User:Caeliv

School work to print:

Journal #1

In Canada, all signage, government service, and

publications must be printed in both English and French

under the Bill 101. Very little attention has been paid to the

“original” languages of Canada – the aboriginal languages.

I believe this has occurred as a result of assimilation. The

original European settlers believed that in order to be a

productive, intelligent society they must speak the language

of intelligent people. Speaking their native languages was

forbidden in residential schools, and a strong focus was put

on learning either English or French depending on your

region. As a result, very few people retain their aboriginal

languages. As quoted from wikipedia: “According to the

2006 census, just over 250,000 Canadians know how to

speak one or more of the country's top 25 aboriginal

languages. About half this number (129,865) reported using

an aboriginal language on a daily basis.” Since so very few

people speak these languages, a focus is not put upon them.

In fact, of the top 20 most popular languages in Canada, not

even one specific aboriginal language is included. I do not

believe that any aboriginal language, unless it reaches the

popularity of English or French, should be included as an

official language. There are many other more commonly

spoken languages, such as Chinese which is spoken by

790,000 Canadians, Punjabi by 280,000, Spanish by

210,000 and Italian by 170,000. No specific aboriginal

language comes close to the popularity of even one of these

languages. If we were to allow aboriginal languages to

become an official language, you could expect the Chinese

to object and say it’s not far that a less-popular language

gets the privileges of far more popular ones.