OT: Canadians asked to accept spam?!

[Christopher Browne]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Peter <plpeter2006-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Lennart Sorensen <lsorense at ...> writes:
> > I can't recall having encountered language problems at a post office
> > counter.  Must be other parts of Toronto I haven't had to use the post
> > office in.
>
> Okay, I apologize for coming across like that. It was just 2 post offices
> and very briefly, maybe it was a freak in personnel, both were very small
> family businesses. But I noticed other people in the queue also had
> trouble.
> Let's hope it was a freak case. Or two.
>

I live in Agincourt, which I occasionally hear dubbed "Asiancourt," and
it's fair to think that there are more Chinese in the region than there are
"white Anglos" like myself.

That being the case, there will doubtless be some stores in the area that
will get much more accustomed to Mandarin-speaking customers than anything
else.

To someone to whom the "language issue" of Canada is all about
French-versus-English, encountering a shop where *neither* of those
languages are aptly spoken will surely come as a shock to the system.

At my own post office, embedded in a little nearby pharmacy, I have not yet
seen anyone on the postal staff lacking Asian features.  Happily, I haven't
had difficulty communicating with them, and if they were insufficiently
able to communicate in English, this would indeed become a problem, as the
local demographics involve other cultural sources, notably rather a lot of
Tamils, that are not too likely to speak Chinese languages.  As we stir
more cultures into the pot, having English as a lingua franca becomes all
the more essential.  (And the fact that I didn't suggest French is quite
likely correlated with why we are seeing an up-tick in the news of
anti-Anglo rules coming from Quebec; when additional cultures get dropped
into Quebec, "lingua franca" becomes more important, and those worried
about the loss of French in Quebec get all the more worried at that.  Which
doesn't prevent their reactions, or the rules, from looking rather
draconian and unjust...)

I expect that what you describe has happened before, and will happen
again.  But I'm not sure it's systematically problematic.  And making sure
that there's not just one language group getting dropped into an area is a
help...
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
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