{"id":2127,"date":"2011-06-22T11:54:34","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T15:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/?p=2127"},"modified":"2011-06-22T12:03:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-22T16:03:11","slug":"drowning-in-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/drowning-in-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Drowning in English"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jean-Benoit recently attended a conference of the association, Francophonie des Am\u00e9rique<\/a>s<\/em> where he heard <\/em>University of Laval professor Michelle Daveluy speak about her adventures aboard the Canadian Marine\u2019s frigates NCSM Ville de Qu\u00e9bec<\/em> and HMCS Vancouver<\/em>. Daveluy, a communications ethnologist, spent several weeks at sea with the Canadian marines researching how communication happens in a bilingual military environment.<\/p>\n

Daveluy got a good laugh from the audience with one of her stories.<\/p>\n

Specific military regulations about bilingualism require the HMCS Vancouver<\/em> to have on board 30% unilingual Francophones, and on the NCSM Ville de Qu\u00e9bec<\/em>, 30% unilingual Anglophones.<\/p>\n

The NCSM Ville de Qu\u00e9bec<\/em> ship is the only Francophone unit of the Canadian marines. Far from being the poor cousin of the fleet, candidates wait a long time to be appointed to this elite ship.<\/p>\n

Daveluy found that the practice of bilingualism on the francophone ship was stratified. The officers made an effort to speak, the sub-officers less so, and the marines not at all. They simply lived in linguistic bubbles according to their mother tongues. So a unilingual Anglophone marine could spend 22 years aboard the NCSM Ville de Qu\u00e9bec<\/em> without learning a word of French \u2013 and many did.<\/p>\n

Daveluy saw that there are limits to bilingual regulations, to put it mildly. The NCSM Ville de Qu\u00e9bec<\/em> must communicate in English with all other Canadian units. And in emergency situations, all communication had to take place in English. Why? For the safety of the 30%-regulation unilingual Anglophones. \u00a0One can well imagine the distress of a unilingual Anglophone watching the waters rise, and only hearing French\u2026<\/p>\n

Yet as Daveluy discovered, there is no such regulation-counterpart to protect the 30%-regulation unilingual Francophones on the HMCS Vancouver<\/em>. In emergency situations there, communication is also in English. So if the francophone marines are going to drown, they\u2019ll have to do it in English.<\/p>\n

As the slogan of the now defunct Croc magazine went: It\u2019s not because we laugh that it\u2019s funny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean-Benoit recently attended a conference of the association, Francophonie des Am\u00e9riques where he heard University of Laval professor Michelle Daveluy speak about her adventures aboard …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[52,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2127"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2132,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127\/revisions\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}