The Decline of English in Quebec

Scheffer   Thu Dec 03, 2009 10:52 pm GMT
From 1971 to 2001, Quebec’s anglophone population – defined as those who speak primarily English in the home, no matter their ethnic background or mother tongue – declined by 15.9 per cent, from 887,875 to 746,890. During these same 30 years, Quebec’s population rose by 18.2 per cent and Canada’s 39.1 per cent.

But after 35 years of uninterrupted population decline, the latest census data made public in December 2007 showed a 5.5-per-cent increase in the anglophone community from 2001 to 2006. It was the first census-to-census, five-year growth in the English-speaking community since 1971. Overall, the number of anglos who came to Quebec from other provinces and countries, or who were born here between 2001 and 2006, exceeded the number who left, or who died during these same five years.

Richard Bourhis, a professor of psychology at the Université du Québec à Montréal who has studied the anglophone community closely, says the low cost of living in Montreal has been an important driver of new anglo population growth.

Bourhis isn’t the only demographer who has noticed that the 2006 census showed most of the anglo population growth was concentrated in the age 15 to 24 category. Bourhis says this suggests to him that a lot of young anglos from the rest of Canada have been migrating to Montreal to attend school or just have a good time – sort of like Canadian backpackers going to Europe a generation ago. For some out-of-province students, the cost of university tuition in Quebec is now cheaper than it is in their home provinces. For example, tuition this year is $6,155 at the University of New Brunswick, versus fees of $5,378 that Quebec charges its own out-of-province students (compared with $1,868 for Quebec residents). Many kids from small-town Canada who leave home to go to university have discovered that the cost of off-campus housing and public transit in Montreal are a bargain by Canadian standards. Bourhis says tuition, rent control and heavy taxpayer subsidization of transit have combined to create winning conditions for an influx of young anglos. For young Americans facing even more onerous tuition fees at home, the financial allures of Montreal are that much greater.

In 2001, one of these young Americans who drifted up to Montreal was a 21-year-old man from Houston, Tex., named Win Butler, who came up through a Boston prep school to study religion at McGill University. A musician, he created a new band, called Arcade Fire, with a Concordia student from Toronto, and other anglo migrants from Ottawa, Guelph and Vancouver. They were joined in the band by a francophone woman of Haitian origin from the Montreal suburbs. Butler ended up marrying that woman, Régine Chassagne. Today, Arcade Fire is an international sensation. And with other new English-language indie bands like The Dears and The Stills, they have become symbols of a radically new anglo chic.

It all came to a sociological climax in February of 2005, when Spin magazine, and then the New York Times, anointed Montreal the next big thing in music, the new Seattle. For anyone who remembers the acute morosity in the English-speaking community after the 1995 referendum, the proposition that Montreal would soon have international resonance because of its English cultural vibrancy would have been preposterous.

But Montreal’s essence is still undeniably French, not to mention alluring for anyone who grew up admiring the city from a distance. Tamera Burnett, 22, a third-year McGill University political-science student from Kamloops, B.C., came to Montreal thinking it was a very special place. She first came to Quebec when she was 16, to study French in Jonquière. She’s continuing to improve her French today at McGill, and hopes to study law in Montreal or at the bilingual University of Ottawa. “I’d love to end up in Montreal,” she says.

Robert Donnelly, president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, the main umbrella group for all the anglophone community organizations in Quebec, says the census results need to be interpreted with caution.

In almost every region of Quebec outside of Montreal, says Donnelly, anglophone populations are continuing to shrink – and shrink fast. Without strong government financial and moral support, he says, English schools, old-age homes, community newspapers and health services in the regions will be severely threatened.

“While the numbers are up overall, they mask serious declines outside of Montreal,” says Donnelly, a native of Quebec City, which has a 2 per cent anglo population, down from 40 per cent a century ago.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/story_print.html?id=1231646&sponsor=
Baldewin   Thu Dec 03, 2009 10:57 pm GMT
Bismarck's law says Romance language eat up Germanic language, while Germanic languages eat up Slavic ones. I always saw English as the exception. Moreover, I have always been skeptic toward this claim.
Anyway, French is at home in Quebec, so it's to be expected the francophones over there stand on their language, their culture.
Baldewin   Thu Dec 03, 2009 10:59 pm GMT
Also, foreigners associate Quebec as francophonic.
Homer   Thu Dec 03, 2009 11:18 pm GMT
"Bismarck's law says Romance language eat up Germanic language, while Germanic languages eat up Slavic ones."

That is interesting.

In the top ten languages there are 3 Romance (Spanish, Portuguese and French), 1 Germanic (English) and 1 Slavic (Russian).


Well, the borders are in USA-Mexico, English Canada-Quebec, Belgium, and Switzerland for Romance-Germanic languages.

The borders for Germanic-Slavic languages is in Germany-Poland, Baltic countries, Czech republic, etc

On the whole, I think that it is true.
meus   Fri Dec 04, 2009 7:27 am GMT
English is only chance for Quebecois to be known abroad . Celine Dion became famous pop star,when begin to sing in English. The same is with Garou -his last album is in English.
PARISIEN   Fri Dec 04, 2009 9:43 am GMT
@Baldewin

Qu'est cette 'loi de Bismarck'? Jamais je n'en ai entendu parler.

Wat it deze 'Bismarckse wet'? I heb nooit daarvan gehoord.
meus   Fri Dec 04, 2009 10:14 am GMT
<<Wat it deze 'Bismarckse wet'? I heb nooit daarvan gehoord. >>
Correct:''Wat is deze 'Bismarckse wet'? Ik heb nooit daarvan gehoord.''
Baldewin   Fri Dec 04, 2009 3:12 pm GMT
Het blijkt een uitgevonden wet te zijn. Ik iemand die vaagjes zien vermelden, maar het blijkt gewoon een satirisch hersenspinsel te zijn.

Il semble qu'il soit une loi inventée. Je l'en ai vu quelqu'un faire une mention, mais il apparaît d'être une fiction satirique.

De bron/La source: http://lvb.net/item/6193 en tevens een forum waar ik het gelezen heb/et aussi un forum où j'ai lu ça.
PARISIEN   Fri Dec 04, 2009 4:41 pm GMT
<< De Wet van Bismarck-von Bülow, geformuleerd door Philippe Schepens aka Fustigator, en te gebruiken in discussies over taalgrenzen, faciliteiten, randgemeenten en dergelijke:
Als een Germaanse taal in vrije concurentie is met een Slavische taal, heeft de Germaanse taal neiging tot overheersen op de Slavische. Maar als een Germaanse taal in vrije concurrentie is met een Romaanse taal, is het de Romaanse taal die neiging tot overheersing heeft. >>
http://lvb.net/item/6193

Loi humoristique ?
En tout cas, dans le Reich allemand des années 1880, elle exprimait une réalité. Alors qu'à l'Est (Posnanie, Silésie, Poméranie) les Slaves se laissaient massivement germaniser, Bismarck et von Bülow ont dû noter que les minorités francophones de l'Ouest (Alsace, Metz, Malmedy), même bilingues, restaient prioritairement francophones.

Loi vérifiée avec Dunkerque, Steenvoorde, Mouscron, Clabecq, Waterloo etc. et Bruxelles, mais pas en Suisse.

On ignore souvent qu'au début du Moyen-Age, la moitié de la Suisse parlait français (ou franco-provençal). Il y a eu historiquement 3 "poussées alémanniques":
- aux 6e-8e siècles,
- entre le 11e et le 13e siècle,
- et au 18e siècle.

Vers 1800, alphabétisation et scolarisation de masse ont stabilisé les limites linguistiques en Suisse, du moins à l'Ouest, car la progression alémannique continue de nos jours dans les Grisons, aux dépens des parlers romanches.

Peut-être que le domaine alémannique dispose d'un dynamisme spécifique ? Jusqu'en 1918, l'aire frontalière francophone dans le Sud de l'Alsace n'a fait que reculer.

http://membres.lycos.fr/mijura/alamans.jpg
PARISIEN   Fri Dec 04, 2009 4:47 pm GMT
Nena   Fri Dec 04, 2009 5:11 pm GMT
Neunundneunzig Luftballons auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
hielt man fuer UFOs aus dem All, darum schickte ein Gerneral
eine Fliegerstaffel hinterher, Alarm zu geben wenn es so waer
dabei waren da am Horizont nur neunundneunzig Luftballons...

De peur que nous n'oubliions
Baldewin   Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:17 pm GMT
I think that it has got to do with the fact that French Flemings consider '(West) Flemish' as their language, and not Dutch (even though it actually IS Dutch). Anyway, the best way to insult a Dutch-speaking Belgian, nowadays known as Flemings (modern meaning), is by degrading his language to 'Flemish', despite the fact some Flemings still call their language 'Flemish' out of sheer ignorance of their history.

Alsacers, while proud of the Allemanic dialect, consider their language to be part of German. One of the earliest literature in German was printed in Strasbourg, as far as I recall.
I think that why Alsatian is having a revival in France, and Dutch/West Flemish isn't.

A factor which plays a role in Belgium is propaganda: I too have been raised with the thought that a good Belgian needs to know French and that francophone be incapable of learning Dutch (because of their accent en because of the Germanic vocabulary and word order). Some low class people still believe this.
On the francophone side they tell/told them we only know to speak incoherent dialect and that we cannot speak Dutch, that's why learning Dutch is effordless. Some are even raised with the idea that we speak Flemish (and not Dutch!), that why many people (even on Antimoon) think they are being respectful calling our language 'Flemish', while it's historically actually an insult.

These propagandic but transparant lies, that ironically are swallowed by the masses, are slowly disappearing, but they play a major role in the linguistic strife in Belgium and the childish behaviour of many.
Guest   Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:25 pm GMT
Who cares.
Baldewin   Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:29 pm GMT
Cajun French is still very alive in Louisiana, but that you also find boring I think...
On this topic linguistic relations between Romance and Germanic groups has attracted the interest of some. The only thing we are trying to answer is the why.
blanchette   Fri Dec 04, 2009 6:53 pm GMT
<<Who cares. >>

I cares.