Plastic Surgery of the Soap Stars

[Sylph]

One wouldn't know how to do it properly. 'Cause one year it's événement, the next one évènement. Gotta love French orthography (and its reforms).

[remos]

I must prefer the looks on the faces of the people from France as they cover their ears and loudly yell "No, stop talking!!!"

[DaytimeFan]

J'ai un ami qui habite dans Dalhousie!

[Sylph]

LOL!

But I have to say I thought the Canadians were much better at French than they seem to be.

Or perhaps it's just this board.

[remos]

LOL....

Well.... you've got to understand the Francophone Geography of Canada. We have three French Nationalities in this country that don't intermingle if they can help it - the Winnipeg Francophonie, the Acadians and the Quebecois. All have their own Patois et Patrie. And truly, the Hatfields and McCoys have nothing some of these folks. I've seen a Quebcois Nun not give help to a lost L'Acadie.

On this board it seems we're French Second Language.

[Sylph]

That's just horrible!

Are the Francophone Canadians more "militant" about French than the French people themselves? Apparently, a lot of younger French people are becoming "illiterate", a phenomenon to which the lack of dictations contributed.

Another great orthography reform is the German one: should you write Kongreßstraße, Kongressstraße or Kongreßstrasse?

[remos]

LOL.... oh my.....

And we haven't even gotten into the myriad of folks who technically speak English but don't understand what the other is saying. I remember asking a Egyptian woman one time if she had a "pen handy". She thought I had three heads.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah.... plastic surgery.... On a more somber yet connected note, I remember a few years back reading how Hollywood directors were coming to Canada and going to England to find native English speakers who could still move their faces.

[Cat]

I have always felt more comfortable in English-speaking Canada than French-speaking, for some reason... the welcome I have gotten in Vancouver, Victoria, Banff, Toronto and Fredericton has always been amazing. I would immigrate there if I could, and if the winters weren't so rough! The Acadians are lovely, though. One acadien once told me that after one of those 18th century wars between the British and French (French-Indian War, maybe?), the French-speakers in New Brunswick were expelled. So they moved to Quebec but were rejected by the French-speakers there, too! So they snuck back into northern New Brunswick where most faced abject poverty and hardship -- to the point where many Acadians immigrated to French-speaking Louisiana in the US. As a result, some Acadians still feel very much aggrieved vis a vis the Quebecois. Perhaps EricMontreal who lived in Montreal for many years will pop into this thread and shed some light on this... but I remember feeling very sad for the Acadians. They must have felt like second-class citizens amongst the English-speakers and people who they thought were their French bretheren.

[DaytimeFan]

I think it's a real misconception that British actresses somehow age naturally. They don't. Judy Dench and Helen Mirren have had their little touch ups too.

[EricMontreal22]

Exactly--I didn't know some Americans thought there was French accross the country. It's mainly all Quebec with then little chunks like in Ontario and Manitoba--virtually nothing on the West Coast. I'm fluent in the language because I was put in French Immersion from preschool on (so were my siblings but they all dropped the program by junior high)--and then spent 8 years in Montreal, doing some of my schooling in French. But most of my friends here are no better (and maybe even worse) than most Americans would be--with just some French class in school. (French Immersion is actually an oddly controversial program--I remember when I was in elementary school there were actually some marches organized to protest it, LOL, but I'm sure thankful for it and it's sad to see as funding gets increasingly cut back, the program falling away).

And of course then you get the vast differences in French in Quebec and France. Ironically in many ways Quebec French has been less corrupted and is closer to old French. What's especially amusing though is how both forms of French incorporate English slang, but completely different slang... Because most of my school was West Coast most of my teachers growing up were actually from France, not Quebec, so I found the Quebecois accent rough going at first.

[EricMontreal22]

Cat come to Victoria--we don't have remotely bad winters here, usually only goes below freezing once or twice a year--we traditonally get about 2 days of snow but last year didn't have any (honestly, since I grew up first in Edmonton and spent some time in Montreal, I miss the cold winters, but I get why many don't). I'm always amused at how many non Canadians think that every single place here is coated in snow come Winter (when I was 9 we spent a season in Sacramento due to my dad's work--and granted these were small kids, but my twin sister and I would actually get asked questions like if we lived in igloos and had tv ).

The Quebecois and Acadiens resentment is fading away. Certainly you don't see it in Montreal but Montreal and small town Quebec are VASTLY different. Most montrealers speak English, have no isse with English speakers, have no desire to seperate from Quebec and even seem tired of that whole subject (whenever friends would visit me in Montreal they'd always be nervous that they'd get verbally abused for speaking English or something, lol). But in the more isolated smaller towns, you still see a lot more of that.

[remos]

Ewww, whomever told you that didn't know their history.

1755 the Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by the English. While Quebec always maintained a relationship with France, L'Acadie truly saw themselves as their own independent culture. The English didn't care who went where so some boats went to Quebec, some to France and some down to Louisiana (Acadian = Cajun). Some found their way back to Nova Scotia/New Brunswick and if you walk along the marshes between the two provinces today you can still see the wooden dams they put in the land to drain the marshes for farming.

Today in Grand Pre, NS you can visit an historic village that commemorates that period of Maritime history known as The Deportation, and Henry Wordsworth Longfellow fictionalized the whole story in his poem Evangeline.

Quebec's history is quite different, they were the mercantile interest of France and so have always maintained a closer identity.

[EricMontreal22]

Yes and no--they do enjoy thumbing their noses at the Academie and all their rules, I think... That said when I've met people from France living or visiting Montreal, you definitely get a huge sense of superiority about how they use the language--I think that's just French nationalism in general though.

Quebec is actually starting to get some attention for the increasing number of boys who drop out of school early, and worries that it's starting to have an obviously detrimental effect on the society. Quebec for a long time spent a lot of focus trying to get their women better educated--and they've managed to do that but somehow the boys have fallen through the cracks. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-lost-boys-of-quebec/article1703310/

[Sylph]

No, I mean, I get that, but it's just that given that it's a "bilingual" country, albeit with one of the two languages with a smaller population, I still kind of think that more of the English-speaking part should also be fluent in French. It's kind of bizarre not to know a second official language of your country. But then again, perhaps that's just me.

[remos]

Agreed. Montreal is a very different place than the rest of the province. My father's people were from the Gaspe and it was a whole different world.

During University my BFF worked for Tourism Canada at one of the boarders and she was amazed how many people showed up with parkas or heavy sweaters in July, lol..... we have deserts, we have continental humidity, we have skiing year round ONLY if you take a helicopter high into the rockies..... and most provinces have the mosquito as their unofficial Provincial Bird.