Languages and Nations

I was talking with one of my schoolmates who will have his first baby soon. I asked him if his children were going to be multilingual. He replied that was for sure. Both he and his wife speak English and French fluently. In addition, his wife speaks Vietnamese fluently. So my schoolmate said his children would speak English, French, and Vietnamese.

I have some European friends as well some friends from the US mentioned that many people in the US only speak English. I think this might relate to the fact that all people in the US except for the native Americans were/are immigrants. Integration was the supreme task for families from different backdrops. The trade off is that people became monolingual. You might have known that my schoolmate and his wife are not from the US. They are from Canada.

Last Saturday evening, I went to the farewell party of the couple. At the party, one of their friends did a quite survey on "what is your favor thing(s) about Canada?" as the couple are moving back to Montreal.

Even though I haven't lived in Canada, there are a lot of good things about Canada. Canada is a neighboring country to the US. Yet, the country has two official languages. It is a part of the Commonwealth. It has universal health care.

In the early of this century, when people from the US traveling in the Europe, they liked to say they were from Canada. Thanks to the 2008 presidential election in the US, people started to be excited about the US. Two of my housemate's friends who were visiting from Vancouver, BC said they wished they would vote in November.

P.S. Trying to be more politically correct, I use "the US" instead of "America". As "America" includes north and south. North America includes the US and Canada.