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Other World Languages II
<< Quebec is sparsely populated, only a small fraction of the total area is suitable for more or less comfortable human settlement. On the other hand it's not a complete Francophone province, in Montreal the English speakers represent a dinamic community. If French is important in Americas only because there is a mere 6 million speakers community in the Quebec then Spanish is important in Asia because there are 3 millions of speakers in Philippines and now it is compulsory in schools. French on the other hand is not studied by all the Canadians. >>
What do you mean that French is not studied by non-French Canadians? Yes, Anglophone Candians are becoming more and more fluent in French as the Franco-Canadians assert its right in that country.
Aside from Quebec, French is dominant in Northern Ontario, Labrador, Northern and Eastern New Brunswick, and Northern Prairie Provinces.
Thepopulation of Quebec is not 6 million but 7.8 million for your information.
And what do you mean that Spanish is now compulsory in the Philippine schools? The truth is schools in the Philippines added extra subjects in their curriculum and that is foreign languages which students can choose one important language and French, Japanese, Italian, German, and Spanish are the most popular in that order.
Spanish in the Philippines is not that important compared to French in Vietnam.
That is not right. You can read a French Canadian webpage to read the situation of several countries. It is interesting.
Philippines:
According to the President of Philippines, Corazon Aquino, Spanish will be again compulsory at school this year. The situation of Spanish in this country is not so bad.
Les écoles primaires et secondaires pratiquent l’éducation bilingue (si chère aux Américains!): l’enseignement est donc dispensé à la fois en anglais et en filipino. L’enseignement de l’espagnol comme langue seconde est toujours facultatif dans les écoles publiques; il peut être obligatoire dans les écoles privées et il est réservé à une certaine élite.
Enfin, la plupart des universités, l’anglais assure encore sa dominance bien que l’enseignement puisse se dérouler en filipino, voire en espagnol (particulièrement dans les universités détenues par l’Église catholique). N’oublions pas que l’Église contrôle encore plus d’une centaine d’universités aux Philippines, ce qui n’est pas peu.
http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/AXL/asie/philip.htm
Vietnam:
The situation of French in Vietnam is very bad, spoken by 100,000 old people in all the country.
Le français et l’anglais constituent au Vietnam des vestiges de la période coloniale imposée d’abord par la France, puis perpétuée par les États-Unis. La langue française est aujourd’hui parlée comme langue seconde par quelque 100 000 personnes, essentiellement des personnes âgées qui ont connu la période coloniale française.
http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/AXL/asie/vietnam.htm
Canada:
The situation of French in English Canada is not very good. Only 9% of English speakers study French.
Le bilinguisme selon la langue maternelle
Statistique Canada révèle que le taux de bilinguisme est plus élevé chez les francophones que chez les anglophones et les allophones. À l'échelon national, 43,4 % des francophones ont déclaré être bilingues, par comparaison à 11,8 % des allophones et 9,0 % des anglophones.
http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/AXL/amnord/cnddemo.htm
<<The situation of French in English Canada is not very good. Only 9% of English speakers study French.>>
That's pretty hard to believe -- what 2nd language do the other 91% of the English Speakers study in up there in Canada?
They can study a basic French and they forget it very fast. Only 9% of English Canadians are really bilingual, according to this webpage.
Even in Quebec English is becoming strong, at least in big citties like Montreal. I think that a small French speaking community can't be compared to 320 millions of English speakers and thus French is not relevant in North America. They will end up absorbed by the impressively bigger English speaking community. Look for example at Celine Dion, she didn't speak a word of English when she started singing , and now it's her working language , she even lives in Las Vegas. This is the path all the Quebequers will follow, to speak English more and more and to leave French . I don't want to sound biased against the French language, but this is the process I think will take place.
A side note about Philippines, the current President is Gloria Arroyo, not Cory Aquino, the latter was a former, corrupt president who did nothing in favour of Spanish but to the contrary. It's Gloria who is trying to reintroduce Spanish. She is a member of the Spanish Academia in Philippines and thus she speaks Spanish nicely.
Sometimes, numbers can be very interesting. That depends on how you see them.
According to wikipedia's info., Quebec's population is simply only "slightly" larger than that of my city (nearly 7m). Some of us are worried about the status of Cantonese some time (??) later, but for the time being, the city is still the (only) stronghold of the language, and people aren't going to give it up very soon (hopefully).
But you see, north of the city are 1.3 billion (and probably even more) people with lots of languages but only one national language. We have to learn it, but the 1.3 billion aren't going to eliminate the stronghold here.
I don't know Quebec, but *if* it is in any way significant in the country, then I *believe* its own language won't, likewise, be given up *very soon*.
That is my wild guess only, but that's how I see it. In this age, well, *hopefully*, uprooting a language (or, *mildly*, to say it may be in decline) could be as difficult as reviving one, esp. for a fairly popular one.
Whast is your city Xie? I guess that 7millions for a Chinese city is quite normal.
Stop using Xie's name. It's the habit of hispanic of using other people's name to sabotage. Anyway, even if there are 320 million anglophones in NorthAm, French will remain stgrong and will absorb lots of anglophones and hispanophones living within it's borders including the Cantonese speakers. In fact there are large number of writers in French who are first generation cheinese who completely turned their bacjk on the Chinese language and culture and embrace French. That's remarkable for 10 million French speaking people in Canada and another 2 1/5 million more in the US sorounded by a sea of anglophones.
The situation of Spanish in the Philippines is very bad. In fact French is now the most popular foreign language. I was invited to attend a seminar attended by people from different nationalities. The interpreter for French speakers were Filipinos but fro the Spanish speakers came all the way from Spain and Latin America. What a pity. The Spanish will never beecome mandatory in the Philippine schools. It's just a hearsay. The philippine president will not allow a huge sum of money to be wasted for a language that has long been rejected by the Filipino people.
Well, as for Vietnam, the people there were so sorry that the French language was discarded but they're now happy that it's compulsory. They realized that the situation is still the same when the people learned English instead in French.
If you want a proof, go to the Yahoo Messenger French Language Room and you'll find out that there are substantial number of young Vietnamese who speak fluent French and there also Chinese, Indians, japoanese, Filipinos, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, and other Lationos. If you're in doubt, ask them to invite you to view them and use headset to talk to them in French. DON'T USE ENGLISH BECAUSE THEY WON'T REPLY TO YOU.
On the other hand, if you go to the Spanish Lnaguage Room, all you can find there are Spaniards and Latin Americans. There were not even Filipinos there and no Brazilians, Portuguese, or Italians. Americans, let me see.... Oh yes second generation hispanic americans who could not even understand a single Spanish word.
BTW, those webpages that you posted are just bloggs written by a hispanic like you and you can never make me believe. They're all craps.
Imagine, Mauritius. it ceased to be a French possession since the fall of Napoleon and the Brits took over it but at present French is fast becoming the first language of the Creoles due to decreolization. In addition Indians and Chinese prefer French over English.
If you compare the situation in the Philippines, it was a Spanish possession for more than 300 years and Spanish was no longer widely spoken early in the 20th century and to think that radios and televisions were already invented during that time so there was no reason for Sapnish sepakers in that country to be isolated. What a oity and a humiliation for people who carry Spanish surnames. Same case for Guam and Marianas Islands.
China says "ni hao" to copper-rich Chile By Pav Jordan
VINA DEL MAR, Chile (Reuters) - Xiao Qiong, 28, stares intently at a group of Chilean teenagers, smiles and says with conviction: "Ni hao!"
The disheveled boys and girls in front of her post exaggerated grins and reply in raucous but near-perfect unison, "Ni hao," Mandarin for "hello."
The Beijing native, petite by comparison with many of her students, is the advance guard in China's patient push for access to South America's mineral resources.
The Mandarin classes were written into a free trade accord signed between Chile and China in 2006. While China has its eye on Chilean copper, for Chile the accord is a chance to become Latin America's gateway to the Asia-Pacific region.
Luna (Moon), as she calls herself in Spanish, uses song, dance and romantic tales of Chinese youth to help motivate her students at the Liceo Jose Vergara, a rough-edged public school in the shanty-clad cliffs that fringe the wealthy Pacific resort of Vina del March
"Chilean children are very free, but very lovely and very friendly," Luna, said outside the school.
China says "ni hao" to copper-rich Chile By Pav Jordan
VINA DEL MAR, Chile (Reuters) - Xiao Qiong, 28, stares intently at a group of Chilean teenagers, smiles and says with conviction: "Ni hao!"
The disheveled boys and girls in front of her post exaggerated grins and reply in raucous but near-perfect unison, "Ni hao," Mandarin for "hello."
The Beijing native, petite by comparison with many of her students, is the advance guard in China's patient push for access to South America's mineral resources.
The Mandarin classes were written into a free trade accord signed between Chile and China in 2006. While China has its eye on Chilean copper, for Chile the accord is a chance to become Latin America's gateway to the Asia-Pacific region.
Luna (Moon), as she calls herself in Spanish, uses song, dance and romantic tales of Chinese youth to help motivate her students at the Liceo Jose Vergara, a rough-edged public school in the shanty-clad cliffs that fringe the wealthy Pacific resort of Vina del March
"Chilean children are very free, but very lovely and very friendly," Luna, said outside the school.
http://www.enn.com/business/article/28466
Unfortunately, finding news stories is not a good sign, because people write news storys on things which are rare and unheard of. So learning Chinese is more a noevlty than a common thing.
OMG this thread is hilarious. First off, who really gives a s*** how well French is doing in Vietnam or French, Spanish in the Philippines? English is the dominate foreign language in both those countries, official in the Philippines.
And to Guest that has writes about French in yahoo chat, as he has many times before, yeah yeah we all know that French is the most popular foreign language overall after English. So it's no suprise that the French room is diverse.
Someone said the Chinese and Indians prefer French to English. Really??? Where did you get that idea from? Granted that none of us should presume what an individual would prefer, but if you look act facts like Enlish being offical in India and the majority of Indian and Chinese schools teaching English, it's pretty obvious which one is more prefered.
I went to Shanghai and Beijing last year and every single person that approached me (some just to have a friendly talk and some to sell crap) used English.
Last, someone said something about second generation hispanics in the U.S. not speaking Spanish. Okay, some may not but I don't know if a chat room is good source to go by if you are going to be critical of such a large demographic. Because in my experience, of the second generation hispanics that I personally know, most speak spanish fluently or at least advanced and very few speak little or none. And I'm from Minnesota, far from the south where Spanish has a stronger presence.
* but if you look at the facts...
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