I find it infuriating that navigation apps throw ads when I'm stopped at a red light. This is THE moment where I should glance away from the road and plan my routing
If you're in the unenviable position of being unable to edit your phone's hosts file, you can block most ads using a DNS-over-HTTPS provider. Mullvad has a free service.
This analogy doesn't map to the actual problem here.
Perplexity is not visiting a website everytime a user asks about it. It's frequently crawling and indexing the web, thus redirecting traffic away from websites.
This crawling reduces costs and improves latency for Perplexity and its users. But it's a major threat to crawled websites
I have never created a website that I would not mind being fully crawled and indexed into another dataset that was divorced from the source (other than such divorcement makes it much harder to check pedigree, which is an academic concern, not a data-content concern: if people want to trust information from sources they can't know and they can't verify I can't fix that for them).
In fact, the "old web" people sometimes pine for was mostly a place where people were putting things online so they were online, not because it would translate directly to money.
Perhaps AI crawlers are a harbinger for the death of the web 2.0 pay-for-info model... And perhaps that's okay.
There's an important distinction that we are glossing over I think. In the times of the "old web", people were putting things online to interact with a (large) online audience. If people found your content interesting, they'd keep coming back and some of them would email you, there'd be discussions on forums, IRC chatrooms, mailing lists, etc. Communities were built around interesting topics, and websites that started out as just some personal blog that someone used to write down their thoughts would grow into fonts of information for a large number of people.
Then came the social networks and walled gardens, SEO, and all the other cancer of the last 20 years and all of these disappeared for un-searchable videos, content farms and discord communities which are basically informational black holes.
And now AI is eating that cancer, but IMO it's just one cancer being replaced by an even more insidious cancer. If all the information is accessed via AI, then the last semblance of interaction between content creators and content consumers disappears. There are no more communities, just disconnected consumers interacting with a massive aggregating AI.
Instead of discussing an interesting topic with a human, we will discuss with AI...
I agree but that cancer isn't limited to the internet or even originated from it. An until society as a whole is ready to deal with it the only thing we can do is form our own subculture that rejects this new normal. Instead of caring about what gets scraped or otherwise used by mega corporations for profit, care about finding more exchanges with real humans. Or in other words: be part creating the world you want to see and ignore those that choose not to participate.
Office Québécois de la Langue Française (OQLF) promotes the french language and adapt new English words (whereas France typically integrate English words in their vocab).
The website Banque de dépannage linguistique (BDL) will have a lot of useful resources if you're interested! For instance, how to write a professional sounding email, names of official documents, invoice templates.
Highlights (good and bad):
* emails -> courriels (courrier + iels; mail + similar sounding syllable)*
* spam mail -> pourriels (pourri + iels; rotten + similar lexem as courriels)
* to spoil (as in spoilers) -> divulgâcher (divulguer + gâcher; to reveal + to ruin)
* to mansplain -> mecspliquer (mec + expliquer; man + to explain); This one is outrageous (and uncommon) because it's an homonym to "m'expliquer" (explain to me)
* to browse (the web) -> naviguer (as in "to navigate"; browser -> "navigateur")
déjeuner is a literal translation though. "Breaking fast" -> "dé-jeuner" (undo fasting).
French people typically say:
- breakfast - petit-déjeuner (small breakfast)
- lunch - déjeuner (breakfast)
- diner - diner
Québecois people say:
- breakfast - déjeuner
- lunch - diner
- diner - souper (eating soup; probably historical roots like "getting your big meal of the day" which is likely broth + potatoes)
This is a remnant of British colonization. French-speaking population didn't know any English, so you have a lot of these literal translations.
I've heard "flour" uttered with the French pronounciation (fl-oo-r, instead of homonym of "flower") in New-Brunswick. I was floored. Took me a while to figure out what they meant.
Clearly, this originates from non-English speakers reading "flour" on a sign and just running with it.
Also, consider that the British conquest happened before watermelon was highly prevalent in France or North-America. It's unsurprising to see terminology diverge in this case.
Well, why not include the word "Canadian", which significantly predates the country, as the prime example?
It's derived from Iroquois Nation words and used by French settlers to refer to Indigenous people. The word "Canada" was used by explorer Jacques Cartier to refer to the city now called "Québec". It broadly refered to the territory of a specific Indigenous tribe. (could be derogatory, but seemingly accurate / matter-of-fact)
After the British invasion, the British start using "Canadian" to describe both First Nations and French settlers (derogatory, "non-British)
Over time, "Canadian" generally refers to habitants of Canada.
Related: the hockey team "Les Canadiens" is from Montréal in the province of Québec in Canada. It's the oldest hockey team (1909, pre-NHL). The name is a reappropriation of the word Canadian at a time where it was used derogatively against "French-Canadians" (term that didn't exist at the time). Their chant "go, habs, go" refers to the "habitants", i.e., French settlers.
Related: "province" originates from latin used by Romans to described conquered territory. This is the term founders of Canada in 1867 decided to use instead of "state"
For anyone interested in Canadian history, always check-out the French version of a wikipedia page (and translate it). English pages have a lot of hand-waving and start history with their conquest. Also, ChatGPT makes outrageous historical mistakes all the time, such as suggesting that French-Canadians were a minority group in the 19th century
> Related: "province" originates from latin used by Romans to described conquered territory. This is the term founders of Canada in 1867 decided to use instead of "state"
> In fact, the word province is an ancient term from public law, which means: "office belonging to a magistrate".
"State" is an overloaded term. In British English it usually refers to the top level political entity, e.g. "head of state" unless specifically talking about the US (except for the Secretary of State...)
I wonder if the word choice was influenced by the US civil war ending only a couple of years previously and wanting to make it unambiguous where the centre of power lay.
> The English word province is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French province, which itself comes from the Latin word provincia, which referred to the sphere of authority of a magistrate, in particular, to a foreign territory.
The fact that British authorities picked a French word that the conquered would understand is significant.
> I wonder if the word choice was influenced by the US civil war ending only a couple of years previously
Interesting interpretation! I would agree given Canadians were given the opportunity to ally with the 13 colonies at the time (but didn't). British loyalists also fled the United States. "Province" made allegiance to the crown oversea clear
> The fact that British authorities picked a French word that the conquered would understand is significant.
That seems unavoidable given almost all English words related to government/law/administration (including "state") derive from French! The only counterexamples I can think of are "borough" and "riding".
> "Province" made allegiance to the crown oversea clear
There is a much clearer term for that though, "dominion" as in "Dominion of Canada". At least to my British English ear "province" simply doesn't have those connotations.
> That seems unavoidable given almost all English words related to government/law/administration (including "state") derive from French!
Interesting. I always thought that Britain adopted parliamentary system earlier than France. I'm guessing this has to do with the period Normandie (i.e., the French king) ruled over England
Norman French was the language of administration in England for about 300 years following the Norman conquest in 1066 and the term "parliament" emerged during this time.
> For anyone interested in Canadian history, always check-out the French version of a wikipedia page
In reading about Canadian history this entire comment strikes me as very "East" biased? (Because I'm reading a strong implication that the French are the true holders of the history and the English just showed up later. Which may very well be true)
> I'm reading a strong implication that the French are the true holders of the history
I interpreted this more as "don't forget to check out the French-language Wikipedia articles too, since they might have contents that are absent from the English-language Wikipedia articles." This would likely be the case for anything concerning Québécois or Acadien culture, or the early settlements by the French; but not likely for most things west of Ottawa (aside from some pockets like Grande Prairie, Alberta or Saint Boniface, Manitoba).
It seems everyone outside of Ontario feels some kind of alienation or other. The west, as you mentioned, but also the maritimes, and especially the Québécois.
Historically speaking, it is the case for Manitoba. Manitoba was founded by French speakers and Winnipeg should be a majority Metis city today. The reason it isn't is because of repression from Ottawa and anglophones. See the Manitoba Schools question and the history of Louis Riel and the Metis treaties.
> It seems everyone outside of Ontario feels some kind of alienation or other. The west, as you mentioned, but also the maritimes, and especially the Québécois.
Yep, and then there's Newfoundland, which isn't even part of the maritimes. (No worries though, they're used to being excluded)
It is true from the Quebec to Manitoba (about the French), but not west of that. The East Coast provinces are more complicated with their own histories.
>> Their chant "go, habs, go" refers to the "habitants"
The province of Quebec has very strong language laws intended to protect the French language. Heavy-handed? You be the judge. City buses in Montreal were recently "pressured" to stop displaying the chant (one of the most Quebecois things you can say to promote your pride) because it's English. Instead they were told to use the super-common-rolls-off-the-tongue-and-way-better "Allez! Canadiens Allez!"
edit: this was later reviewed because of public pressure about just how stupid it is and now "go" is ok. But the language police still say "go" is an Anglicism and public bodies are obligated to use "exemplary" French, so you can see some of that snooty OG France perseveres - I guess the system works!
Be sure to also check out how francophone Quebecois have been very effective at revenge - driving out anglophones and allophones from Quebec through vindictive attacks against their language, culture, schooling and employment. It's sad, but I am ultimately glad I will be the last generation of my family born in Quebec. Au revoir and good riddance.
To put things into perspectives, let’s remember that anglophones in Québec, which represent about 10% of the population, have 3 universities, one of which is McGill, and have there theaters and artists, newspapers and tv shows. Many live in Montréal all there life without knowing a word of French, since it is possible to find almost everywhere someone that speaks English. By constrast, it is less and less easy to live only in French in Montréal, since it is not always possible to find someone that speaks French.
The reality in Montréal is that most people are bilingual. Outside older folks, unilingual French speakers are much rarer than unilingual English speakers, which are structurally preserved via the institutions you described. For instance, English-only schooling from first grade to university is available to them, but not to French-speaking households or immigrants. IMHO, it's a disservice to this population. I've had colleague born in Québec deciding to leave because they felt insecure about their professional abilities in French
English is associated with money (historically from colonial forces, and now foreign capital). Montréal, the metropolis, is an island that was unified as a city. Rich English-speaking borough lobbied in 2006 to become independent entities to control their regulations, policies and taxes. This includes the West Island (Dorval, Pointe-Claire, Beaconsfield), and even the very central Westmount near McGill. Nowadays, poor neighborhoods and their french names are erased by condo promoters: Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve is HOMA, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce is NDG, Ville-Mont-Royal is TMR, Pointe-Saint-Charles/ Le Sud-Ouest is Griffin Town
> By constrast, it is less and less easy to live only in French in Montréal, since it is not always possible to find someone that speaks French.
Sorry you went to a restaurant in chinatown that didn't speak french. I hope you can recover safely from that experience. Meanwhile, this is the truth of living in Quebec as an allophone: https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/article505933.html
If you read the article you posted, she faced discrimination because she was indigenous. Nowhere in the article was the language she spoke ever mentioned. It’s pretty disingenuous to use this to push a political viewpoint.
She died because she didn't speak french and the staff laughed at her rather than try to communicate with her. If you think racism in Quebec doesn't have a connection with language, you are dangerously misinformed.
The case was well reported in media and they basically all agree that it’s a symptom of systemic racism against Indigenous people in Canada. The hospital staff thought she was on welfare based on her ethnicity in this case, or straight out “bet” on the patient’s blood level in another case in BC the same year. She would have got the same treatment even if she spoke French.
> If you think racism in Quebec doesn’t have a connection with language
Where have I said this? Not everything is about the language though.
I mean, if you read the entire story and all the horrific incidents happening to Indigenous people across the country and still made it about yourself, not much I can say about it.
The original post was focused on history and language, and I added some political spice. Not discussing the politics of language (as in OP) is a bit outrageous.
You're right that French-Canadians are not guilt-free from discrimination et al. Québec only ever had French as an official language, but the last decades we've seen a series of dubious policies
