Ingulphus Quotes
William the Conqueror had so great an abhorrence of the English language, that he commanded all the laws and law-proceedings to be in French; and even the children in school were taught the first elements of grammar and letters in French and not in English.
William the Conqueror
Ingulphus, c. 1030-1109, Historian and Secretary to William I c. 1028-1087 History
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The 1977 Quebec language law decreed that all immigrants be educated in French, that all businesses transact in French, that English-named towns, rivers, and mountains be Frenchified, and that all English (or even bilingual) commercial signs be outlawed. Other minorities could only transact business in French. After great protest and ridicule the Quebec Parliament amended the law to allow French signs to contain another language provided that the font of the other language was no bigger than half that of the French.
This referendum was passed by the voters as a backlash against the large influx of Hispanics and especially Cubans.
The King was concerned because many of the English living in Ireland were “going native” and he also thought that if the Irish could become more civilized they could be assimilated instead of having to control them with expensive troops. To some extent this actually worked, especially in speaking English, but the entire law was very difficult to enforce. It did however, keep the Englishmen from departing from English dress, speech and household arrangements.
He was interviewed by PBS and asked why he introduced and financed California Proposition 227 the severely limited and curtailed bilingual education. Based on his success getting Proposition 227 passed in California, he tried to follow suit with Arizona Proposition 203, Colorado Amendment 31, and Massachusetts Question 2 which were not so successful. The research on Bilingual Education is mixed with some studies showing benefits and others not. Intuitively, the case against it was easier to sell as the objective was to develop English Proficiency and it was hard for many people to understand how that would better be accomplished if other classes were taught in a native language like Spanish. The other side point out that students who come the the United States very competent in Mathematics, Science and History get thrown into English speaking classes in those subjects and the fall behind very quickly. By the time their English is sufficient to take instruction in English, they have already failed the courses in which they used to be good and have to take them again if they are still in school which is rare since the lack of English skills causes them to fail all subjects if a Bilingual program is not available for their math, science, and history courses. Both sides of the argument have a point, but in many anti-Bilingual campaigns, the educational arguments gets lost and the issue becomes whether or not America should be an English speaking country, and Hispanic chauvinism and anti Hispanic racism end up driving much of the debate.
This was another of the radical reforms of Queen Victoria. Most counties were terribly sensitive about the language used by their citizens. Where there were different ethnic language groups, the dominant group tended to make the use and teaching of other languages illegal. So it was in Great Britain where Gaelic, traditionally spoken in Scotland and Welsh, spoken in Wales, were discouraged and not taught in the schools. The Queen shocked the right wing language nationalists with this letter making a major language and cultural reform in Great Britain. Victoria herself had learned a number of languages when she was a young girl and realized that the schools were the ideal place to develop multiple language facilities. Lansdowne promptly instituted the queen’s desired language reforms to the delight of the Scots and the Welsh. Rather than create disunity, the Scots and Welsh became more loyal to the Nation that recognized them, their culture and their rights.
This is a classic example of the absurd chauvinism that people develop over language. Even in modern times, the French are paranoid about their language and a Norwegian government fell over which dialect of Norwegian was used on a television news program.
Senior civil judge in the Court of Appeal of England and Wales
This was before the state had officially sanctioned and accepted the church. Most of the institutions were pagan and the kings had subjects of both religions with Christianity not yet dominant. Yet among Christians, the Church had government temporal power, even before the church was allied with the state.
Executed by the English for his part in the Easter Uprising. At the time English was the world language of commerce and French, the language of diplomacy.
Stalin was then only 26 years old. This was more than a decade BEFORE the Russian Revolution and Stalin was a young left wing revolutionary planning how to bring about a revolution and how the society should operate thereafter. He was then much the youthful, intellectual, Georgian idealist. The Russian upper class all spoke Russian and usually French and English as well. But the working class only spoke a single language—their native language which was for huge numbers of Russians, not Russian. It was Ukrainian, Georgian, and many others.
