Observation: Le mot québécois pour «dry cleaning» est «nettoyage», mais le mot française europeanne est «la pressing». 19990707T0018

0707T0854

T1736 There is a city called la cité du Westmount which is an enclave in le ville de Montréal. You know why.

Today I visited Jardin botanique, Insectarium, Biodôme and Musée Steward (Île-Ste-Hélène).

Jardin botanique and Insectarium was ok, save the kids running around.

Biodôme was the awesomest of its kind I've seen: a juxtaposition between a museum, a zoo, and a botanical garden, it recreates 4 ecologies. The entering of each will give a similar sensation of entering a holodeck in Star Trek. Real, live, rare birds are used in the demonstrations. Totally cool.

The Musée Stewart on Île-Sainte-Hélène had exhibitions of North American history, with a concentrationon the former French North America (New France), and a special exhibition on Napoléon.

It is not a casual expression to say that Québec, and the problems therein, is the heritage of the French-English enmity far away in Europe hundreds of years ago. Musée Stewart explains this.

I am still not sure how to make of my linguistic experience in Montréal. Here is a brief exchange in la Musée Stewart between me and the ticketlady:

«Bon jour.»
«Bon jour.» -- me
« . . . (française) . . . billet?»
"I am sorry, what was that?"
"May I have your ticket please?"

Still, feels like a high school French test gone out of control and grew as big as a city. T1757

Hungry.
Uyghur restaurant.
Depanneur -- timbres
-- cartes de poste
T1758

I should read up on Québec, Canadian, and European histories. T1759

T1948 It poured right after I ate. Now the rain had stopped.

I don't want to talk without principle and say whatever is convenient, but I felt somehow uncomfortable as an anglophone in Québec.

The only person that was closest to being mean to me was the bus driver; however, the discomfort is still there.

Although what the Parti québécois has done is similar to what some Taiwanese language activist want to do, it may not be the best policy.

It is still unilingualism, or to be nicer: dominated bilingualism/multilingualism. T1955

Ligne orange, à direction Côte-Vertu T2146

This is the part where I 'invented' theoretical statistical sociolinguistics.

In a society, the ratio of the population of people monolingual in language X is [X]. That bilingual in languages X & Y, preferring X is [XY]. That bilingual in X & Y, preferring Y is [YX].

Example:
In society S, we only have two languages A & B. We thus have [A], [B], [AB], [BA] >= 0, [A] + [B] + [AB] + [BA] = 1.

All two party communications can be expressed in the multiplication of 2 []'s. Some of the multiplication rules:

~> means: contributes to
[X][X] ~> X
[X][XY] ~> X
[X][YX] ~> X
[XY][XY] ~> X
0.5 [XY][YX] ~> X, ~> Y
[X][Y] ~> 0 (empty set)

Example: so, in our previous example, all 2-party communications can be written as ([A] + [B] + [AB] + [BA])²

So, the probability of communication in language A is: prob(A) = [A][A] + 2 [A][AB] + 2 [A][BA] (unilingual terms) + [AB][AB] + [AB][BA] (2 × 0.5) (preference terms)

total population approximately = 1

(Is this correct? Am I overcounting in those terms with a factor of 2?)

We have something similar for that of language B.

The probability of a communication failure is simply prob(0) = [A][B] + [B][A] (both unilingual terms) T2208

If there is a language policy (governmental intervention) to enforce preference in language A, assume [BA] = 0, and [B] << 1. What happens? T2210

(Gare Centrale)

T2240 The probability calculations above is correct when total population >> 1. (bus 105 ouest)