To all Americans

It is still going strong and a surprising number of people can speak it.

I found the French thing funny mostly because at the time they were building the Concorde with Britain they were so nit picky about everything being done in both languages - then came the difficulty - French did not allow for most of the technical terms.

Ah, I didn't understand your "official" position take. I was speaking more of the actuality - 40 years after the official acts. And I expect as generations pass on those that were brought up expecting diversity, rather than treating it as special, the official and real will be more the same. That's my utopia. When I was married to the Indian DH, my DGM was quite interested in us having children - especially as she already had 1 great from my DB. On one memorable occasion - I think we were going out to dinner for her birthday (80?) in FL, and while we were waiting she started telling us that she was sure we'd have really beautiful children (of course) which led to the tagging of our potential future kids as "little mocha chip babies" - given my freckles, and pale eyes, red hair and then DH's quite dk black hair, brown eyes, and fairly dark skin. Our response - well, they'll have good eyelashes and straight hair. I mean - what can you say. But, we were pretty thrilled that our 80 yr old grandmother was so blasé about our inter-racial situation. Of course, this became the family chat - what was happening on the mocha chip front (which sadly petered out after a few years of trying and treatments).

I guess to outsiders, I do think of that as an issue between cultures. No doubt, cyclical to some extent.

Very similar to here. We have friends that are part Native American, enough (1/16?) to actually get money from the reparations paid to the tribes, making for regular dividends.

That is pretty funny. Two proud nations - long history of dispute. Lots of British people buying vacation homes, and wanting that part of France to Anglicise. I remember well the many issues in Miami as more and more Cubans, South Americans came to the city and began insisting that they not have to learn any English, but that Spanish should be as official as English. And then there is Spanglish - a weird dialect of Cuban Spanish with English spoken by younger folks - mostly the children of immigrants. Such brilliant phrases as "Ay, que cute!" (as in "wow, how cute") - even 20 years ago my Cuban American Princess (we called her the Jewban) roommate would say such things.

Ellice

It's interesting to learn all our different experiences, POVs. Here, seriously, some of the schools have upwards of 30 languqges being spoken. They teach at least 4 (6?) languages in all the middle/high schools, and many teach about a dozed. About all - Spanish, French, German, Russian, then you start seeing Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, some African Languages (Swahili), Portuguese, and then it goes down. It's amazing when there are articles in the paper of the issues facing some of these districts between communicating with students, finding ways for them to learn English, and then what to teach in the foreign languages.

Very much the same situation here. The tribes have done very well with putting casinos on various tribal lands - bringing in money. Also, some are getting money paid for water rights, etc. Truly depends on the nation, and the reservation. Some are living in bad conditions - some it's fine. In ABQ, it's pretty interesting - because the town is such a mix of Natives, Hispanics, and Anglos - you see everything. When you go west towards 4 corners, and hit the big Navajo reservation - it varies. From my interactions, it seems things are much better the last 20 years as many of the reparations are happening, and the tribes maintain much more control as they wish - can stay on their land or not. Housing on the reservations that I've seen varies - just like elsewhere - from not so good, poor housing to modern, or modernized and nice.

Hey, I wasn't implying that you are yahoos - just less densely populated, and indeed without the close "big city" thing, and I'd expect more of the Natives. Sorry if it seemed I was insulting you - truly not.

Ellice

Ah, the technical term part - not really quite so true. Just a convenience thing for some. A lot of math things are kind of standardized in English/German. I have a hard time thinking what "technical" term wasn't translatable. Having worked as a scientist/engineer in France and here with French colleagues, sharing a lot of technology and research. I think that some things which just get a name - the English name just sticks - but not always.

Funniest technical term thing - looking at my Japanese officemates books from home - all in Japanese - except for the math, & specialized technical things - in English.

Ellice

There are lots of small towns where racism (especially against First Nations) is rampant. Ask a Nova Scotian black about racism, and prepare to hear horror stories. Canada is trying, but we have lots of problems still.

As for your friend's experience in Quebec, Daniel Johnson was a Canadian politician from Quebec. Despite the English sounding name he was thoroughly French, but was criticized for having an 'anglo' name.

And, I can tell you, with embarrassment, names some of my own relatives have called immigrants.

MargW

"ellice" wrote

The French terminology definitely exists. DS did all of his highschool maths in French, as he was in a French immersion program. He then went to McGill in Montreal, where the language of instruction is English. There was sufficient difference in terminology that he claims to have spent the first

2 weeks of term asking classmates if this term in English meant X, so he could translate for himself.

Dawne

On 1/26/09 6:00 PM, "MargW" wrote:

I think what you say illustrates so well the diverse experiences we have. And parallels what I've found in living in the DC area as compared to other parts of the US, or overseas.

Fortunately, for me, in my family there was only ever in my 12 year old's memory 1 incident of a relative coming out with a really bad slur as a generalization - and it was discussing (with much alcohol) some of the issues during the riots/decay in Harlem. Our housekeeper, a black woman, was in the house, and my parents immediately grabbed the drunk relative - yelled at him, and he proceeded to apologize, to all and sundry, start to cry, and then insisted upon sharing a drink with the housekeeper. It was memorable - kind of like a movie scene. OTOH, when DH - who is from a small NJ town (very parochial town), with no minorities, and I got married there was interesting follow-up. We had a judge do the ceremony, and a pretty diverse group of guests. The ceremony had readings from religious liturgy that we'd found - it was really nice - and our judge asked if he could keep it to use (he'd given us some from his stock to use in preparation of our ceremony). Anyhow, we did have blessings over candles, and wine. No other particularly Jewish things. The non-religious eldest sister of his evidently went nuts after the ceremony - carrying on about where was the Christian stuff, etc - FWIW - obviously anything religious had been Old Testament - so shouldn't have been offensive. This continued on we heard long after the reception, and the next day she was making remarks - very anti-Semitic. It was interesting. Then, the next day when we were taking the crazy SIL to the airport she broke down hysterical in the car telling us that the other sister is a bigot because she has lived in small town RI for

30 years, and that there father had been very anti-Semitic and anti-black until his life was saved by a Black cardiologist in the ER, and a Jewish cardiologist who then treated him. DH, being younger, didn't really get to hear the evident slurring language in the house, because by the time he was old enough his father had the epiphany. My father, OTOH, was actually court-martialed while in the Army Airs Corps for punching a sergeant that called him a dirty kike.

We just don't live in homogeneous countries, and in small towns, where there is more of that sameness, I think the prejudices with unfamiliarity take longer to dissipate.

Ellice

I worked in the SouthWest of France, about 90 min from Toulouse. The university there has a great aerospace engineering dept, and Air France had facilities there as well. I spent a lot of time down there, had colleagues at the Uni, and honestly found really high calibre work. We always had fun doing language swaps, and I had a large technical English-French dictionary. What I found is that with some languages a term may be multiple words, a phrase while in another language the same term is just one word.

Ellice