Canada, a bilingual country?

[matai]

Canada is a bilingual country, officially, at least.

What surprises me is that commercial radios outside Quebec NEVER EVER play any French Canadian music, even though the French represents 25% of the population.

In Quebec, radios are under obligation to play a certain percentage of French music, it's a CRTC regulation, otherwise, they get their broadcast licenses revoked.

Do you think Canadians would be more open and less racist towards the French culture if their radio were playing some French hits once in a while instead of 10x a day the same (sometimes) boring English song?

[sobrohusfat]

No - they'd just turn the dial.


There's already a french station

[matai]

As an example, NRJ ("Energy") Montreal:

http://montreal.radionrj.ca/

You will notice their website looks EXACTLY like SunFM. Of course, it's the same company.

[Dizzy1]

Racist? Seriously?

[LoneWolf_53]

Canadians might be more "open" as you put it, if Quebecers showed a little less disdain for all things English, considering they are part of a bilingual country.

As it stands it's more a case of what goes around comes around.

[matai]

Racist? Seriously?

No, I'm just kidding, not.

[Dizzy1]

Canadians might be more "open" as you put it, if Quebecers showed a little less disdain for all things English, considering they are part of a bilingual country.

As it stands it's more a case of what goes around comes around.

Bingo.

Mind you I wouldn't mind if they played a bit Alizee :)

[sobrohusfat]

Here you go Matai:



Fill your boots!

(see what i did there?...boots...bottine.......fill 'em)

[GenesisGT]

Celine Dion, My Heart Will Go On, I think we have another ten years to go before we drop below 10% Quebec acts on english radio.

[Captain Awesome]

What's good music from Quebec?

I like French Zaz. Anybody similar to her in Quebec?

[Xia33]

Canada’s linguistic diversity extends beyond the two official languages. "In Canada, 4.7 million people (14.2% of the population) reported speaking a language other than English or French most often at home and 1.9 million people (5.8%) reported speaking such a language on a regular basis as a second language (in addition to their main home language, English or French). In all, 20.0% of Canada's population reported speaking a language other than English or French at home. For roughly 6.4 million people, the other language was an immigrant language, spoken most often or on a regular basis at home, alone or together with English or French whereas for more than 213,000 people, the other language was an Aboriginal language. Finally, the number of people reporting sign languages as the languages spoken at home was nearly 25,000 people (15,000 most often and 9,800 on a regular basis)."[nb 2]

Other languages are used by +/- 20% of the people and French by not a whole lot more (22%+/-) according to stats. May be "officially" a bilingual country, but it may just be a multi lingual country un officially, with English leading.

[GoStumpy]

*removed*

[skydawg]

keeping the french music in quebec is a good thing.

[WeatherWoman]

Canada is a bilingual country, officially, at least.

What surprises me is that commercial radios outside Quebec NEVER EVER play any French Canadian music, even though the French represents 25% of the population.

In Quebec, radios are under obligation to play a certain percentage of French music, it's a CRTC regulation, otherwise, they get their broadcast licenses revoked.

Do you think Canadians would be more open and less racist towards the French culture if their radio were playing some French hits once in a while instead of 10x a day the same (sometimes) boring English song?

Actually the number is closer to 22% including Quebec.

There are two varieties of French in Canada: Acadian and French-Canadian, so which are you refering to?

Québecers whose mother-tongue is French comprise 82% of the local population, thus being a linguistic majority in the province. But outside Québec, it is indeed a minority language, with 33.9% of the population speaking an Acadian variety of French, 4.4% in Manitoba, 4.1% in Ontario, and less than 2% in other provinces (Chevrier, 1997).

A full 95% of French speakers in Canada live in Québec, and just 5% in other parts of the country, and one concern is that this figure will decrease as these Francophones become assimilated into English Canada

With only %5 of the 22% of french speaking Canadians and the majority of those in Ontario, our english radio stations reflect the language of their communities. In French communities I am sure it the radio stations place 100% french as a relection of their population.

I don't see this as rasism. It is a reflection of the majority of people in the community. As an advertiser I want to hit the majority of customers and not the minority.

[jimmy4321]

Only province not bilingual is Quebec, lol