions for loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund since the early 1990’s, with the threat of Communist takeover having receeded. There are now a multitude of protective measures that go from bilingual primary education (Honduras), to constitutional protection (Columbia), to the establishment of indigenous languages as co-official with Spanish (Guatemala). With respect to the status of Spanish among native speakers, Independence lead to the creation of national educational institutions and a desire to reform Spanish orthography so as to facilitate its learning by American speakers, as well as to foster a literary tradition independent of Spain. Such reforms come to little in the face of the turbulence created by Independence, but a second round of standardization began as part of the modernization process initiated around 1870. Increasing immigration to Latin America and the strengthening of trends towards democratization lead to the fear among the intellectual elite that the linguistic unity of Latin America would collapse into a cacophomy of local variants, much as the Latin of the Roman Empire fragmented into the variety of Romance languages. The final threat to the official status of Spanish is the growing contact with other European languages: with English throughout Latin America, and with Portuguese along the southern border of Brazil. Contact with English arises through migration to the United States for economic or political reasons or sojourns for business or education. This contact is particularily acute in the case of Puerto Rico, where its adminstrative dependency on the United States has led to an extensive diffusion of English, as well as the threatened imposition of English as the official language should Puerto Rico ever gain statehood. This threat has sparked intellectual debates that echo the Spanish-vs.-indigenous-language debates heard on the mainland: language is an expression of identity, perhaps the fundmental expression of identity, and it should not be given up lightly. Selected references Angel Rama (1996) The Lettered City. Duke University Press. [spelling reform after independence, p. 43ff; foundation of Spanish American Academies, Cuervo, Caro & Bello p. 59ff] Julio Ramos (1989) Desenceuntros de la modernidad en América Latina. Literatura y política en el siglo XIX. Tierra Firme, México. [Ch. II sobre Bello] Julio Ramos (1996) Paradojas de la letra. Ediciones eXcultura, Caracas, Miami, Quito. [Ch. 1 sobre Bello] http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/Pubs/LALangPol.htm
French immersion in Canada 30 years later
French immersion programs were introduced into Canadian schools in the 1970s to encourage bilingualism across the country. Thirty years later, immersion programs provide an alternative education stream for many students. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted in 2000 offers some insights into how well Canadian 15-year-olds enrolled in immersion programs are doing. This feature article looks at the PISA results for reading achievement, comparing French-immersion and non-immersion students in English-language school systems in the ten provinces. The analysis also provides information on the students' family background as one set of factors that may lie behind the high performance of students enrolled in French immersion. Top of page French immersion most popular in the Maritimes Information on French immersion in PISA was provided by parents. Parents were asked if their child was ever enrolled in an English school in a program where 25% or more of the instruction time was in French, such as French immersion. They were then asked in which grades their child was enrolled in a language immersion program. A student was considered currently enrolled in a French immersion program when parents reported that the student was enrolled in an immersion program for their current grade. While French immersion programs exist in English language school systems in all ten provinces, the percentage of 15-year-olds enrolled in these programs ranges widely, from 2% in British Columbia to 32% in New Brunswick (Table 1). Not all French immersion programs are alike. Early immersion programs begin in either Kindergarten or Grade 1; middle immersion programs start midway through elementary school; and still others begin in the later grades. In turn, attendance in immersion varies by the type of program. For example, while only 21% of the students enrolled in French immersion in Nova Scotia in 2000 had been enrolled in immersion before Grade 4, at least 80% of the 15-year-olds enrolled in French immersion programs in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta had started in early immersion programs. More girls enrol in immersion While the proportion of girls and of boys in non-immersion programs is roughly equal in all provinces, girls account for 3 of 5 students in French immersion programs in all provinces except Quebec. Immersion students outperform non-immersion students in reading Students were assessed in the language of their school system; 98% of French immersion students were tested in English. While the percentage of immersion students tested in French was generally very small, most of these cases were in Manitoba, where about one-quarter of French immersion students were tested in French. What accounts for the high performance of French immersion students? One factor may be the over-representation of girls in these programs: PISA results show that, overall, girls tend to outperform boys in reading (average reading score of 551 for girls compared to 519 for boys). However, when the reading results for boys and girls are considered separately, the average performance of French immersion students is still significantly higher, again with the single exception of Manitoba. French immersion students tend to have higher socio-economic status backgrounds Overall, there is a strong relationship between reading achievement and family socio-economic (SES) background. While differences in family socio-economic background contribute to the high reading achievement of students in French immersion programs, the advantage held by French immersion students is not that straightforward. In general, students in French immersion programs tend to come from better off families than non-immersion students. However, in four provinces - Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia - there were no real differences in the average family background of immersion and non-immersion students. Finally, when only students from families in the top socio-economic quartile are compared, the results show that substantial differences remain in many provinces when the achievement of students in immersion and non-immersion programs is compared. The role of self-selection and other possible factors Although further research is needed into factors leading to the higher academic success of French immersion students, in general, parents of immersion students are from higher socio-economic backgrounds and are more likely to have a postsecondary education. Also, a higher proportion of girls enrol in immersion programs; PISA results show that girls outperform boys in reading. However, when gender, socio-economic background and parents’ education are each taken into account, the results show that French immersion students still outperform their counterparts in non-immersion programs. What additional factors might contribute to the high reading performance of French immersion students? It may be that French immersion programs are more readily available in more affluent (for example, urban) communities, where average literacy scores tend to be higher. There is also the question of self-selection. Schools and parents may tend to screen students to ensure their readiness for immersion programs. Students who have less developed language skills may be less likely to enter immersion programs, particularly early immersion. There may also be a tendency for less-skilled students to transfer out of immersion programs if there is a concern about their ability to learn in the second language. It may be the case, as other studies suggest, that French immersion programs assist student learning in other ways, providing an enriched learning environment. A positive peer effect may occur, for example, when students with high potential for achievement are grouped together. Clearly, more research is needed to allow us to fully explain why students in French immersion programs tend to score higher on reading literacy than non-immersion students. That research will continue to explore the role played by socio-economic status and gender, as well as by other factors, such as home environment, the grades in which the students were enrolled in French immersion programs, and school resources. When considered together, factors such as these should provide a better understanding of the achievement of students in French immersion programs. References This article is based on Allen, Mary (2004). “Reading achievement of students in French immersion programs”. Educational Quarterly Review, Volume 9, number 4, pages 25-30. Catalogue 81-003-XIE. http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/81-004-XIE/200406/imm.htm
French relies on the speakers among those whose native language is not French among Anglophones and Allophones thanks to successful French immersion program.
<< More girls enrol in immersion While the proportion of girls and of boys in non-immersion programs is roughly equal in all provinces, girls account for 3 of 5 students in French immersion programs in all provinces except Quebec. >> Good! because when these girls marry, they will pass their French language skills to their children and eventually send them to French Immersion schools. Remember that lots of French speaking Cajuns in Louisiana have Anglo-Saxon surnames because their Anglo ancestor married a Cajun girl and these will happen in Canada too outside Quebec and New Brunswick.
Any language that has to resort to laws and gov't progams in order to ensure its usage is obviously in a desperate situation. Quebec hasn't been in French hands since 1763. They are lucky any French is spoken at all still and shouldn't be surprised at the growth of English there. Most Canadians speak English and most immigrants want to use English. Francophones need to accept the reality for what it is. Over time English will continue to dwarf the the use of French in Canada.
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