The Soup du jour in Quebec.. returning to their roots.
"A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh?"
(Do you speak Gaelic?)
You don't? Why not? A good part of this country was settled by Scottish immigrants, my family hails from Scotland, it's a part of who I am. How could I go on, how could I have value as a participant in Canadian society - without speaking Gaelic?
Really - I'm shocked that we haven't passed laws requiring children to be taught Gaelic as their first language - otherwise, our culture is doomed.
Does that sound, hopefully, as stupid to you as it does to me?
I don't actually speak Gaelic. I'm proud of my heritage - but then, I'm also proud of my Hungarian heritage - and don't really feel that the fact that I don't speak any of my ancestral languages is a loss to me or my children.
You see, I'm Canadian.
I live in a modern world.
I drive a car - I have no horse outside my door. When I have an infection, I take antibiotics, and I prefer to have a local anesthetic when I have dental work done when I attend my dentist.
I do not own an abacus, and in fact, I am producing this blog on the internet with a laptop computer - and occasionally use an ipad to connect with friends and family on facebook, unless I choose to phone them on my iphone.
**sigh** What a loss that I have adapted to an evolving culture, where more people the world over can communicate directly with common languages as opposed to staring at each other dumbly as they ready for the next siege in a war over their differences.
Quebec, on the other hand, is all hot and bothered to de-evolve. They, apparently, don't wish to join the rest of the world in the inevitable evolution to a changing global culture. They like things just like they were back in 1534 when France walked in and declared the territory of "New France" - ignoring the obvious reality that the country was already occupied by aboriginal peoples. Nevertheless, from that point, apparently, the cultural identity of Quebec was established and was never to change.
Really?
Well, Quebec - have fun with that.
Your sad paranoia, so deep that even questioning the necessity of Bill 101 by Maxime Bernier throws you into spastic fits, is just that - sad.
Next we understand the Quebecois will be developing gills and slithering back into the primordial soup.
Can't happen quick enough.
"Mar sin leibh an dràsda."
(Ta Ta for now!)
3 comments:
So I guess one can't be Canadian unless he speaks English... Thanks for confirming what Quebeckers have known since the beginning.
There is a pretty clear difference between Scottish Gaelic and French. The former is hangning on by a thread and all of its speakers also speak English; the latter is an international language spoken by 500 million people in 56 countries on 5 continents. You think none of them has an iPad?
I love the smugness of English Canucks. They're totally into the idea of a common language as long as that language happend to be their mother tongue.
The Quebec identity has evolved in sync with every other Occidental nation and has changed enormously over the centuries, but you clearly know nothing about that. And what's more, Quebec has successfully graduated to a fully modern nation full of iPhones, laptops and RRSP's and, unlike your ancestors, has been smart enough to do it all without giving up its language.
Come for a visit sometime.
I have no problem with the French language, and, if society evolves so that French becomes the language of the day, then I think I would have to become more fluent in French - or if I chose to move to Quebec City or Paris.. but I don't think I would seek to have the government pass laws contrary to the Charter of Rights to try and prop up a language which, allegedly, can't properly survive without abusing the liberty of citizens to speak and express themselves in whatever language the want.
But I guess I'm a bad guy
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