a_gee_dizzle

The federal NDP is struggling right now. What if they were to say, “yenno, fuck it, we’re straight up 100% socialist. Our platform is now that there can be no private ownership of the means of production, all workplaces are democratically run, etc.”? Would this help revitalize the party, or would it cause people to distance themselves even more? What is the state of public opinion on this right now, in your assessment?

Or just an apocalypse in general.

I often see these words used interchangeably, though as I understand it there is a difference between the two ideologies, no?

Serious responses only please

The other day some of you guys were arguing about whether it was the Russians or Americans behind this disinformation campaign. Well, it turns out it's neither: it's the Dutch (kinda).

Edit: deleted because it looks like this was arleady posted

It's on Elmwood street. Looks pretty gnarly

I was discussing this topic in another thread and I got a lot of downvotes for suggesting that English will not forever be the world's lingua franca. I'm not sure why people took such offence to this idea, I thought it was common knowledge that French would eventually surpass English (or even Mandarin) in terms of total users.

Anyway, I've linked the source of this projection. It's a study/report from Natixis, a major corporate and investment bank (they were studying language growth to do some economic forecasting or whatever). The link to the report should be attached to this post (see page 2 for a summary, but there are subvariations of the projections and different graphs scattered all over the place in the report).

The reasoning is that most of the world is eventually going to start decreasing in population. But the world as a whole will still be growing in population. Why? Because Africa is currently experiencing a massive population boom, so the demographic weight of Africa is going to increase substantially (see, for example, the UN projections for world population growth). And of course the French language is widely spoken across Africa.

Now, is there room to critique this report? Absolutely. For instance, you could argue that it's not fair to assume that Africa will continue to be predominately francophone; perhaps many African countries will move away from the French language now that the French colonial area is largely over. There is some movement in that direction. But regardless, this is a serious report, out of a serious institution, written by serious people. So the idea that French may surpass English a very real possibility, despite what some people seem to think.

Someone said this community was dead. Let's prove them wrong. Post pics of your sexiest off roading vehicles

It's a lot of poop guys

No 'they went to go live on a farm' BS. How do you actually tell them without lying?

Right now French and English are the official languages of Canada. There are the English parts (the majority of the country) and the French parts (the biggest being Quebec). But it seems to me that the French-speaking parts punch well above their weight culturally. Because their language insulates them from the strong US cultural influence, giving them space to develop their own unique cultural identity and not have to compete with US media. So it would be a big cultural upgrade if all of Canada spoke French. Plus the French language is cool. Wouldn’t it just be cooler if we all spoke French more?

Q: But how would that work?

A: Good question. Well French immersion is already really common (when English-speaking families sent their kids to French-speaking school). What we need to do is make all schools French immersion, and once we have a generation fluent in French we can begin the process of slowly purging the English language from any sort of government institution. Overtime people will be speaking French so much that it will seep into their private lives and they’ll just speak French at home.

Q: But wouldn’t a policy like this be massively unpopular and cause widespread backlash?

A: Absolutely it would that’s why it’s an unpopular opinion. But in an ideal world, we would do it. 🇨🇦🇫🇷

If anyone wanted to phase out English in favour of some indigenous languages I would be in favour if that too.

Edit for spelling

Another edit: why are you guys downvoting this for disagreeing, you're supposed to disagree thats the point of this sub

I am prepared to cry if need be