I think the Murphy question will hurt Harper in Quebec

Sitting for a taped interview with Steve Murphy, the anchor for CTV Halifax, Mr. Dion had been asked: “If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper hasn't done?”

“If I had been prime minister two-and-a-half years ago?” Mr. Dion replied.

“If you were the prime minister right now,” Mr. Murphy explained.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081009.welxndionatv1009/BNStory/politics
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Why didn't Murphy just say "yes" after Dion's question. It does look like a poorly phrased question, meant to trip up someone whose mother tongue isn't English (tenses are notoriously difficult in second languages).

I think Harper just threw in the towel in Quebec on this one. It won't go over well with French Quebecers. He not only won't get a Quebec breakthrough, but he will probably lose seats there.

It may help in some parts of Ontario, but I think the effect will be short-lived - a nightly poll or two.

Check out this blog.

http://gdtk.blogspot.com/2008/10/its-not-dions-english-that-was-problem.html

I can't see this helping the Conservatives overall. It's like saying to French Quebecers "you can't be PM if we can trip you up in English". It is insulting, and not a good strategy. I think it will hurt them badly there. It might cement the old Reform Party anti-French vote, but Harper had most of that anyway.

To think, he started the election wanting to get a majority via the Quebec vote and he ends the election trying to save a minority via ridiculing a French Quebecer over his lack of easy fluency in English. Quite a comedown.

And the Bloc appears to be taking over there now. Harper had the perfect storm going for him, and somehow he's blown the whole thing.

The question was horrific English. But it's the sort of thing that happens in oral speech. Sometimes oral speech makes virtually no sense when set down on paper or in pixels, but everybody present understood what was being said. A native speaker might have made enough sense of it to answer. On the other hand, in a situation where there was an actual arbiter -- in a courtroom -- I can see a judge requiring counsel to rephrase that one, if a witness looked understandably blank in the face of it. It simply was not a question that could be answered with the degree of certainty that is needed in sitations like those.

I think Dion's English is horribly unfortunate, and I think that the party's obvious failure to require that he get it up to speed is unforgivable. He needs elocution lessons in English. He needs to be able to pronounce English words, and speak in English sentences, in a way that an English-speaking audience understands. Who could not have realized that this was really very important??

I'm fluently bilingual, and very practised at figuring out what a francophone speaking English badly is saying, but I'm completely floored by Dion at times. Interestingly, Duceppe's English (including his tone of voice in English -- he doesn't sound quite as nasal and whiny as he used to, although he still sounds nasal and whiny in English where he doesn't in French) seems to have improved noticeably in the last little while.

It's an unfortunate phenomenon that an anglo can speak appalling French, in the sense of having most of the words right but pronounce things wrong and use entirely the wrong emphasis and inflection, and still be understood by a francophone audience, while a franco who speaks English that way just will not be understood. That's Dion's problem -- it's not that he has a marked accent, it's that he's unintelligible. And anybody who might have thought that wasn't going to affect votes is just an ostrich.