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Comment by jszymborski | Hacker News Reader

Anglophones built Quebec alongside Francophones.

We've as much right to this province as francophones.

Also, here's a hot-tip: telling people they don't belong somewhere and that they should go live elsewhere is usually a really great heuristic of when you're extremely wrong.

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Well, the post you're replying to puts things in a way I'm not comfortable with. But inside it is something very correct:

French is the official language of Québec. If you want to live there and not do business with people in French, that is your problem.

I wouldn't say you don't belong there. By all means belong there. But the official language is French today, regardless of who built the province. If you want the province's official languages to be English and French, well, democracy is there to make that possible, even if it's unlikely at the moment.

You have a right to live in Québec. But for the moment, not a right to demand that businesses or government agencies communicate with you in English.

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As for me, I lve in Ontario. And FWIW, I believe very deeply that our society should beend over backwards to do business with people in a language they understand. So if someone is in trouble with the law, I am happy to have my tax dollars go to providing them with a translator. I think government web sites should have all sorts of translations available. I believe in the melting pot.

But...

All I can do is advocate for it and vote for it. If a different province votes for something else... I respect that.

I feel that official languages is in a very different bucket than laws about what people can wear in public.

As someone living in EU, there is a practical limit to this. Languages NEEDS should be satisfied: For example, a translator should be provided to someone not speaking common languages (for the area) trying to get medical care.

But language WANTS might not be economically viable. For example in Scandinavia, Sami people (estimated population <100k) demanded all government interaction (documents, services, etc) to be translated in all their dialects (there are 11+ dialects, which are different in writing). Amount of work to be done to support that request would be astonishing.

Ironically the same true for French. There are 20+ very different dialects, is Quebec ready to work in all of them on government level? Or are we talking about le français standard?

So there is some practical limits to this, and so far EU is handling it's ok-ish. EU-wide systems are available in all official languages of all members, and minority languages are embraced when practical.

Where are you coming up with 20 different dialects of French? Are you talking about the various French-based creole languages, which are totally separate languages (e.g., someone from France has essentially no hope of understanding a native Hatian Creole speaker). If that's what you mean it's a bit silly to call them "dialects" instead of "separate languages" because Haitian Creole and French are as different as English and French.

Or are you talking about the various regional languages/dialects/"patois" in France? If so, sure, many could be called "dialects of French" but they aren't spoken at all outside of France so it isn't really relevant to Quebec.

I'm referring to a fact that before economical needs created unified time / measurement system / language, each region had their own language-dialect. For example Gallo-Romance languages and so on [0].

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France

Yes, you're right. And those dialects still exist; I know people (born before WWII in semi-rural areas) whose first language was something so different from the standard that it'd have been very difficult for someone from Paris to understand.

But as far as I know, none of them are spoken in Quebec...

What's funny that you think that about me is that I'm an anglophone that absolutely HATED my mandatory French classes in Vancouver high school.

I also remember being a kid being ANGRY at Quebec for daring to want to separate, and thought we should just "kick them out, if they want their own country so badly."

I've come to appreciate Quebec as a unique and meaningfully distinct part of Canada. I do not think it weakens my Canadian identity to have one part of the country have a fiercely proud and unique perspective on feeling equally Quebecois and Canadian at the same time (or some balance of the two). Just because I don't have a similar sense of identity about my province, doesn't mean others can't.

I do think it's a bit unfair that the Federal Government has to treat English and French equally while Quebec itself does not, however I've also learned ago that fair actions and intentions do not always lead to fair outcomes. If Quebec did not fiercely fight to protect it's French-speaking status, it would have died a long time ago and got swallowed up from both sides by the English side of Canada. And that would have been a shame.

Finally, I'm an immigrant. And as such, I am deeply welcoming to other immigrants to Canada. But I also am conscious of the fact that refugees notwithstanding, immigrants have a choice in which part of the country they immigrate to. And given that, I don't think that it's unreasonable to build expectations for them that if they move to Quebec they will need to study and master French if they want to integrate. This should not be any more of a shock or burden than expecting Belgian immigrants to understand that there is a French half and a Flemish/Dutch half, and they are quite different.

Saying anglophones built Quebec alongside the francophones sounds a bit like French people saying they built Algeria or Vietnam as a justification for not granting it independence.

The reality is that the anglophones built Quebec because they were colonizing it, and without them the francophones would have "built Quebec" just as well.

The French started earnestly colonizing Quebec less than 100 years before the British conquest so that analogy does not seem apt at all...

What matters is that the inhabitants when Britain invaded were almost all French, and French speaking. It doesn't matter much if their parents had been there for a long time already or not, it was their home and they had founded it.

Both countries invaded, both English and French speaking people built it into what it is today. Arguing about which imperialist culture was there first (especially when the difference is so small historically) to justify attempts to exclude one of those cultures is VERY different than arguing that imperialized regions have a right to independence. There is a vast difference between spreading discrimination/hate and advocating self-determination.

In general, I am in favor of the rights of regions to self determination as it is generally better when people are ruled by a government they consent to.

I support the right of Hong Kong, Catalonia, Quebec, Scottland and others to succeed if the majority of their inhabitants have a strong and consistent desire to leave.

I do not support discriminatory policies or attitudes that are intended to drive certain groups of people away.

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