Good morning. It's my pleasure to introduce you to the Portail linguistique du Canada and its English equivalent, the Language Portal of Canada.
The objectives of the portal are to disseminate and promote language products developed in Canada, to share and enhance Canadian linguistic expertise and to help Canadians communicate in the country's two official languages.
The English equivalent of the language portal is called the Language Portal of Canada. The two sites are not absolutely identical, given the fact that linguistic needs and resources differ from one language to the next.
Let's start in English with the section called “Headlines”, where the users can read every week different and interesting articles. As an example, this week we had an article called “Canadian students shine”. You'll be happy to learn that out of half a million teens tested in over 70 countries, Canadians ranked sixth in reading. If you want to know more about the articles, you click on the link.
On the French side, there are also five or six headlines every week. For example, there is an interesting head line this week on the history of the French-speaking coast of Newfoundland, told using a needlework tapestry. It's quite interesting, if you're interested in knowing more about the subject. Once again, you click on the link for more information.
Because the portal is a Canada-wide project, we currently benefit from the cooperation of ten or so organizations that help to enrich the portal's content, particularly the Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers.
If you check under “From Our Contributors”, you'll find “Cultural Immersion”, an article signed by a member of the Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers. If I switch to French, I'll also get the article but in French this time.
I am back at the home page now. Under the section “Discover”, you will find more than 1,500 hyperlink that take you to different interesting sites that have to do with languages in Canada. They are divided into seven categories, including “Language Professions”. Someone wanting to secure more information or register for a course in terminology or translation can find the necessary information there.
Another quick way of finding useful links is to use the map of Canada. For example, if I click on the Province of New Brunswick, I immediately see a list of helpful resources if I live in that province, or if I'm interested in what is going on there with respect to languages.
The same list exists in English also.
Coming back to the home page, I will now show you Termium Plus, the second-largest terminology bank in the world, with over four million terms in English and French and 200,000 terms in Spanish.
So, if I type “changement climatique”
and I want to know how to say “changement climatique” in English, I just click on French to English and there I will find the English equivalent of “changement climatique”, which is “climatic change” or “climate change”. You also have the Spanish equivalent.
If you go right down under Termium Plus, you'll find 15 writing tools, some in English, some in French.
For example, on the French side, there is a very popular tool called ConjugArt, which is the equivalent of the French Bescherelle. It gives you the conjugation of almost 8,000 verbs in French. I can give you an example. If I type “courir”, I automatically get the conjugation of the verb in every tense.
I'll come back to the portal.
Every week, we also have the tip of the week. Is the expression “widow of the late” redundant? Should we say only “widow” or “widow of the late”? You click on the articles and you'll find out if you're supposed to say “the late” or just “widow”. I would only say “widow”.
Now I'm back at the webpage of the French site.
We also have the “Flash Quiz”. Every day there is a different question. Today the question is: “The library reminds us to keep quiet”. You can choose a), b), or c). You say c)? Congratulations, that's the right answer.
We can also try to answer the question in English.
Flash quiz: Montgomery's sequel to Anne of Green Gables was called?