Step 1: Ireland looks at Quebec's language laws
Step 2: Ireland copies Quebec's language laws
Step 3: Ireland copies Quebec's "language police"
Result: the majority of the Republic of Ireland will by law have to speak Irish for almost all situations (eg. business, signage, school). Those that don't will be quickly marginalized and driven to either learn or leave Ireland.
Downside: Ireland becomes a bit of a laughingstock as the Irish Language Police sometimes get caught by the press doing really stupid things, such as trying to ban the word "pasta" from menus because it is Italian
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/01/quebec-language-police-ban-pasta
Well, given that English is a mandatory second language taught in schools and universities and that good use of the English language is considered a hallmark of an educated person (Israeli politicians have been made fun of by young Israelis for bad English and it has hurt their careers), I would say Israel has actually proven my point of how important it is to have your people speak English.
Frankly, I don't think English was ever a threat to the Czech language, though German would have been. I've never been a supporter of the idea of a Czechoslovakia or its two daughter nation-states. Autonomous regions of larger Austria (Czechs) and Hungary and Poland (Slovaks) would have been more logical. Especially in the case of the Slovaks there's no historical reason for a nation-state. Might as well given independence to Cornwall, Breton, Lappland, or Friesland.
The Czech language was under heavy pressure from German, and if the Czechoslovak state had not happened it might not exist today.
I think you are overestimating French in Quebec and the extent to which they speak it. Sure in Montreal and Quebec French is very strong, but English is very much spoken everywhere. If you go in to a sub shop they will greet you in English and speak it very well. Plus French laws in Quebec don't apply to places like the Postal offices and other federally protected language places. Northern Quebec barely speaks French at all. About 65% of all complaints to the Office Quebecois de la langue Francaise come from the southern three regions around Montreal and the Ontario/NY border; single largest complaint- language on product labels.
The UN Human Rights Committee has ruled that Quebec has no right to limit people's freedom of expression to choose a language. And the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Ford v Quebec in 1988 that Quebec should only make French more prominent in advertising, not the sole language, a recommendation that Quebec did end up doing.
Well I live in Montreal and yes, English is spoken fairly commonly downtown, because there are lost of anglo businessmen, tourists and students. However pretty much everyone in Quebec, even in Montreal has to know French to be able to work and live in the province, because you have to do business in the French language (although being bilingual is often desired by employer because of doing business with the US). Thus most of the people in Quebec who only speak English are only there temporarily (eg. students and foreign or out of province businessmen). For the record Montreal is about as bilingual a city as you can get (at least as far as English vs French), as pretty much no major cities in Canada outside of Quebec use French for anything except for official government stuff where bilingualism is required, although outside of Montreal and Old Quebec City, it really is mainly French monolingual in Quebec. The language laws have been toned down a bit in the last couple of decades, but remember that the language laws themselves were ruled as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada but were upheld and implemented by the Quebec government via employing the "notwithstanding clause". So pretty much everyone outside of Quebec believes that the language laws are still pretty draconian, but they are still there, and regardless of their ethicacy they have been effective at preserving the French language and diminishing other languages, primarily English (See the Anglo flight from the late 1970s to the late 1990s). To be blunt, outside of the touristy/international business areas Quebec is French, not English or bilingual. Most of Quebec is as French as the rest of Canada is English.
This seems vaguely relevant.
http://faultylogic.comicgenesis.com/d/20070922.html
It seems to express a (typical? No promises...) view in Ontario of the language laws.
Note the stuff below the comic, it's probably more germane than the comic.
Well, yeah, which is why I mentioned the stuff below the comic.um...ok. British death robots and surrendering French soldiers are not really how Ontarians think of the French language, or Quebec
I don't hate the language, I'm just annoyed with the laws surrounding it. And for the sake of our non-Canadian readers, I'll give a little bit of background on this... For starters, Faulty Logic is made in Canada, specifically... Ontario, Canada.
Canada is legally a bi-lingual nation. That means that we have two official languages and ideally, people who speak either language should have completely equal rights and priveleges in any area of the country. (France originally settled the area known today as Canada, but English nearby came into conflict with them and eventually sent squirrels in giant mechs to force the French colonies into defeat, as detailed in the comic. Rather than force the French civilians to assimilate to British culture, they were allowed to keep their language and heritage and eventually created the bilingual country of Canada when the colonies reached confederation.)
This all sounds great on paper but it does not add up well in the modern world. French speakers in Canada represent a minority of the country, and because Canada primarily deals in trade with the United States (who have absolutely no desire to speak in french or produce french products), there is a constant pressure on French Canadians to assimilate into an English culture to make their lives easier which French Canadians fight against.
To delay this assimilation (I say delay because I don't believe it can go on forever), the government has passed many laws about Canadian products and businesses that force the french language to be printed on just about everything, whether or not these products or businesses are in a province that actually contains a french speaking population.
In Ontario, for instance, there is no french speaking population. You cannot enter a store and expect to converse with a cashier in french. There are no road signs in french, and there is basically no way to go about your day to day life speaking french because english Canadians have no pressure to learn the language.
The end result of this is a large rift between english and french culture. French Canadians are annoyed with English apathy and fight tooth and nail against the domestic and international pressures of assimilation, while English Canadians find french annoying because it tends to clog up their lives being on everything they touch, and are annoyed with the hostility that can occur while French Canadians fight against English assimilation.
I really wish there was something funny I could say here, but there's not. This rift isn't going to fix itself any time soon. French has become a second-class language in Canada, and all the laws in the world are not going to fix it at this point. It's certainly not fair to French Canadians, but I cannot fathom a solution that doesn't involve angering the majority of Canada.
Having noticed a common trend on the internet I'm now wondering what is it about Ireland that makes the Anglophiles so aggressive?
The only question: How can the diaspora be motivated to return to the land of their grandfathers/ancestors?How about... Have a very large group of Irish diaspora returning from one or more non English-speaking country, so that the introduction of a lingua franca becomes something of a necessity, and Irish one of the options.
The only question: How can the diaspora be motivated to return to the land of their grandfathers/ancestors?
I second the motion; aside from Argentina, Brazil and French Canada should also be considered.Another question, from where? The majority of the dispora are in English speaking nations, top of my head Argentina might be the best option, they have a significant dispora but can't see how you could convince them to return to Ireland and even then they have English as a language more than Irish.