Leyland Cecco , The Guardian; Canadian astronaut’s bon mots help heal wounds from French language row
"On day three of the mission, as the Integrity spacecraft hurtled towards the moon, Jeremy Hansen turned to a camera. “Bonjour tout le monde,” he said from nearly 125,000 miles away – a greeting with a literal translation that captured the immensity of the journey: hello all of the world.
“For the first time in history, our language, the French language, was expressed en route to the moon,” posted a Canadian parliamentarian. “Never had French been spoken from so far away.”
Hansen’s decision to speak French, during the mission and at a Nasa press conference on his return to the Earth, came shortly after a linguistic row – and public relations nightmare – for Canada’s flagship airline, that underscored how deeply the language is linked to the country’s politics and culture.
The Air Canada chief Michael Rousseau was forced to resign last month amid a storm of indignation after he spoke just two words of French in a video tribute to two pilots killed in a fatal collision. One of the pilots was a native French speaker, and Air Canada is based in Montreal, and Rousseau’s failure to speak the language – despite having a francophone mother and wife – has been seen as a snub to the 80% of Quebec’s population who do...
Upon return to Earth, the Artemis crew appeared moved by the deeply human experience of leaving the planet. Hansen later said it made him realize humans were “small and powerless – yet powerful together”.
Recent developments in artificial intelligence and wearable technology have led some to suggest that learning a second language is no longer important. But the Canadian astronaut’s decision to deliberately speak French, with the world watching reflected the deep cultural component embedded in learning and respecting another language.
“Of course, language is a tool of information, exchange and communication. But it’s so much more than that. Anyone who decides to learn to speak another language than their own, realizes the extent to which any language comes with a specific conception of the world and the universe around us,” said Chouinard. “It’s really a way to learn to see the world – our world – through a different lens.”"
No comments:
Post a Comment