February 02, 2004

• Only about 16% of Canadians are bilingual, and of those not everyone would speak both French and English - most of the blingual Canadians I know are immigrants (or were born to immigrant parents) and speak their native language plus English. I speak only a little French myself. I don't know whether that's better or worse than the American statistic, but I'm quite sure that's pretty poor show in comparison to European standards. It does remind me of a joke told to me by a French-Canadian professor of mine: If you speak two languages, you're bilingual. If you speak three languages, you're trilingual. And what are you if you speak just one language? English. I don't think that anyone will be particularly "irked" about this shortage. It's so rare for anyone to speak French and Afghan, and those who do probably have better options than working in a combat zone for $12/hour. It's not a deliberate political maneuvre on the part of the Canadian Army, just an inconvenient reality.
• Aha, thanks Orange Swan...I knew some monkey would know some stats central to the story. BTW, now that I think about it, I'm the only one in my family who doesn't speak any French... /-:
• Orange Swan, I've heard that joke before with "Americans" as the punchline. After watching the Band of Brothers series recently, I'd never work as the darn tea lady in a war, let alone be the poor translator.
• Official biligualism doesn't mean people speak two languages, it means that we have the right to access to federal government services in either language. But I don't think actual biligualism is any higher than in the US, and as Orange Swan said, most bilingualism is English or French and a third language. Canadian language statistics: knowledge of official languages, and population by mother tongue. As any English Canadian can tell you, grade school French as a second language instruction (outside of the few immersion programs available) is terrible. Biligualism has increased, but we've a long way to go. Most of our parents know absolutely no French, since it was only introduced into schools sometime in the 70s or 80s, and in my Ontario school we only had 30 minutes every other day from age 8 to 14 (after which it is optional, and often dropped). All I remember are the boring workbooks, and forgetting everything I learned during the summer vacation. I know that a lot of the urban school boards like Toronto or Vancouver are more worried about teaching English as a second language, but until we change our entire approach to French instruction, bilingualism will remain an ideal rather than a reality. French-English biligualism is also very concentrated geographically (slow load, comes eventually) to those places that have traditionally had both French and English communities, like Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick or southern Quebec. Quebec also seems to have done a better job of integrating biligualism in to public education, which is why so many important politicians and military leaders are Quebequois (and power to them). But it's not just anglophone Canada - it's the whole lot of us anglophones (though I'm impressed with how many anglophone Americans know Spanish, especially those from the southwest). But generally, we don't make foreign languages as high a priority as the rest of the world, and I think we will suffer for it. I don't really know the solution - I don't understand how some other countries, especially in Scandinavia, seem to be so sucessful in teaching foreign languages. I don't know if its the lack of urgency, or maybe we're just not as bright. Does anyone have statistics for biligualism in other anglophone countries? (I looked, but the US doesn't seem to have a department as easily googlable as Statistics Canada). Though, for the linguistically inclined, I'd like to point out that official biligualism, while failing to achieve actual biligualism, has introduced all sorts of little changes into Canadian English, such as the word order in the names of government departments like "Statistics Canada" and "Health Canada/Sante Canada," as well as the very useful terms "francaphone," "anglophone" and "allophone." I especially like the latter; you can use them to refer to people by their language group without talking about their nationality (which gets very confusing when talking about Americans and Canadians and English, etc, who are all anglophones, but otherwise utterly unalike)
• Sorry - Orange Swan said some of the biligualism is Official language and Non-official language, not most. But I'm from Toronto, so it's an easy mistake to make, as it's suposed to be one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Being in the U.S. is strange - Americans often think of Canada as very whitebread, because it has fewer visible minorities over all. But here the cities seem to be just split up between several large groups, especially white, black and hispanic, not the rainbow of nationalities I'm used to.
• jb, you can see some numbers for New Zealand; summary: we're low, with only around 11% of locals having a second language.
• $12/hour? $12/month! Afghanis to Quebe
• I don't know if its the lack of urgency, or maybe we're just not as bright You don't have to be bright if you're exposed to the right linguistic environment. I've met plenty of people who had three, four, even five languages who were not especially bright, nor even more than moderately curious. That said, go learn a language! Monoglots miss out on whole worlds.
• People with many languages often don't understand how difficult it is for the unilingual to learn a second language, especially after puberty, when all our special language-learning machinary shuts down. The more languages you know, the easier it becomes to learn more. If you grew up speaking only one language, it can be extremely difficult to pick up a second language later in life. In my case I am now being asked to learn Russian and my university is giving me no support asside from some books for independent study. Add to that some rather severe learning dissabilites (or dyslexia, if you prefer) and I'm having a really tough time of it. Overall, I'm inclined to be a little bitter when people imply that my inability to speak a language other than English must mean I'm not curious about or interested in the rest of the world.
• It was more of a cheerleader-style "anyone can do it and I encourage you to give it a go" kind of post than any implication of lack of curiosity, general wetness, mental weakness, nyah nyah etc. That said, handing you a pile of books and expecting you to put a whole language together yourself is complete pants. Is there no course they offer that will teach you merely to read the language for research purposes? Because if you really have to learn it, you'll find something like this an immense timesaver, even if you have to go elsewhere to do it. And if this is a requirement of your program, I would suggest that the university has some sort of obligation to pony up for this.
• Oh, no offense taken Wolof. I'm not really reacting against your comments, so much as against the many, many people who've sneeringly commented that you can't -possibly- be a historian without a second language. Sometimes, if they're really rude about it, I ask them whether I could be a historian if I was blind. Occasionally that shuts them up. As for my university.... remember this is the University of Cambridge, which has the organisational cohearance of a crate full of angry pandas. Yes, there is a department in the university that teaches Russian. But they won't teach Russian to anybody who isn't already fluent. There's also a language centre that runs a Russian course, but -that- course gives its priority to scientists and engineers (presumably this is because it was set up so Cambridge people could keep up with recent advances in Soviet science). That means history people have to line up behind mildly curious engineers so that they can study a topic at the very core of their doctoral work. Bottom line: independent study is my only option. It's not an ideal situation. A very kind anonimous informant tells me that there's some people here with considerable Russian expertese. They bid me mention 'languagehat', which, a little research tells me, is a MOFI local with a facinating linguistics blog and a penchant for hats. Well I'm afraid I don't post here all that much, but I -do- always wear a hat, much to the bemusement of the chronically hatless locals. (apparently the porters in my college call me 'the chap with the hat')
• "Blind" - excellent riposte, Dreadnought. I'll have to remember that one. I am married to a woman who shares your learning disability. When she needed a theological language for her graduate program, I convinced her to study Latin, on the theory that it would prove generally useful (unlike, say, theological Spanish or German), uses the alphabet that she already knows (unlike Greek), and might skip the hearing/speaking circuit that I posited might underlie her disability. The results were not heartening: she toiled mightily for many months with a private tutor (and me, drilling her over dinner from the ashes of my junior-high-school Latin), yet after all that time didn't even reach beyond the present perfect active tense. Fortunately, her school (that other Cambridge, on the Charles) was willing to cut her some slack, in the face of her extraordinary effort, demonstrable disability, obvious general intelligence and ability, and the marginal utility of this particular foreign-language requirement. With sufficient time and effort she certainly could have mastered Latin or any other language, but that wasn't what she was there to learn. I don't think that the limitation originates in being unilingual at puberty. I didn't start a foreign language until I was 12, but I still pick them up: not easily, but without heroic effort. (My wife and I complement each other pretty well.) Seems that just about any mainstream European language would be easier than Russian. Good luck to you.
• Seems that just about any mainstream European language would be easier than Russian. Good luck to you. Ah, yes, that's true. Actually I do have a basis in French (although it isn't very strong). However I'm studying the Soviet Navy so it's a bit of a moot point : )
• Soviet navy, hm? So much for my notion to learn Spanish instead.