silverflight8: bee on rose  (Default)

I'm back home! And before I start blabbering about my trip, I have to say something.

Lots of whining )



But anyway.

Paris was so nice (although it was too warm, in this Canadian's opinion); I'm still kind of disappointed that I didn't see the monument for the Bastille--apparently the place it used to stand is now a roundabout--ouch. As before, I marvelled at the trees--most of them carefully tended into spheres or squares--but the ground is dusty-white, blinding in the sun.

I thought the things people said about London traffic were just exaggerations. I think that just passing London from Manchester was awful; it took a few hours to travel what on an open highway takes less than an hour. London was exciting, though, even if it was just to see, for real, what these places are--all those famous sites and squares and roads that are mentioned in books but never expanded on. (Also, driving from Scotland to England and passing Gretna Green--I laughed so hard. xD) It also shocked me a little that King Henry VIII is buried with Jane Seymour--and he must have chosen it too, having died after her. Also, 221B Baker Street. (!) And the British Museum, an outstanding example of imperialism at its finest (collector's curios my hat! You've carted the Parthenon, not to mention thousands of priceless artifacts, to Britain without more than a by-your-leave!) 

Now I have a to-do list that I really don't think I want to even think about, the three birds are squabbling in the living room (although at least they're not having pitched battles anymore) and it's raining more at home than it did in England. I think I need a vacation from my vacation. 

Postcard and letter came from friends! And I think I may finally be able to find one of my friends (didn't know her phone number--she was moving then), so I am in a jubilant mood. :D


silverflight8: bee on rose  (Default)
Usually when I write in either French or Chinese--wait, scratch that, when I attempt--I open up another Word document, because compared to writing in those other two languages, English is a breeze. Analogy: because I'm far better in English than any other language (which, to be honest, I feel kind of bad about), it always feels like I'm trying to make really fine jewelery with thick gloves on. I know exactly what I want to say, exactly how it should come out--in English. In the other two languages, I'm stretching frantically for the words I know--and they all seem awkward, already-used, repetitive. In English, I have the luxury of fretting about the wording; sometimes in French, I'm utterly at a loss to find the word I'm looking for.

Oh, and also this. I have a book of poetry that I keep in my bathroom to read when I'm brushing my teeth. It's actually really nice, because it's a textbook of sorts, and has all sorts of wry commentary in the back of the book, but also this quote from Octavio Paz, who is, unsurprisingly, both a poet and a prose writer:

 
"Languages are vast realities that transcend those political and historical entities we call nations. The European languages we speak in the Americas illustrate this. The special position of our literatures, when compared to those of England, Spain, Portugal, and France, derives precisely from this fundamental fact: they are literatures written in transplanted tongues. Languages are born and grow in the native soil, nourished by a common history. The European languages were uprooted and taken to an unknown and unnamed world: in the soil of the societies of America, they grew and were transformed. The same plant, yet a different plant. Our literatures did not passively accept the changing fortunes of their transplanted languages: they participated in the process and even accelerated it. Soon they ceased to be mere transatlantic reflections. At times they have been the negation of the literatures of Europe; more often, they have been a reply.

"In spite of these oscillations, the link has never been broken. My classics are those of my language, and I consider myself to be a descendant of Lope and Quevedo, as any Spanish writer would...yet I am not a Spaniard. I think that most writers of Spanish America as well as those from the United States, Brazil, and Canada would say the same as regards the English, Portuguese, and French traditions. To understand more clearly the special position of writers in the Americas, we should compare it to the dialogue maintained by the Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic writers with the different literatures of Europe: a dialogue that cuts across multiple languages and civilizations. Our dialogue, on the other hand, takes place within the same language. We are Europeans, yet we are not Europeans. What are we, then? It is difficult to define what we are, but our works speak for us."

-Octavio Paz, 1990 Nobel Prize Lecture. Taken from An Introduction to Poetry, Eighth Edition (1994) Kennedy, XJ; Gioia, Dana
 
First: that is an elegant, beautiful metaphor for this. For me, personally, though, this is interesting. My parents learned English in school, sure, like Canadian children learn Spanish and French as secondary languages in school (Quebec, of course, excepted). But it wasn't until they moved to Canada, in their twenties, before they really used it. The language they had lived with all their lives was not English; the idioms and classics they studied were not English, American, or Canadian. I was born in Canada, raised in North America, and consequently speak English better than I do my parents' language, though I am fluent enough. Like Paz: "I consider myself to be a descendant of [well known writers of Spain]...and yet I am not a Spaniard". I am, I suppose, a strange conglomerate of languages, halfway in English, and halfway in another.

Sorry about the vagueness. I'd rather not put too much personal info on my LJ; I'm kind of paranoid.
silverflight8: bee on rose  (Default)
Cross-posted to [livejournal.com profile] bookish .
I read this in French, but I'm afraid my French is too patchy to do the review. :) Not yet ready to risk the pitfalls of French grammar quite yet...

It's easy to dismiss this book as childish, really. The narrator starts off by describing his youth, when he tried to draw a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant, and being told by les grandes personnes--adults--that it was a hat. But it's inn that first chapter, the big theme of the book--the beautiful simplicity and naturalness of children--is shown.

Cut for length )
I'd recommend reading this in the original, French version; the translated English version, I've found, loses a lot of the charm and delight that the original has. 9/10
silverflight8: bee on rose  (Default)
Bill C-232 is now up for debate in the Senate. This bill, which can be searched for by Google would make it mandatory for Supreme Court justices to be bilingual.

In case you don't know, Quebec is one of the provinces, and they speak French (technically, Quebecois, since their version of French is not quite the same as Parisian French anymore). Quebec is also, interestingly, the only place in all of North America where French is spoken, owing to the French loss to the British way back during the Seven Years' War, in the eighteenth century. In consequence, I think the people of Quebec try to really guard their language and customs; they are, after all, in a sea of anglophones.

As far as federal policies go, all federal employees must be bilingual--even if they're Canada Parks rangers way out in the West, or people in the Parliament. All the websites of federal programs and so on can be accessed in French or English; the Prime Minister occasionally debates with other party leaders in French. Legislative work in Ottawa are published in both languages.

However, the farther you move away from Quebec (and New Brunswick, which is the only other province that mandates bilingualism in even the smaller courts), the fewer francophones you will meet. This is especially true for Western Canada (I'm defining this as Manitoba and west); there are few prominent francophone communities, and usually French is learned in schools. Western Canada is primarily anglophone.

And so this bill. I'm on the fence as to whether it's justified or whether we should implement them (being an anglophone, I realize I have privilege in being able to hear court cases in English). I'm not sure that I could really make a judgement on that, and I'm glad that I'm not going to decide this. I do have to say this, though: the application pool is already quite small to select Supreme Court justices from. There aren't all that many people who have the qualifications and the inclination to be a judge; by passing Bill C-232, that will shrink the pool even further.

And the bill won't shrink the pool evenly. No, Western Canada will be hit hardest, because honest to goodness the French culture is simply not here. You walk out onto the street every day of your life, and you will never be required to know French. A lot of kids opt out of learning French.

There's already grumbling from the West that they aren't being represented properly (if you like, take a look at equalization payments, how much Alberta is paying Quebec, and how Quebec is whining about Alberta. /annoyed). Alberta especially pays a great deal towards the East. This is not going to help the East-West division, superficial though it may seem. Citizens who appeal to the Supreme Court (or just have their cases tried there) are allowed to plead in either English or French; translators are used. Furthermore, three of the nine judges must be from the Quebec court; I'm not going to get into how this isn't representation by population, but whatever.

Even bigger of a problem is the familiarity one must have with a language to be a competent Supreme Court justice. It takes  years to become competent in the legal language of one's first language; imagine the time it'd take to acquire it in both. Even supposing you were fully bilingual, from childhood, and understood the nuances of both English and French, you would still need to learn it in both.

In summation: both sides, argh. I'm not too hopeful for this one.


tl;dr Bill C-232--not gonna be pretty, whichever way it goes.
silverflight8: bee on rose  (Default)
This a poem by Reid, published in 1963 and taken out of An Introduction to Poetry, 8th edition, by Kennedy, X and Gioia, D (1994), HarperCollins.




Speaking a Foreign Language
Alastair Reid

How clumsy on the tongue, these acquired idioms,
after the innuendos of our own. How far
we are from foreigners, what faith
we rest in one sentence, hoping a smile will follow
on the appropriate face, always wallowing                                       5
between what we long to say and what we can,
trusting the phrase is suitable to the occasion,
the accent passable, the smile real,
always asking the traveller's fearful question--
what is being lost in translation?                                                        10

Something, to be sure. And yet, to hear
the stumbling of foreign friends, how little we care
for the wreckage of word or tense. How endearing they are,
and how our speech reaches out, like a helping hand,
or limps in sympathy. Easy to understand,                                        15
through the tangle of language, the heart behind
groping towards us, to make the translation of
syntax into love.



I have books all over my home, and I read them at odd times. I read this poem and thought: "This is it. This explains it exactly." It is incredibly frustrating to try to speak and write in French, in Chinese: two languages that I am more or less proficient in, the latter more fluently. In English, having used that language for years and still using it everywhere, the struggle to find words, to describe things adequately is easier. I never think about accents or syntax or grammar; by virtue of living in that tongue, I trust that the people I talk to understand.

In speaking Chinese, sometimes the accent slips from me; my family traditionally speaks another dialect close to Mandarin, but not quite. And so I find myself grasping, trying to form the words exactly right, and always having to think: what do I say next? How does this translate from English to Chinese? In French, because there is nowhere that really requires me to speak in the language, it's even worse. Seeing a word beginning with "r" induces a mild panic in me; I scramble to find the correct word that has already popped up in my mind in English.

Writing is even worse. Working in English is like using tiny tools to craft delicate jewelry; trying to write in French or Chinese is akin to using big thick gloves and trying to manipulate those tools. That exquisite control that makes some writing such a delight to read is lost when I try in other languages.

And yet, like the poem describes in the second stanza, when I talk with people whose native tongue is not English, it hardly matters whether they have an accent or not. The worry that the speaker feels is not translated into frustration for the listener; the mangled syntax is endearing (line 13) and easily pushed away.

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