Miscellany
- I'm on LanguageLog again - Mark Liberman quoted an e-mail I wrote him regarding the Texas Longhorns salute. Briefly put, a journalist claimed that the gesture was also an obscene sign in ASL ... which wasn't actually true. But yaaaaaaaay for LanguageLog!
- The grad school applications continue - or rather, the associated drama continues. Still no sign of my recommender (who is also my adviser - man, I'm scared), but Chicago says they won't hold that against me. Which means either a) there isn't a problem; or b) there are worse problems. Ugghhh, I really don't want to think about it any more. And I haven't heard anything from Penn.
- Open question: am I a bad person? I just can't muster up too much sympathy for the Anglophone nurses who have been fired because they can't read and write in French.
Language cops bust Quebec nurses
By BRIAN DALY
Canadian Press
POSTED AT 8:29 PM EST
Tuesday, Jan 4, 2005 Montreal
Two nurses at an English hospital have had their licences revoked after failing a written French test even though Quebec faces a nursing shortage. Elizabeth Davantes, 47, and Eulin Gumbs, 43, who both speak French, say they'll look for work outside Quebec after losing their jobs recently at the Jewish General Hospital.
Quebec's language watchdog and the provincial nursing federation require that all nurses, even those in English hospitals, pass a written French test. Ms. Gumbs has failed the test five times, while Ms. Davantes has failed on four occasions. Ms. Gumbs, a single mother of two, said Tuesday she's looking for a job elsewhere now that she can't work here.
I don't want to leave, said Ms. Gumbs, who rates her spoken French as excellent. Quebec is my home. My family lives here, my kids live here. But I cannot support myself on nothing. The Office de la langue francaise recently warned the use of French in the workplace is in a precarious state in Quebec and Premier Jean Charest has hinted at a crackdown.
However, the province faces a major nursing shortage. A report released in 2003 suggested the province will lose 16 per cent of its nurses to retirement in 2006. Head nurse Serge Cloutier, who worked with the two women, said the ranks of his profession are already thin and won't be helped if nurses are forced out. It's a bad situation, Mr. Cloutier said in an interview.
Of course, if you lose two nurses it makes a difference. The nursing federation did not return phone calls on Tuesday. The hospital said Tuesday it did its best to help the women. The Jewish General Hospital actively tried to keep (the nurses) on staff, even though they failed the written section of the French exam, the hospital said in a statement.
Officials at the hospital wrote several letters to the nursing federation and spoke with the language agency in an attempt to have the nurses' licences extended, said the hospital. But the nurses had their licences revoked in October, said the hospital. A spokesman for the language watchdog, the Office de la langue francaise, said his organization isn't to blame for the two nurses losing their jobs.
Gerald Paquette said the French tests are drafted with the help of professional orders and employers. Rev. Darryl Gray, president of the English-rights lobby group Alliance Quebec, said Quebec is showing ill will towards the women.
Anglophone nurses definitely are not going to jeopardize the French language in this province, he said in an interview. Rev. Gray said he wonders why the province won't work with Ms. Davantes and Ms. Gumbs to help them improve their written French skills. How can we attract people to this province if it has been made clear to us by the province that we're not wanted? he asked.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050104.wnurz0104/BNPrint/National/
Ok, it's rough to lose your job, but isn't it worse to lose your life because you can't read what your nurse wrote on your chart? because she can't read your doctor's instructions? Come on. A nurse has the choice to work on her French, or not to, in a Francophone province; a patient who's already in the hospital doesn't have the time to learn English to make the nurse's life easier.
But if it were a story of two Spanish-speaking nurses in L.A. who had been fired for problems with their English, would my reaction be the same? I'd like to think so ... but I feel like in general I have less sympathy for Anglophones than for other linguistic minorities. Because I'm Anglophone myself? Because after such a long history of linguistic dominance it's time for a little payback? Or because they're not yet a real linguistic minority as long as they retain ties with Anglophone Canada? I just don't know.