For every cannon, three hundred carriers,” intones a master of ceremonies in mustard-colored jacket, played by the actor Mncedisi Shabangu, relaying the British military’s “advanced arithmetic” in English and Xhosa. ..…
English, of course, was also a “colonizer” language, brought by the British empire, but that colonization was not as recent a memory. And because English wasn’t the language of the most recent oppressor, it seemed a positive step to use English for official purposes. . ..…
Culturally, Montreal in the pre-Confederation period was definitely a British city. “The English language was everywhere,” the city’s historian Paul-André Linteau notes. ..…
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