Last night, I went to the movies with Alicia… the two of us are avid fans of made in Québec films and we wanted to see «J’ai tué ma mère»… a movie that was nominated for five categories at the Cannes Film Festival 2009. It actually received the Art Cinema Award, the Regards Jeunes Prize and the SACD Prize… quite an achievement for Xavier Dolan (age 20) who wrote, directed and played the main character in this movie. That being said, anyone who enjoys movie series such as Tranformers or Terminator would not really appreciate this kind of movies… only because there is no action!
This morning, I had a short chat on Skype with an English-speaking friend of mine who asked me what was the title of the movie I had seen… A few minutes later, he sent me a link with the movie detailed description. I was kind of puzzled… I had to check twice to make sure it was the same movie I had seen with Alicia. Of course, I told my friend what the movie was really about!… According to this american website, the plot is: A semi-autobiographical about Dolan as a young homosexual at odds with his mother… First of all, the main character is fictive although probably inspired by several stories… Yes, Hubert (the 16 year old main character) is marginal because of his homosexuality yet a typical teenager who is in a love-hatred relationship with his mother. And being gay is not the reason for this ambiguous mother/son relationship… Obviously he accepts his homosexuality and it is not a big deal for his mother either.
It is the story of an often stormy relationship between a teenager and his mother… it is about growing up… it is about that phase between childhood and adulthood… not necessarily the easiest, but not the worst either… it is only a passage rite…
I kind of pondered upon this for a while this afternoon… why is the English description so far away from the French description of the same movie? Would it be due to a bad translation in the subtitles?… Well… although dialogues would be altered by some misinterpretation in English, the images stay the same… right? What we see should be the same, no matter the language we speak… Yet it seems that we see it through different glasses… If language constructs the way we see the world, this is a good example! Because we communicate differently based on the language we speak, we get different messages… and it is fascinating! It certainly contributes to illustrate and understand what we call the two solitudes in Canada.
On the other hand, Alicia (who is an Anglophone) interpreted the movie the way I did… yet she is bilingual and, last night, she watched the movie with the French side of her brain… I wonder whether she had seen it differently if she had stayed tuned to her English mode…
This reflection led me to the oral interaction test… okay… you probably wonder what is the connection… actually I was thinking about language and culture… For the past two weeks I have been preparing Joyce for her oral test that will be held next Tuesday afternoon… Joyce’s mother tongue is English but she attendend French immersion school and her husband is Francophone… In my book, she is bilingual. She has no problems communicating in French: her comprehension is excellent and when she speaks, her message is as clear as crystal…
Yet she is struggling with the third part of the oral test simulation: the two/three minute presentation followed with hypothetical and opinion questions. Does she make mistakes when she expresses herself in French? Of course she does!… Just like anyone else! I do not know many people who can master two languages… but, when it comes down to communication, no one is seeking perfection. Well… except the PSC!… My problem with this test is that it does not take into account cultural differences… Joyce is from New-Brunswick… There are many Francophones in this province. We call them the Acadians… They have a very unique way of speaking French and, personally, I do think their language is colourful and filled with local flavours… Joyce was born and raised in New-Brunswick, therefore she speaks French the way Acadians do… Tell me… what is wrong with that?
Last week I suggested that she could practice her conditional and subjunctive (her weak spots) with her husband… His first reaction was: “But… we don’t speak French like this here!”… Precisely! The only answer Joyce could come up with was: “Well… it’s the way they speak in Ottawa!”… Well, no one in the National Capital speaks like that either! If they have their own expressions in Moncton, people in Ottawa have their own also… are they better? Absolutely not!…
Right now I do feel cheap… because I am asking her to let go of her spontaneity in order to speak French according to the standards established by the PPC… Foutaise!!!… Now when we are practicing the presentation part of the test, Joyce doesn’t sound natural and joyful… the way she usually is! Why, in the name of God, are candidates not allowed to just be themselves and speak French according to their personality and cultural background with the expressions they know and use naturally?… Joyce will work in Moncton and chances are that she will speak French with Acadians and not with some scholars from La Sorbonne!… All this nonsense originates from the PPC stubborness to standardize the oral test. They have one model… one pattern… one way to measure candidates’ competence in French… and do I have to mention that this model is far from being perfect? It is fake, superficial and it does not measure anything else than people’s tolerance to the most stressful situation of their working lives!
Hopefully, one day, the PPC so-called panel of experts will realize the importance of cultural differences all across the country and they will allow people to express themselves in the language that is commonly used in their regions… which is still French, but with its specific cultural expressions and differences…
“La soif d’égalité n’est souvent qu’une forme avouable du désir d’avoir des inférieurs et pas de supérieurs”
Gustave Le Bon
A Language Barrier or… Cultural Differences?
Last night, I went to the movies with Alicia… the two of us are avid fans of made in Québec films and we wanted to see «J’ai tué ma mère»… a movie that was nominated for five categories at the Cannes Film Festival 2009. It actually received the Art Cinema Award, the Regards Jeunes Prize and the SACD Prize… quite an achievement for Xavier Dolan (age 20) who wrote, directed and played the main character in this movie. That being said, anyone who enjoys movie series such as Tranformers or Terminator would not really appreciate this kind of movies… only because there is no action!
This morning, I had a short chat on Skype with an English-speaking friend of mine who asked me what was the title of the movie I had seen… A few minutes later, he sent me a link with the movie detailed description. I was kind of puzzled… I had to check twice to make sure it was the same movie I had seen with Alicia. Of course, I told my friend what the movie was really about!… According to this american website, the plot is: A semi-autobiographical about Dolan as a young homosexual at odds with his mother… First of all, the main character is fictive although probably inspired by several stories… Yes, Hubert (the 16 year old main character) is marginal because of his homosexuality yet a typical teenager who is in a love-hatred relationship with his mother. And being gay is not the reason for this ambiguous mother/son relationship… Obviously he accepts his homosexuality and it is not a big deal for his mother either.
It is the story of an often stormy relationship between a teenager and his mother… it is about growing up… it is about that phase between childhood and adulthood… not necessarily the easiest, but not the worst either… it is only a passage rite…
I kind of pondered upon this for a while this afternoon… why is the English description so far away from the French description of the same movie? Would it be due to a bad translation in the subtitles?… Well… although dialogues would be altered by some misinterpretation in English, the images stay the same… right? What we see should be the same, no matter the language we speak… Yet it seems that we see it through different glasses… If language constructs the way we see the world, this is a good example! Because we communicate differently based on the language we speak, we get different messages… and it is fascinating! It certainly contributes to illustrate and understand what we call the two solitudes in Canada.
On the other hand, Alicia (who is an Anglophone) interpreted the movie the way I did… yet she is bilingual and, last night, she watched the movie with the French side of her brain… I wonder whether she had seen it differently if she had stayed tuned to her English mode…
This reflection led me to the oral interaction test… okay… you probably wonder what is the connection… actually I was thinking about language and culture… For the past two weeks I have been preparing Joyce for her oral test that will be held next Tuesday afternoon… Joyce’s mother tongue is English but she attendend French immersion school and her husband is Francophone… In my book, she is bilingual. She has no problems communicating in French: her comprehension is excellent and when she speaks, her message is as clear as crystal…
Yet she is struggling with the third part of the oral test simulation: the two/three minute presentation followed with hypothetical and opinion questions. Does she make mistakes when she expresses herself in French? Of course she does!… Just like anyone else! I do not know many people who can master two languages… but, when it comes down to communication, no one is seeking perfection. Well… except the PSC!… My problem with this test is that it does not take into account cultural differences… Joyce is from New-Brunswick… There are many Francophones in this province. We call them the Acadians… They have a very unique way of speaking French and, personally, I do think their language is colourful and filled with local flavours… Joyce was born and raised in New-Brunswick, therefore she speaks French the way Acadians do… Tell me… what is wrong with that?
Last week I suggested that she could practice her conditional and subjunctive (her weak spots) with her husband… His first reaction was: “But… we don’t speak French like this here!”… Precisely! The only answer Joyce could come up with was: “Well… it’s the way they speak in Ottawa!”… Well, no one in the National Capital speaks like that either! If they have their own expressions in Moncton, people in Ottawa have their own also… are they better? Absolutely not!…
Right now I do feel cheap… because I am asking her to let go of her spontaneity in order to speak French according to the standards established by the PPC… Foutaise!!!… Now when we are practicing the presentation part of the test, Joyce doesn’t sound natural and joyful… the way she usually is! Why, in the name of God, are candidates not allowed to just be themselves and speak French according to their personality and cultural background with the expressions they know and use naturally?… Joyce will work in Moncton and chances are that she will speak French with Acadians and not with some scholars from La Sorbonne!… All this nonsense originates from the PPC stubborness to standardize the oral test. They have one model… one pattern… one way to measure candidates’ competence in French… and do I have to mention that this model is far from being perfect? It is fake, superficial and it does not measure anything else than people’s tolerance to the most stressful situation of their working lives!
Hopefully, one day, the PPC so-called panel of experts will realize the importance of cultural differences all across the country and they will allow people to express themselves in the language that is commonly used in their regions… which is still French, but with its specific cultural expressions and differences…
“La soif d’égalité n’est souvent qu’une forme avouable du désir d’avoir des inférieurs et pas de supérieurs”
Gustave Le Bon