La Francaise - Yes/No

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

Hi folks,

de Gaulle tried it with little success:  French officials told to abandon gaming Anglicisms - BBC News

IMO it's like trying to push water upstream; you just cannot do it.

Jerry Baumchen

[JoeWeber 2,299]

15 minutes ago, JerryBaumchen said:

IMO it's like trying to push water upstream; you just cannot do it.

 

You can't? So then what's the engineering secret behind water fountains?

[Phil1111 911]

Today Canada news:  Quebec’s Bill 96 officially becomes law, French language minister named  "Bill 96 has been widely criticized by anglophone, Indigenous and immigrant groups over concerns it goes too far."

Ban assault rifle and ban English. Not much new in Canada.

[JoeWeber 2,299]

1 hour ago, Phil1111 said:

Today Canada news:  Quebec’s Bill 96 officially becomes law, French language minister named  "Bill 96 has been widely criticized by anglophone, Indigenous and immigrant groups over concerns it goes too far."

Ban assault rifle and ban English. Not much new in Canada.

You’d be better off leaving those alone and banning poutine. Christ, I’d rather have a bowl of that foul Slovakian Halusky.

[gowlerk 1,914]

7 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

You can't? So then what's the engineering secret behind water fountains?

All the water fountains I've ever seen have the water falling down. Demonstrating the point.

 

[gowlerk 1,914]

6 hours ago, Phil1111 said:

"Bill 96 has been widely criticized by anglophone, Indigenous and immigrant groups over concerns it goes too far."

They can't help it. They're French.

[JoeWeber 2,299]

10 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

All the water fountains I've ever seen have the water falling down. Demonstrating the point.

 

What goes down must have previously gone up. 

[gowlerk 1,914]

15 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

What goes down must have previously gone up. 

Yup, but the point is that you can't keep it there. The altitude can only be borrowed.

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

15 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

What goes down must have previously gone up. 

Hi Joe,

Tell that to the Columbia River.

Jerry Baumchen

[kallend 1,623]

2 hours ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi Joe,

Tell that to the Columbia River.

Jerry Baumchen

I've climbed to the top of a waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge.  The water got up there somehow.

[riggerrob 558]

19 hours ago, gowlerk said:

They can't help it. They're French.

Language politics can get real stupid, real quick.

Starting around the time I was born, the Quiet Revolution radically changed Quebec language politics. Back then Canada was dominated by a handful of English-owned banks headquartered in Montreal. Montreal was the biggest and most heavily industrialized city in Canada. Just as soon as they slipped the bonds of Union Nationale hold on power, rising Quebecouis politicians decided that after 200 years of oppression by the British, Union Nationale, Roman Catholic Church, major banks, etc. it was their turn to oppress some one else.

Too bad nobody bothered to remind Quebecouis that they suffered under a rather boring occupation. Brits did not bother with the usual rape, pillage and plunder (compare with recent Ukrainian experiences at the hands of Russian invaders.)

During a single generation, Quebec went from an almost feudal, agricultural backwater to hippy-dippy, free-love, more liberal than they can handle, etc. This several generation gap also brought a dramatic drop in fertility rates. Circa 1960, Quebec had the highest birth rate in North America, but that rapidly dropped to the lowest birth rate in North America.

Since they feared being out-numbered in their own province, Quebec politicians introduced a variety of laws to force immigrants to attend French-language elementary schools, etc. Insignificant Frenchmen wanted to immigrate to Quebec. OTOH plenty of Haitians and North Africans wanted to immigrate to Canada. Granted, they were Catholic and they spoke French, but - HEAVEN FORBID - they were black! Horror of horrors!

Funny, but my mother taught kindergarten for 20 plus years and she always had a few immigrant kids in her class?????? The principal always found a way to sneak in the best and brightest immigrant kids.

45 years ago I grew weary of that sort of language politics, so I moved out of Quebec. The last time I went back was for my father's funeral, just before COVID-19 hit. He was my last family member still living in our home town.

Sadly, most of my Anglophone high school classmates had long moved out. But the most amusing part was all the recent immigrants and refugees from Muslim nations: Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Syria, etc. Few of these refugees speak French when they arrive. Their women dressed more like Catholic nuns than modern Quebecouise women. Hah! Hah!

Bottom line, Quebec politicians have a history of shooting themselves in the foot with language legislation.

[gowlerk 1,914]

1 hour ago, kallend said:

I've climbed to the top of a waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge.  The water got up there somehow.

It fell from the sky. Again, borrowed altitude.

Edited June 2, 2022 by gowlerk

[riggerrob 558]

Funny how even the Swiss tend to prefer American vocabulary. Swizerland has 4 official languages: French, German, Italian and Romanche. Any official Swiss gov't document can be published in French, German or Italian

About a decade ago, I was invited to teach a parachute rigging course in Switzerland. Most Swiss are bilingual or tri-lingua. Since we were in the "Vallee" region near the French border, we settled on French as the dominate language for the course.

Before the course, I e-mailed out a series of pre-course quizes in English and French. The quizes encouraged students to look up various topics in manuals written by Dan Poynter, Sandy Reid (FAA Parachute Rigger Manual) or (Frenchman) Eric Fradet. Students balked at using some of Eric's terminology, since they were already familiar with American terminology. Terms like "pilot-chute" versus "extracteur." Ironically this was around the time the US Army adopted an "extractor" for their AT-11 static-line system. Hah! Hah!

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

37 minutes ago, riggerrob said:

Language politics can get real stupid, real quick.

Starting around the time I was born, the Quiet Revolution radically changed Quebec language politics. Back then Canada was dominated by a handful of English-owned banks headquartered in Montreal. Montreal was the biggest and most heavily industrialized city in Canada. Just as soon as they slipped the bonds of Union Nationale hold on power, rising Quebecouis politicians decided that after 200 years of oppression by the British, Union Nationale, Roman Catholic Church, major banks, etc. it was their turn to oppress some one else.

Too bad nobody bothered to remind Quebecouis that they suffered under a rather boring occupation. Brits did not bother with the usual rape, pillage and plunder (compare with recent Ukrainian experiences at the hands of Russian invaders.)

During a single generation, Quebec went from an almost feudal, agricultural backwater to hippy-dippy, free-love, more liberal than they can handle, etc. This several generation gap also brought a dramatic drop in fertility rates. Circa 1960, Quebec had the highest birth rate in North America, but that rapidly dropped to the lowest birth rate in North America.

Since they feared being out-numbered in their own province, Quebec politicians introduced a variety of laws to force immigrants to attend French-language elementary schools, etc. Insignificant Frenchmen wanted to immigrate to Quebec. OTOH plenty of Haitians and North Africans wanted to immigrate to Canada. Granted, they were Catholic and they spoke French, but - HEAVEN FORBID - they were black! Horror of horrors!

Funny, but my mother taught kindergarten for 20 plus years and she always had a few immigrant kids in her class?????? The principal always found a way to sneak in the best and brightest immigrant kids.

45 years ago I grew weary of that sort of language politics, so I moved out of Quebec. The last time I went back was for my father's funeral, just before COVID-19 hit. He was my last family member still living in our home town.

Sadly, most of my Anglophone high school classmates had long moved out. But the most amusing part was all the recent immigrants and refugees from Muslim nations: Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Syria, etc. Few of these refugees speak French when they arrive. Their women dressed more like Catholic nuns than modern Quebecouise women. Hah! Hah!

Bottom line, Quebec politicians have a history of shooting themselves in the foot with language legislation.

Hi Rob,

I still remember when de Gaulle came to Quebec ( the 60's I think - maybe later ) and admonished them to secede from the rest of Canada.  He had everyone in a uproar for a while.

Jerry Baumchen

[ryoder 1,384]

I can't help it; This whole conversation keeps reminding me of:

 

[riggerrob 558]

1 hour ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi Rob,

I still remember when de Gaulle came to Quebec ( the 60's I think - maybe later ) and admonished them to secede from the rest of Canada.  He had everyone in a uproar for a while.

Jerry Baumchen

Yes Jerry,

I remember that day well. Probably 1967, when Canada was celebrating 100 years of confederation. President deGaulle spent a long, hot, summer's day touring the North Shore of the Saint Lawrence River from Trois Rivieres to somewhere close to Montreal. He had heard a variety of political slogans shouted repeatedly over the course of the day "Vive la Quebec libres!" was among them. Towards the end of that long, hot day, deGaulle was invited to give a speech at Sainte ???? de ???? When he spouted "Vive la Quebec libre!" some in the audience were horrified! Many perceived it as an attempt at meddling in the internal affairs of another nation ... something just not done in diplomatic circles. The rest of deGaulle's tour was hastily cancelled and he flew home a day or two later.

Please remember that this was back int eh days when the Front de Liberation du Quebec's favorite sport was bombing (federal) mail boxes and killing the occaissional post office worker as collateral damage. Back then we genuinely feared a bloody civil war..

[ryoder 1,384]

1 hour ago, riggerrob said:

Please remember that this was back int eh days when the Front de Liberation du Quebec's favorite sport was bombing (federal) mail boxes and killing the occaissional post office worker as collateral damage. Back then we genuinely feared a bloody civil war..

So they were inspired by Northern Ireland?

[JoeWeber 2,299]

5 hours ago, kallend said:

I've climbed to the top of a waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge.  The water got up there somehow.

Multnomah Falls? So that's a thing organized by a bunch of commies. Guy I know sells the buckets to the ex-Rajneeshie bucket brigade that totes the water to the top. It's always the simplest and most obvious explanation.

[gowlerk 1,914]

2 hours ago, ryoder said:

So they were inspired by Northern Ireland?

I guess. The kidnapped 2 people and murdered one and some of them ended up in exile in Cuba. Google "October Crisis". It was a huge thing here.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/timeline/the-flq-and-the-october-crisis

Bombs in Montreal

 

Bombs explode on the CN Railway line and at the National Revenue building in Montreal. After being informed of the bombs, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker reportedly asks, “Is this Ireland?”  

Edited June 3, 2022 by gowlerk

[riggerrob 558]

Our family lost a friend during an August 24, 1969 FLQ robbery. Alfred Pinisch was a political refugee from Communist Eastern Europe (Hungary?). I met Alfred many times when he competed against my father in local rifle matches. Alfred was working at International Firearms in Montreal when the FLQ tried to steal guns to arm their military wing. A pair of beat cops were first on scene and one accidentally shot Alfred. The beat cop never recovered from his guilt and drank himself to death.

[riggerrob 558]

On 6/2/2022 at 6:30 PM, ryoder said:

So they were inspired by Northern Ireland?

FLQ were inspired by the recent revolution in Cuba and the on-going "troubles" in Northern Ireland.

Mind you, Irish Catholics - living in Quebec - tended to hold themselves distinct from French-speaking Roman Catholics in Quebec. Many towns had separate (Irish) English Catholic school boards that were completely separate from the French Catholic school boards.

After the "FLQ Crisis" the kidnappers traded a hostage for passage to Cuba, where they live din exile for a few years. I was flabbergasted when the kidnappers were allowed to return to Canada and even more flabbergasted when one of them was elected to sit in the "Assemble' Nationale."