Jul 01, 2009 04:30 AM. Chantal Hébert. MONTREAL
Raising young children in Toronto in the early eighties, we hooked them on Passe-Partout, Télé-Québec’s popular preschool program, and restricted television access to the length of the half-hour daily episodes.
The only language spoken at home was French, and both kids were home-schooled to read in their mother tongue long before they could decipher a word of English. That was part and parcel of bulletproofing our kids for the inevitable day when they ventured into the largely English-speaking Ontario world.
A few years later, a move to Ottawa, a city where French has a greater presence, brought some relaxation to the parental rules, and we mostly let down our guard when Montreal became our home a decade after that.
Mostly, but not completely. In the age of video games and the Internet, raising children who are as competent as they should be in French is a challenge, even in Canada’s French-speaking metropolis.
Rationing English in favour of French paid off. Our adult sons switch effortlessly from one language to the other, and they have to think twice when they are asked whether the movie they are watching or the book they are reading is in French or English.
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Tags: Bilinguism, French
Posted in Language diversity, Language policy | No Comments »
Jun 29 2009 by Martin Shipton, Western Mail
BILINGUALISM is killing the Welsh language in its own heartlands, an academic has claimed.
Instead of helping Welsh to survive, the increasing prevalence of simultaneous translation facilities is having the opposite effect, says Dr Richard Glyn Roberts, a lecturer in the School of Gaelic and Celtic Studies at University College Dublin.
In a thought-provoking chapter in a new book about Wales published by the University of West Brittany, Dr Roberts – writing in French – argues that bilingualism amounts to little more than a gesture which paradoxically confirms the predominance of English.
Dr Roberts states: “The reality is that in a great number of meetings, the interpreter has nothing to do because Welsh speakers insist on speaking English in the presence of non-Welsh speakers – a fact that surprises no-one in view of the socio-cultural weight of the English language.
“One example will suffice to illustrate the growing cost of bilingualism.
“In December 2006 at Caernarfon, I was present as the translator at a meeting of 18 health professionals, of whom nine were Welsh speakers and nine non-Welsh speakers.
“In spite of the equality of numbers, everyone spoke English. Numerical equality; linguistic inequality. That is easily understood, because the Welsh speakers speak English as fluently, or nearly as fluently, as the non-Welsh speakers, and they feel frustrated at being obliged to speak via an interpreter.
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Tags: Bilinguism, English, Translation, Welsh
Posted in Book review, Language diversity | No Comments »
