How will doom-monging Francomaniacs explain this? Vancouver french immersion can't take all applicants, and more are piling in. For a province on the other end of the country, BC is quite keen on the language Duceppe, Marois and company call endangered.
The CBC report is a pleasant read. It shows many parents being much more pragmatic than certain brave-new-world-ists. Those are the cretins who'd have you believe their pathological guilt-induced mania of English, and the West, being on their way out. Chased out by Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, et cetera.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and the Van parents know it. Rather than heeding the asinine suggestion of Mandarin immersion ventilated in the comments section (always an entertaining read, if you want to gauge the extent of human ignorance that is), one is well advised to know that it's unilingual Chinese who are on their way out. In the meantime, many jobs in Canada will pay you better if (or not hire you unless) you speak French.
French has traction throughout Canada because mindful parents (and just-as-mindful students) know it's still the language that unlocks doors, or opens them wider throughout the country. It has lost momentum almost everywhere else, in no small part due to the very same people who purport to protect it.
English has the soft power of business and education, Italian entices through the arts, Arabic through oil and geopolitical events, Spanish and Portuguese through Latin American development. What is the selling point of French?
It used to be the language of the European aristocracy. It has to share its space with others in the EU bureaucracy. An uncompetitive job market at home and lack of coordinated development abroad are reducing French to just above niche language.
It needn't be so. French-speaking nations need to find a common selling point for their language and coordinate efforts to entice learners. If sustainable development and the African renaissance spoke French, the next generation of businessmen and civil servants the world over would be blabbering in it non-stop. The continent is, on the other hand, being penetrated by English and Chinese.
I like being able to speak French. Despite this, I hate seeing others have the language rammed down their throats. A hated language is worse than a dead one, and the efforts by some in France and Quebec to impose their vernacular are nothing but a recipe for disaster.
I have no magic solution to French woes. I merely see it losing ground because some are too busy duct-taping what's solid and ignoring the rest of the house crumbling.
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