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Canada9720 Posts
On February 18 2010 12:06 ShaLLoW[baY] wrote: Maybe it's just because I'm speaking from a military perspective, but 99% of the Quebecois I know speak near-perfect English. if you go somewhere outside montreal or quebec city that quickly becomes not the case
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im Quebecois, and most Quebecois speak horrible english although im not sure how this translate in online writing. As far as TL goes, all Quebecois TL users are basically bilingual like pretty much all the educated//internet savvy segment of the non-english-native population outside of asia. So your observation about canadian posters might just be regular anglo-canadians who just dont give a fuck about grammar.
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lol. Well thanks for the info anyway, I'm interested in Canada, always thought I might live there one day.
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I assure you that the Francophone population outnumbers the Cantonese-speaking population in Canada. The Quebecois are treated specially because they are original Canadians, unlike ourselves. Furthermore, French does not suffer from language attrition in Canada, whereas oriental languages do.
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On February 18 2010 12:26 sc4k wrote: lol. Well thanks for the info anyway, I'm interested in Canada, always thought I might live there one day.
Watch out if you wanna come here. Prerequisite number 1 for a visa is to be an amazing hockey player. You gotta be really skilled, fast, and solid in the corners. The simple fact of having a fancy British accent makes this very unlikely but you can still apply. We do have positions opens for professional darts players this year, so that'll increase your chances.
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I'm french canadian and I think my english is fine...
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It's pretty much like intrudor said though, I didn't learn much at school at all, mostly thru video games and chatting/reading online
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lol so we've moved past tea and top hats and now we're onto darts?
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yeah English is terrible here for native French speakers
to give you an idea, I'm completing my last English class till university (in college atm). it's called "advanced business English" and we still have grammar lessons on modals and shit
and people take notes, ask questions and genuinely don't understand it's just sad
btw, just to point it out: french canadians who post on TL.net probably learned from the internetz, so it's partially your fault. <3
at least I know it was the case for me, I wasn't very good before starting games and really learned with WoW. The thing is the way the education is set up, failure is an option and teachers often close their eyes because it's generally a lost cause. For one thing, hardly anybody can really develop their oral skills because they'd actually have to go out of their suburbs to go to Montreal and find decent English speakers. and rule out their parents, they're probably as bad unless they've had to work in an international business (where they were forced to learn a minimum, but that doesn't magically make them bilingual). So basically we're telling kids "english is only useful during the 2-3 hours/week you have in class. maybe watch tv in english? oh wait it's much easier to just watch it in french."
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I'm from the Toronto area and when I visited Montreal and other surrounding cities, I would say that over 90% of everyone I met knew English pretty darn well. Like, here and there, I would hear traces of an accent. Or in some cases I would be in a conversation and the other person would be speaking so fluently but might not understand a couple of common words that are used in English speaking areas. What those words were? I donno, it was 2 years ago lol.
But generally, I felt like I never left Ontario, which kinda sucked because Quebecois can spot tourists from a mile away. Anyway. I think Quebec residents are better in English than a lot of people are giving them credit so far in this thread.
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On February 18 2010 12:23 CTStalker wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2010 12:06 ShaLLoW[baY] wrote: Maybe it's just because I'm speaking from a military perspective, but 99% of the Quebecois I know speak near-perfect English. if you go somewhere outside montreal or quebec city that quickly becomes not the case
Fair enough, most of the people I know are from those areas. I also suppose that the majority of the Quebecois who join the military are going to have some grasp of the English language.
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On February 18 2010 12:19 Mastermind wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2010 11:56 MoltkeWarding wrote:According to Stephen Harper Quebec is a nation. And yes, Canadians in general do not learn European history in school. In school, I was taught Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain, CPR and Metis revolt, War of 1812, Vimy Ridge and D-day, the 1972 hockey series against the USSR and a lot of miscellaneous nonsense. Not very well, not very well at all...
Studied a little bit for a few years but stopped that like 8 years ago, the few times I've been to France though the little I do know has proved useful. What I find amusing are the numbers in the UK row of the EU linguistic survey conducted a few years back. Read it for yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union#Language_skills_of_citizens What? I learned a fair bit of European history in school. I guess we do things differently here in BC.
That is not true; at least there are some history taught on the World Wars.
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Only thing I remember being taught about Europe in HS was how France dropped the ball on us when they lost vs England
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In elementary school or high school? In high school, there was one mandatory history course, and it was Canadian history.
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I'm one of the people who lived in Quebec but never spoke french, so it all depends on the areas you go.
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
You have to take into consideration their spoken english is a lot better than their written english.
My written French is 10x more atrocious than my spoken french.
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On February 18 2010 12:26 MoltkeWarding wrote: I assure you that the Francophone population outnumbers the Cantonese-speaking population in Canada. The Quebecois are treated specially because they are original Canadians, unlike ourselves. Furthermore, French does not suffer from language attrition in Canada, whereas oriental languages do. First nations might want to have a word with you.
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On February 18 2010 12:19 Wr3k wrote: The only thing I am going to say about this, is that it drives me nuts listening to french announcements for stuff like the olympics, and having laws that require French signage. There are more people in Canada who speak Cantonese, yet the Quebecois have to be recognized and treated specially... While I agree with your complaint, the reason french is spoken at the Olympics is because it is one of the three official languages (The second being english, and the third is the native language of the hosting country), NOT because of the Quebecois.
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First nations might want to have a word with you.
As long as they don't call themselves First Canadians, there's no need to argue.
While I agree with your complaint, the reason french is spoken at the Olympics is because it is one of the three official languages
Why do you agree with his complaint then? Do you think that the world should adopt English as its official language?
Further details on language use in the IOC:
1. The official languages of the IOC are French and English. 2. At all Sessions, simultaneous interpretation must be provided into French, English, German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. 3. In the case of divergence between the French and English texts of the Olympic Charter and any other IOC document, the French text shall prevail unless expressly provided otherwise in writing.
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