Right now French and English are the official languages of Canada. There are the English parts (the majority of the country) and the French parts (the biggest being Quebec). But it seems to me that the French-speaking parts punch well above their weight culturally. Because their language insulates them from the strong US cultural influence, giving them space to develop their own unique cultural identity and not have to compete with US media. So it would be a big cultural upgrade if all of Canada spoke French. Plus the French language is cool. Wouldn’t it just be cooler if we all spoke French more?

Q: But how would that work?

A: Good question. Well French immersion is already really common (when English-speaking families sent their kids to French-speaking school). What we need to do is make all schools French immersion, and once we have a generation fluent in French we can begin the process of slowly purging the English language from any sort of government institution. Overtime people will be speaking French so much that it will seep into their private lives and they’ll just speak French at home.

Q: But wouldn’t a policy like this be massively unpopular and cause widespread backlash?

A: Absolutely it would that’s why it’s an unpopular opinion. But in an ideal world, we would do it. 🇨🇦🇫🇷

If anyone wanted to phase out English in favour of some indigenous languages I would be in favour if that too.

Edit for spelling

Another edit: why are you guys downvoting this for disagreeing, you’re supposed to disagree thats the point of this sub

  • ResistingArrest@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    hello!

    • you are right, but i think we can agree that calling attention to the difference between a linguist and a polyglot who made an auxlang is pedantic.
    • all nouns in esperanto end in “o”, unlike in spanish, where “libro” (book) is masculine and puerta (door) is feminine (there are less obvious examples like “lapiz”, masculine). I think its fair to say that esperanto has un-gendered nouns since you cannot delineate a gender from just looking at the noun itsself. any source on esperanto will corroborate this.
    • i dont neccesarily disagree with you about this, but esperanto does have fewer moods than spanish, so id call it easier than spanish on that front. it also has fewer declensions than russian (to my knowledge)
    • i say the french did it beause Gabriel Hanotaux was the one league of nations representative who didnt want to adopt it for international relations. esperanto is notably easier to learn than french on account of the ungendered nouns, fewer moods, etc. I think it would make sense for politicians to learn it and we avoid all the translator BS.
    • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      we can agree that calling attention to the difference between a linguist and a polyglot who made an auxlang is pedantic

      No. We can’t. The difference between a linguist and a polyglot are the core reason why Esperanto is such a disaster as an “international language”. Zamenhof (like most polyglots without at least some education in linguistics, even if that education is mostly auto-didactic) had no clue how language is structured. He had no idea what a phonetic inventory is and what other languages outside of his narrow sphere had. He had no idea what allophony is and “resolved” the allophony issues by avoiding talking about it at all, really. He had no idea what grammatical structures were in use in the world to find something suited to as many of those as possible.

      He didn’t know language. He knew a handful of (related) languages. There’s a huge difference here.

      I think its fair to say that esperanto has un-gendered nouns since you cannot delineate a gender from just looking at the noun itsself.

      Are you smoking something? <patro> vs. <patrino>. One is masculine, the other is feminine. How do you tell? You look at the noun itself. THIS IS GENDERED NOUNS! Now how about <ĉevalo> vs. <ĉevalino>? Indeed the Fundamento has <studento> and <studentino> because things are masculine by default. A female student is a different word from a male student, both being gendered nouns.

      So, no, it’s not “fair to say” that the nouns are un-gendered since you can trivially delineate a gender from looking at a noun.

      but esperanto does have fewer moods than spanish, so id call it easier than spanish on that front. it also has fewer declensions than russian (to my knowledge)

      And it has literally infinitely more declensions than Mandarin (and a lot more languages in the Sino-Tibetan sphere).

      esperanto is notably easier to learn than french on account of the ungendered nouns, fewer moods, etc.

      To someone already familiar with specifically Continental European languages (at least two), sure. But to a speaker of Mandarin, or Tibetan, or Korean, or Japanese, or … well, a metric ton of languages (I haven’t even touched three more continents!) there’s no meaningful difference in complexity. But there’s a HUGE difference in utility.

      i say the french did it beause Gabriel Hanotaux was the one league of nations representative who didnt want to adopt it for international relations

      One person vetoed it for one use case once a long time ago (1922).

      What’s the excuse for the remaining century and a bit? (Hint: It rhymes with “not good enough to be worth learning given its complete lack of users” because identical rhyme is still rhyme.)

      • ResistingArrest@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        I’ll concede the whole argument because you’re well informed, but you’ve kinda just been an asshole from moment one. Do you want information exchange or do you want to be right?

        • ZDL@lazysoci.alEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          What “exchange” takes place when one side is saying things that are flatly incorrect? Facts don’t care about your feelings and all that jazz.