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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| The Blaz Senior Member Canada theblazblog.blogspotRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5599 days ago 120 posts - 176 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swahili, French, Sign Language, Esperanto | Message 9 of 20 28 February 2010 at 6:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Definitely not. We take a mandatory 4 years of French in public school (grades 6-9) but as learners on this forum well-know, school can be an awful place to learn a language. I can personally remember going though public school French without any conception that I was actually learning another language... just that I had lists of things to memorize and write and forget. When my grade 9 French exam was administered the instructions were written in French and I had no idea what they said. Some parents wisely send their kids to French immersion schools which are available in most cities, but those french classrooms are little islands of French in an anglophone ocean, and I've seen a lot of those kids able to read French but no capacity to speak it. There are French communities outside of Quebec. I have a friend who is Franco-Ontarienne and she personally feels very little solidarity with the Quebecois. She feels like the Quebec culture has forgotten that they have descendants living in the rest of Canada who still consider themselves Franco-Canadians. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Blaz Senior Member Canada theblazblog.blogspotRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5599 days ago 120 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swahili, French, Sign Language, Esperanto | Message 10 of 20 28 February 2010 at 7:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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According to figures from Wikipedia...
6.8 million native speakers of French 10.1 million First or second language speakers = 3.3 million 2nd language speakers Population of Canada = 34m Population of Canada outside Quebec = ~26m Therefore, percentage of non Quebecois who speak French as a second language (and this probably includes many Franco-Canadians) - 3.3m/26m = 13% of non-Quebecois Canadians. Ok my calculations are pretty suspect, but it's a ballpark. 13% actually seems way too high, anecdotally. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 20 28 February 2010 at 7:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Native English speakers in Canada occasionally speak French; how many do depends on the region (and your definition of speaking French). Most don't, though.
Attitudes towards French vary from positive to quite hostile - I've seen letters to the editor where people are shocked and horrified and calling for boycotts because a restaurant in an anglophone area in Western Canada dared have a bilingual menu, rather than only English. That's the extreme fringe, though; most people don't have such strong anti-French sentiments. The way French is taught in schools definitely doesn't endear people to the language. Nor do heavy-handed enforcements of language laws which prevent imports of goods people want because they're not bilingually labeled. Quebec's attempts to separate are often seen as an attempt to extort the rest of Canada unfairly. Etc. Some people also get somewhat upset about the status of French in Anglophone areas where it's not the second-most-common language. Other languages are relegated to a rather tertiary role, regardless of the number of speakers they have. The situation is somewhat different in the territories recently (where several of the most common indigenous languages have gained more legal status), but I'm not intimately familiar with it - and only a tiny percentage of Canada's population lives in the territories. I wish the language situation in Canada was more positive. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Blaz Senior Member Canada theblazblog.blogspotRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5599 days ago 120 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swahili, French, Sign Language, Esperanto | Message 12 of 20 28 February 2010 at 7:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with you Volte and feel saddened by the situation. As a language enthusiast it's easy to be positive about multiculturalism and multilingualism.... 'French is a huge part of Canada' - great, I'm learning French! - 'French is mandatory in school' - great! free classes! 'Canada is a country of immigrants' - Great! I love other languages and I'll learn some of them and chat with strangers.
BUUUUT Things get so much harder in the policy realm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 20 28 February 2010 at 8:29am | IP Logged | |||||
Canadian French classes put me off language learning for half a decade, frankly. They were horrible. Canada's attitude towards immigration, on the other hand, was a motivator - I absolutely loved being able to listen to local radio in dozens of languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| crackpot Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6300 days ago 144 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 14 of 20 28 February 2010 at 9:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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To start with, Quebecois DO NOT speak standard French like the rest of the world does.
I took classes at a college in Ottawa, 3km from Quebec and the French department refused to hire Quebecois for just this reason. My friend in France told me that when Quebecois appear on French TV they often need subtitles. Almost no one outside Quebec in Canada speaks French well enough to even order a pizza. Most of those that do speak French live in adjacent areas of Ontario and New Brunswick. Here in Calgary, it is probably the 10th or 12th most common language one might hear on the bus...if that high. I've never met a French speaker in Calgary that can't speak understandable English. Because most people you will interact with in Quebec as a second language learner already know English it is difficult to practice. You can't just walk into a shop and practice for example because the person behind the counter certainly speaks better English than you do French. My girlfriend and I spent a week in Montreal some years ago and we only met two people who couldn't speak English out of probably 100 people we talked to. Maybe in Quebec City this is different, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6329 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 15 of 20 28 February 2010 at 9:24am | IP Logged | |||||
I've said it a thousand times and I'll continue to say it: this is a myth. We speak standard french, no more no less than the rest of the world does, and our variant is statisticly no more different than the southern or eastern dialects of France. I watch continental French TV since I was born, and I have never -ever- seen a Québécois speaking with subtitles. There are tons of academic publications about the difference between standard continental French and Québecois French, and you should read them carefully before giving an opinion on such a complex topic.
Indeed, it is very, very different outside of touristic Montreal. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 20 28 February 2010 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
The Quebecois accent is stigmatized, but it's generally not absolutely incomprehensible. Quebecois is standard French. There are some regionalisms and archaic parts, but the same is true of most language communities, and the standard register is the same. If someone refuses to hire any Quebecois as French teachers, it's either a matter of accent or bigotry.
This is an overstatement. 1.9% of Albertans are native French speakers, putting it 5th - and last I checked, Alberta is the province with the lowest percentage of French speakers (native and non-native combined) in Canada (the territories also have a higher percentage than Alberta). 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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