BBRoundtable

Nakor wrote:Once I'm done with those two I fully intend on learning French at some point... it's just so important here.

O_O

You know, I neglected to comment on that in my previous post, but now that I think about it, I can't tell for some reason if that was supposed to be sarcastic or not.

No, it wasn't sarcasm lol. I sucked at French the first time around, but it seems like a rather useful language to have if I intend on both doing any sort of linguistic work in Canada (including teaching languages in Canadian schools, where it's probably the most vital of them).

I'm surprised that French would be all that important in Canadian schools outside of Quebec, especially if you're on the west coast. Do that many people really speak French in the rest of Canada?

No, actually. As French is technically our second national language, it is a mandatory class until Grade 7 or 8, at which point it becomes an optional course after that.

It's also important for some government jobs, since all federal laws and whatnot have to be available in both languages. While not technically true of the individual provinces, which are mostly monolingual, even there most things are available bilingually anyway. (Fun fact: There is only one officially bilingual province in Canada. And it's not Quebec!)

Ah, see, I didn't know that all the official federal documents in Canada had to be in both English and French. Learning French makes a lot more sense in that context.

Nakor wrote:(Fun fact: There is only one officially bilingual province in Canada. And it's not Quebec!)

According to Wiki, there are three: Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba. Wiki knows more about Canada than j00, 5p00n3j. Go figure that the reason Quebec isn't officially bilingual is because its only official language is French.

Manitoba and Ontario are not officially/legally bilingual. Not sure where you got that, as I don't see it in Wiki at all. Anyway, only New Brunswick is bilingual.

Provinces and territories of Canada

Huh... now that I look at it again, even though the chart in the middle of that Wiki page says Ontario and Manitoba have both English and French as the official languages, the Wiki page for Ontario only lists English. That's odd. The Manitoba page, meanwhile, says that its government is only partially bilingual, because the executive branch doesn't have to put its documents in French (the rest of them do).

Yeah, Manitoba isn't legally bilingual, they just have very strong bilingual government support due to the Métis (people of, in this case, mixed French and Native American heritage) population there.

Ah. Maybe you oughta go update the Wiki page, then. Speaking of official languages, it amazes me to this day that English still isn't the official language of the US. It's the only common language in this country, and all the government documents and road signs and whatnot are in English, so why not just get it over with and make it official?