Entry # 8 French should be taught more
Trip Start
Unknown
1
8
Trip End
Ongoing
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Description de l'événement: Last Saturday, it was very nice outside and I wanted to skate so I went to Kimble Skate Park. Once I was there, there was not a lot of people but there was my friend Brandon. I got into skateboarding during all afternoon with him and at the end of the day, I just discussed a bit with him about languages. From the first day I met Brandon, he knew I was French because my accent was a bit different but I would say now that I really improved my English. However, he also told me that he did not know any French at all. He only knew to say I do not understand in French. He told me that he just totally did not understand this language. Then, I told him that it was probably easier for a Francophone to learn English than an Anglophone to learn French. Finally, Brandon told me that most of people here do not really know French. I told him a bit about the language program and he told me that it would be great if there were more of that kind of program in New-Brunswick.
Constat/Réflexion: After that discusion with Brandon, I realized that French is really not taught enough in English schools. I learned this year at school English, Spanish and Chinese. I know that I really improved my English with the language program of this year and I am just sad to see that Anglophones are not really interested to improve their French. They just seem to do not care about French and I learned a lot on myself at the same time. I learned that I am a little bit more concerned by the importance of my usual language than I expected. I also realized that there should be more language programs which focus on French in English provinces in Canada. I realized that language programs help a lot to improve other languages and it would be a good thing for Anglophones to improve their French, especially in New-Brunswick.
Finally, this picture is a photo that I took on Google and we can see on that picture how we say in French Do you speak English? I wanted to illustrate an example of what nowadays everyone should know. However, Brandon did not know to say Do you speak English in French.
Comments
Why ask people to speak French? Let's be honest, English is the dominant language of the planet, so speaking it (regardless of your native tongue) is assumed to be critical but why would somebody who already speaks the world's dominant language care to speak a secondary language? Especially, when the secondary languages need to speak the dominant?
Here's a better way to ask it, as a person who can hear why not learn sign language? See, as an English person I can "hear" everything just fine so learning another method of communication makes little sense.