One in twenty Toronto residents can't speak English or French

Meh. We couldn't speak English either when we moved here. The difference? We didn't move to an ethnic enclave so learned the language out of necessity. Too many newcomers in too short a time span tend to congregate amongst their own, thereby removing that necessity. And that's the problem. Every big western city has a Chinatown or Little Italy where many folks don't speak the local language as they can work and live amongst other expats. And that's fucked.
 
Scheme said:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...cant-speak-english-or-french-study-finds.html



What do you guys think? I would imagine one of the basic necessities of being an immigrant is at least knowing the language. 1 in 20 sounds ridiculous to me. You essentially can't communicate with two people on your bus. To put this in perspective, gay people only make up 1.7% of the population, so there are 3x more people who don't speak the native language than homosexuals in the population.
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Can't speak at what level? I know lots of people who have lived in the US their whole life who can barely speak English.

Also, immigrants will learm the language. Give them a minute.
 
How many people in NYC cant speak English? I bet its higher.
 
So 95% can speak English or french.....and 5% can't.


OMG the sky is falling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You essentially can't communicate with two people on your bus.
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Who gives a shit? Literally nobody speaks to strangers in most western societies anymore....LMFAO @ you trying to say they are ruining the community aspect of Canada.....Sorry bro, but there is no community aspect at all....People mind their own business and do their own shit.
 
It's cute that French is added in, because official language. Ontario is basically full-on English-speaking.
 
Bald1 said:
Meh. We couldn't speak English either when we moved here. The difference? We didn't move to an ethnic enclave so learned the language out of necessity. Too many newcomers in too short a time span tend to congregate amongst their own, thereby removing that necessity. And that's the problem. Every big western city has a Chinatown or Little Italy where many folks don't speak the local language as they can work and live amongst other expats. And that's fucked.
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It's called ghettoization.
 
It's 2018. Should we keep on pretending that Canada is a real country?
 
Scheme said:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...cant-speak-english-or-french-study-finds.html



What do you guys think? I would imagine one of the basic necessities of being an immigrant is at least knowing the language. 1 in 20 sounds ridiculous to me. You essentially can't communicate with two people on your bus. To put this in perspective, gay people only make up 1.7% of the population, so there are 3x more people who don't speak the native language than homosexuals in the population.
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Bullshit, Toronto is at least 69% gay, and everyone else is bi.
 
SaiWa said:
Your friend is an idiot and you obviously have never lived in a multi-lingual household. My parents only spoke to me in Cantonese and i (and my brother) had no problem speaking and writing in french and English. Knowing multiple languages is good thing. As long the kid is in an environment (day care or school with people who speak English for example) they will have no problem adapting and figuring what is English and what isn’t. My parents only speak to my nephews in Cantonese and my brother and his wife use both and those kids have no problem speaking English.
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Both of my parents speak a different dialect, our friends speak the national language and the subjects in school were taught in english. My language skills is over 9000.
 
SaiWa said:
Your friend is an idiot and you obviously have never lived in a multi-lingual household. My parents only spoke to me in Cantonese and i (and my brother) had no problem speaking and writing in french and English. Knowing multiple languages is good thing. As long the kid is in an environment (day care or school with people who speak English for example) they will have no problem adapting and figuring what is English and what isn’t. My parents only speak to my nephews in Cantonese and my brother and his wife use both and those kids have no problem speaking English.
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He's an idiot for wanting his son to get a grasp of his country's native tongue before learning other languages? He doesn't want to prevent him from learning them, he just want him to focus on English first.
 
Could not possibly care less.
 
Seano said:
To be fair, I don't think we really stress it here in the states either. I don't really get why not. Being able to communicate with each other is beneficial to a society.
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Why? You can just dial 1 for Espanol.
 
Eh, my grandparents lived in TO their entire lives after they left Germany. My grandmother barely spoke passable English (probably due to being a stay at home Mom and not having constant contact with English speakers) and my grandfather spoke his own brand of hybridized German/English (which actually worked surprisingly well, probably because the two languages are remarkably similar once you get over pronunciation).

Both of their daughters grew up to be English teachers.
 
So what you're saying is there's a developing demographic in Canada that is neither belligerent nor pretentious douchebags....

J/K...about the pretentious part.
 
1 out of 20 is amazing since I’m told Toronto is immigrant and progressive central
 
Bald1 said:
Meh. We couldn't speak English either when we moved here. The difference? We didn't move to an ethnic enclave so learned the language out of necessity. Too many newcomers in too short a time span tend to congregate amongst their own, thereby removing that necessity. And that's the problem. Every big western city has a Chinatown or Little Italy where many folks don't speak the local language as they can work and live amongst other expats. And that's fucked.
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Well I think the city I am in is getting rid of it's chinatown and the lil italy is almost gone. Let's just say those areas got hip.
 
irish_thug said:
He's an idiot for wanting his son to get a grasp of his country's native tongue before learning other languages? He doesn't want to prevent him from learning them, he just want him to focus on English first.
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You’re an idiot for thinking a child cannot learn multiple language growing up. The best time to learn is from the beginning. Start them at young age and it generally stays with them as long as they use it (at home or in the community).

As a matter of fact your friend’s child is in the best situation to be multilingual. English will be naturally learned through community exposure (school, friends, watching tv, movies, etc..). And the child could easily learn Macedonian (Slavic) and Tagalog language at home. If they wanted him to learn a language that is neither the community language or their native home language then that’s when it gets way more difficult but people do it (with money to hire a tutor). Your friend’s kid first language will always be the community language (English). Everything else will be extra gravy.

You underestimate how well children can learn languages. My parents barely knew any french and my brother and I had no problem learning french and Cantonese. Then we learned English when we moved to Australia. I learned English (and was out of ESL classes) in less than a year.
 
Scheme said:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...cant-speak-english-or-french-study-finds.html



What do you guys think? I would imagine one of the basic necessities of being an immigrant is at least knowing the language. 1 in 20 sounds ridiculous to me. You essentially can't communicate with two people on your bus. To put this in perspective, gay people only make up 1.7% of the population, so there are 3x more people who don't speak the native language than homosexuals in the population.
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youre not going to talk to them anyway.

it will cause you 0 problems.
 
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