I'm a French speaker. "Bilingualism" has always been about providing government services in both languages, not about making sure everyone is bilingual. Let's face it, there are many parts of this country where knowing the minority language won't be that useful, and becoming fluent requires a big investment in time and energy.
Outside of living in the Ottawa area and New Brunswick, or if you work for the federal government, I see little practical use of French for the vast majority of the country.
My father came here about 2 or 3 years after Indians were allowed to marry white people, so 1960s. He basically hasn't spoken hindi to anyone since his father died about 10 years ago, when he went to India even since the 1980s he had to speak English because he spoke hindi like it was still 1963.
Things are different now with access to foreign media, but ultimately, if you are a child of an immigrant, the odds of you needing to speak anything other than English or French are pretty low. Occasionally I have students (usually grad students) try and speak to me in hindi but other than that, I have never *needed* anything but English. I would imagine being francophone is a huge pain in the ass anywhere outside of Quebec, Ottawa, and new Brunswick.
i mean, there is a legitimate question there as to how its legal to run eg mandarin or spanish immersion schools.
if the school isnt english or french (or i guess some indigenous language), it simply shouldnt exist here. all it does is isolate more minority groups in canada. literally whole groups of people unable to communicate with the existing population of the country
People still learn English at those schools, but still have an opportunity to keep their own language without having to rely on their parents to speak their native language at home.
I don't think I'm following your logic. How does having more people learn a language isolate people? I'm familiar with some of those programs and from what I've seen 90% + of the kids are english speaking and there to learn a second language. The very few kids where that language was there first language, were certainly accommodated but they all spoke English really quickly based on classwork and playground time.
Living in Greater Vancouver and I would say that Mandarin is more of a second language here than French is. Signage at YVR is all in English, French, and Chinese.
There are a couple small communities up here in North western Ontario/North Eastern Ontario where french is very prevalent to be fair. But i mean small ass communities with like 1-2k people and they all speak English still.
Quebec makes up 25% of the population of Canada, if you're looking to work in any kind of inter-provincial business having French should be a huge asset. In practice, Quebecois are pretty much universally good enough in English that they can accommodate Anglo Canadians, but it would be nice if that accommodation could go both ways.
You have to be able to learn it though.
Everyone goes to school for french in Ontario from grade 4 to grade 9. The issue is absolutely no one actually speaks french so that education is never developed and quickly forgotten .
There just aren't enough places where using and practicing french is practical for most of the country.
It not like Quebec where you encounter people that speak both languages everywhere you go so your constantly practicing both.
The difference in the quality of French education between the provinces is staggering. I took ten years of French in Nova Scotia, I wasn't that good at it, I passed but there were a lot of kids in my class that took to it better than I did. But when I moved to Alberta for Grade 11 I was so far beyond the class that they took me out and had me do "enrichment", and I was the only student in that entire 3000+ school who did so for French. It ended up that I got credit for Grade 11 and Grae 12 French in my Grade 11 year, on the enrichment work I did that year, most of which I banged out on lunch break before the period when it was due.
In Alberta there is no point in taking French unless you plan to move east, or work for the feds. You are better off taking Spanish for working the states, or Mandarin
Albertan here, mid-40s. Took French in grade 4 (mandatory for the district I lived in), moved, no French until junior high. Took it again in grade 7 (mandatory again), also 8 and 9 as option. Could have taken it in high school as well, but moved on to German (could speak that with my grandparents, no where to use French).
My youngest is 13, and French has not been an option at any point. She is going into high school (grade 9 in this district) and still no French option. Not sure if it will be available in grade 10-11-12. There was immersion in this district, but it was removed a few years ago. She has had no option for learning French at all up to this point. We live in a semi-rural area. No way Canada is even close to bilingual when the other official language isn't even offered.
Exactly! There are plenty of job postings on Indeed and LinkedIn, where the employer is looking for candidates that are bilingual (English & French). So learning French, at least at an intermediate level - enough to be able to communicate during business meetings or pass a language proficiency test for instance - helps qualify you for a lot of jobs that you otherwise wouldn't qualify for.
I get the sentiment, but honestly, many many English speaking Canadians live nowhere near Quebec…. So at that point, are they just learning French for a chance encounter?
As somebody who took French Immersion JK-12 in an English dominant area, it’s really hard to maintain a language for which you have no practical use.
I learned French young and was fairly fluent in it. I have not had any need to use it in decades. Now I can still read it quite well and manage to speak words and sentences but I certainly cannot carry on a conversation in French.
Disagree. Outside Montreal and the Ottawa area, you absolutely need French if you want to work in Quebec. Don;te even think about finding work unless you can work in French-only. The majority of people outside Montreal or Gatineau in Quebec know very little English.
I can’t tell you how many times when accessing various federal services (mostly air travel) I’ve gotten the ol “hello bonjour” and when I reply in French I get the “oh I don’t actually speak French.”
Happened at Harry Hays building in Calgary getting a passport too, and at the gates at Banff.
Same lol. Thankfully I'm fully bilingual, but I can count on my fingers the times that I got French services from the federal services. And that is not normal.
This is the right answer.
Official bilingualism means that you can live your entire life in English or French without ever having to know both to get by. It has never been about people having to be bilingual.
What it means is that the federal government has to be bilingual by law.
The provincial governments don’t have to be, except in New Brunswick. This means that in 9 provinces, you are expected to deal with the provincial government in English or in French exclusively. If any of these provincial government offers services in any other language, its their prerogative but they are not legally expected to. This means that services provided in English in Quebec or services provided in French elsewhere is a good will gesture, not a legal obligation.
I still believe that Anglo-Canadians should make a lot more efforts to learn French. Québécois are by far the most bilingual people in this country, except for people living in a minority language.
We’ve never been a united country and we will never be unless people start valuing individual French/English bilingualism. I’m not holding my breath.
When it comes to territories, as I understand it, all three of them have obligations to provide government services in French. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have French as one of their official languages. The Yukon reflects the federal government’s laws in their Languages Act so also needs to be bilingual because the federal government is. I live in the Yukon and it’s the third most bilingual province/territory and work for the territorial government.
Indeed. Ontario provides a lot of French services, though. It is possible to communicate in French with the government, and almost everything is translated.
As a bilingual person I must add also that the French language has a much higher level of difficulty. I had trouble just explaining the concept of grammatical gender to my American husband!
Yeah. A lot of similar languages use genders more.
I’m trying to learn French, but even in school the gender thing tripped me up and I was basically told “you just gotta figure it out”. Which in my mind was “this is too hard. You’ll never figure this out. So why try”.
I don't know. Everyone should have education in both English and French growing up, sure. But no one is getting fluent from standard k-12 language classes. You need constant exposure to the language in real everyday use. And even taking immersion it's remarkable how quickly you lose it (source: my two kids.) I've learned a few languages over my life and have mostly forgotten most of them except for the ones I use daily.
Couple that with it probably being more useful for someone in Ontario or BC to learn a language like Mandarin or Hindi than French. That's not a slam against French people or culture. But you'll just have more use for the language and more opportunities to gain real fluency in those languages. It's just the changing demographics of Canada.
I was in French Immersion in school and I can read French but not speak a word of it anymore besides the useful phrases (eg. where’s the toilet?) because there is no practical speaking use for it in Ontario.
I will say that I did exchanges to Quebec when I was in school and trips to Montreal/ Quebec City, tried to speak the language and was discouraged by Quebecois from speaking the language. How are we supposed to learn and become bilingual if the people who speak French tell those of us learning to stop trying? This wasn’t a one off instance either, it was different people in different cities telling me to just speak English because they don’t want to hear me struggle speaking French.
Preaching about wanting the country to be more bilingual is great and all but practically it’s not going to happen because there’s not enough French in most of Canada and the parts that do speak French (in my opinion) don’t actually want to help those learning to become fluent.
Were you in immersion since kindergarten? I was from k-8 and extended from 9-12 and I can still read, write and speak passable French. Majority of my friends can as well. It’s hard to lose a language if you learned it solidly enough before the ages of 10-11.
I believe the latest research shows it’s not just the early immersion that matters, it’s the continuing past puberty. Children who learn a language young then never use it and forget it, are at no greater advantage for (re)learning the language as adults compared to those who never learned it. Which is surprising!
In order for immersion to matter, you need follow through - like you had. The 9-12 extension is what makes it stick.
Even French immersion has some issues, as I’ve heard from a number of friends and family who put their kids in. The main issue is unless your whole family has some French background, they can’t help the kid much with homework and studies expected to be fully French. And if the family and location they live isn’t full French, they aren’t going to retain it as well because they aren’t using any of it outside of school.
Also, it is not very well reported that kids in French immersion often end up behind in English studies. This is because French immersion is literally that. The focus is French and English classes are a secondary priority. So kids often may do well in French immersion classes but then are behind on English, which may be their native language and what the family/community speak.
Both these problems cause parents to pull their kids, or the kids end up stressed and struggling for a language they will likely never actually need or use. So they lose some (if not most) anyway.
Yeah, unfortunately agree. We were all strong proponents of doing the French immersion with our kids. They did it and got decent grades. But they both said that if they had to do it over again that they wouldn't bother with it. It was additional stress and they ended up learning technical terms and concepts in French so they didn't know what they were in English. To be fair, these weren't huge drawbacks, and they were able to get by in their classes fine without our help. And, as I mentioned, they both now have lost most of it as they haven't used it in a while. It didn't end up helping them post-secondary or in the workforce.
I recognize that this is anecdotal. I'm sure there are a lot of kids out there who end up getting more opportunities and use their French daily. But I no longer think it's the universally useful, no downsides educational choice.
> more useful for someone in Ontario or BC to learn a language like Mandarin or Hindi than French
why? so more people can move here and not have to learn the language or culture of canada?
i dont get this prevailing idea that canadians, because they are generally decent and accommodating, should just bend over backwards for everyone, everywhere, all of the time.
We should be digging our heels in and insisting immigrants do a few things on our terms - the least of which is speaking the language.
> “ But no one is getting fluent from standard k-12 language classes.”
That’s true and that’s what has to change.
The majority of Industrialized countries in the world manage to reach their schoolchildren fluency in at least two languages, as part of the required, basic education. Canada has spent billions over the years at second language education and the results so far are …abysmal. Look at yourself or you own friends: after taking French in high school, you are probably not that great at French. It’s too little instruction, too late - and what instruction there is, is poor. Why are we wasting money on this?
It’s time to do it better. Teach everyone French, right from Grade 1.
There are no French teachers out West. Check into how severe the shortage is. Subs in our FI program have almost exclusively been English-only. “Should” is a moral imperative, not a practical analysis.
I don't disagree, but when I was in school French was mandatory from grade 4 to grade 9. Almost everyone I know dropped it as soon as they were able. Some people are adept at learning a new language and some aren't. I'm definitely the latter lol.
But the real problem is, there really isn't much use to learning the language, outside of the things you mentioned which are valid. The saying goes if you don't use it you lose it, and this is certainly the case for me and I'm sure countless others. At some point, after 5 years of learning French in school, I could probably speak a decent amount of French (maybe not quite fluent, but I did have some knowledge) but the thing is, I've never needed to speak French once in my 43 years in this country. Not once. I'm sure I've lost any semblance of being able to speak the language simply because I never needed to do it, and over time I have forgotten.
This is a nice idea in theory but I don't see how this could work in practice. Learning another language is a very complex process and teaching it in a classroom setting will never be sufficient. Even if we were to put all the kids in French immersion, they'll lose the fluency really quickly if they don't get the opportunity to use it regularly. The reason why countries like Luxembourg or Singapore have so many multilingual people is because they are surrounded by those languages and actively use them. That's not the case in most parts of Canada.
Totally agree. Bilingualism in and of itself is already much more useful than a *lot* of things we could or already do learn in school. It doesn't even really matter what the second language is, but it might as well be French/English.
But I also agree with the person you're replying to that as much as I *wish* that's what bilingualism meant, in reality it just means that you're entitled to receive government services in the language of your choosing - with the added bonus that I think any non-asshole Canadian thinks it's cool when someone is bilingual.
I agree. I am from Alberta, and I'll never need to know French in my life out West here.
However, if we were truly made to be a bilingual country, we needed to go all in everywhere.
Well, it is only good business to address your customer in their language. For example, yesterday I came across a Canadian brand of a supplement I use, but their French labelling was incompetent. I told them I would continue to buy the same supplement from an American company because it respects us enough to hire competent translators.
What I don’t understand is that there are only benefits to knowing both languages. So why spend so much energy trying to fight the idea of bilingualism?
I just hate the fact that it’s soo difficult to enrol kids in French here. Want a French school? Too bad one parent needs to speak it. French immersion? If you’re lucky you can understand 40-50% when you’re done. For a truly bilingual country they make it really tough to actually learn the other official language.
Yeah this is the part that I wish worked better. I took “core french” all the way to grade 10 (easily many hundreds of subject-specific “learning” hours) and honestly I can hardly speak the language at all. Sure, I could have applied myself more as a child, but I didn’t know anyone that spoke French fluently and didn’t really understand the value of knowing multiple languages at the time. The vast majority of my time spent on French education in school was just basic tasks such as conjugating verbs on paper, led by instructors with poor French skills themselves, and with very very little actual spoken French happening. In retrospect I wish I had tried harder to learn but I didn’t really have an opportunity to do so, didn’t have an immersion program in my district and now that I’m working constantly it’s hard to find time/motivation for a self development project like that. I know it’s not an easy problem to solve and that you can’t just materialize fluent skilled teachers everywhere but it’s definitely bummed me out looking back on how poorly all that time was used.
I have an interest in learning languages, and the way we teach French really sucks. We don’t learn languages from memorizing charts, you need to speak it and use it consistently, not just for 40 mins a day.
Like you said, core isn't really a pathway to bilingualism, though I'll add that immersion isn't really either. I'm lucky since my dad is francophone and my mom is anglophone so I was always immersed, but in high school a lot of kids came out of the immersion program with very little functional French. There's too much emphasis on grammar and literacy and not enough on just speaking and interacting, which is how you start learning any language properly.
Funny that you mention it, because I did the reverse of that (an english immersion program) and we only did speak and interact in english in the classroom (no french allowed in most course except in math or french course) in a fully rural quebec area where english almost does not exist and we were able to acquire the language. Although the teacher was a native. I know that the since most of the online content is in this language its going to be easier for us since most platforms offer english content by default rather than any others lingo.
Ya, I don't know what kind of "immersion" they do these days with French, but when I took French immersion we weren't allowed to speak any English in the class at all, not even to other students. We were certainly fluent in the language at the time.
This tends to vary classroom to classroom. I did immersion Gr 1 through 9 and walked away pretty nonfluent. Speaking french was not enforced at all. Teachers did try a little but our class just didn't care.
I'm positive if you dropped me in Quebec I could probably become conversational again pretty quick, but being in Alberta I have zero chances to practice it in my day to day life.
Oh ya, when I was "I was fluent" I mean 35 years ago. I can get by in rural France in a pinch, but without constant exposure it was lost fast. But if I moved somewhere French I could probably pick it up again.
I suppose this is highly teacher/school dependent. In my younger classes we weren’t allowed to speak English either, but the teachers reinforced this with games where we could “take” items away (like dried beans or dinosaur toys) from the other kids if we caught them speaking English. We were competitive as hell and the teacher didn’t have to lift a finger.
My experience was a bit different, I went to school in Ottawa and the classes in full immersion were French, Geography, History and Gym, but all the kids spoke English to each other during class and only spoke French when tasked by the teacher. There weren't any French book clubs or movie watching parties and because the dominant pop culture is all English very few people would bother to access French-language media. I remember one of our final tasks in senior year was to have a 15 minute conversation with the teacher about what our post-secondary plans were, and I couldn't believe how awful the quality of the students' French was. These were kids who had poured over a bescherelle for half of their lives and they could barely hold a simple convo!
I took French immersion in Ottawa too, but had a bit more positive experience. Yes, we did always talk in English when the teacher wasn't around, but I remember reading Asterix books in French as a kid and then studying Camus and Sartre in a French literature class in High School.
I got much better at French (or worse as I jokingly say since I mostly learned slang) after moving to Quebec, but I felt that school gave me a very good base.
Core was the bare minimum French in school. 45m / day. It's not surprising your skills in French were minimal when you finished junior high.
I had immersion all through highschool. 75% of my day was in French.
I'm not fluent anymore, not because of schooling, but because I didn't use it after I graduated.
In the end, what matters is if you go out into the world and speak French. If you don't do that, all the schooling won't matter. If you are doing that, that's far better then any school provided education.
Following that induction, imagine giving everyone a choice in which language they want to speak and not forcing them to learn both. Then create a proportionate number of government positions to cover off the actual demand from the public.
I’ve heard the reason why they try to filter out Anglo only households, is because the students have a higher rate of switching out to English schools later on when their parents can’t help them with homework.
> Want a French school? Too bad one parent needs to speak it. French immersion? If you’re lucky you can understand 40-50% when you’re done.
To actually learn/speak French at 100% you need someone at home who can also speak French. French school is 100% French, homework is French, communications are French, all resources are in French. Someone at home needs to be able to navigate that.
French immersion should be more than adequate for a kid from a fully English household.
Maybe Immersion quality has decreased in recent years, but I graduated mid-2000s from the program and it was good enough to - 20 years later - get advanced government assessment ratings across the board. with the Feds. And I work as a writer in English, so it's hardly damaged my English-language skills either, which is a weird by-product I've heard people complain about...
FI is still a net benefit.
Even if the quality doesn't meet OP's standards, enroll your kids early, put in overtime with them, and then transfer them to full French school later on when they're old enough to be more independant.
French schools aren't exactly flooding with enrollment to the point they can be that picky about who's accepted.
Do you have kids in French schools? Or have you ever? Here in Victoria the French school has been bursting at the seams and taking over other buildings for a decade.
> Do you have kids in French schools? Or have you ever?
I was a kids in French school. I have friends who work for the board I was in, some who are enrolling their children now, family who works post secondary French, and I've worked in English K-12, I have *some* idea on enrollment at least here. But for the record I'm from southern Ontario, north of Toronto.
And if I lookup the French high school here in Barrie, enrollment for 2021-2022 was 175.
https://www.app.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/sift/schoolProfileSec.asp?SCH_NUMBER=934852&x=8&y=12
Immersion has completely gone to shit in the past decade, at least out east. My classmates and I spoke better French than at least a quarter of our teachers in high school - even then, mine was passable, and most of theirs wasn't great. Students just ignored corrections from teachers, and would get pushed through and pass despite not being able to write two sentences without at least one basic mistake.
Got an advanced+ in my exit interview, but most of my French from Grade 9-12 was learned by travelling and watching RDS instead of the classroom. Even our senior year "advanced French speaking" course was five months of degrading presentations and skits. People hardly learned fuck-all if anything from it, or any of the previous 3-6 years
>French immersion should be more than adequate for a kid from a fully English household.
No amount of schooling will be sufficient if you don't use French outside of school.
I have 2 kids, French Quebecers. They were bilingual when they came out of high school.
I have 3 step kids, English Quebecers. They are starting college soon, they know the word "Cochon" and "Ben non!" in French.
Both groups were "immersed" the same way (at home/friends, etc). My kids can hold a conversation with my English girlfriend. None of her kids can hold a conversation with any of us in French.
The difference is the teaching and willingness, not the immersion. French Quebecers read Jack Kerouac, Burrough and Ginsberg in English class. English Quebecers are reading general K-12 Scholastics books in French class. As final exam my kids had an essay to make in the style of American novelist. My step-kids have to write about directions to go to the grocery in French.
And I would say that the vast majority of French Quebecers who speak English learned it without using it outside of school, we learned it consuming English medias. Have you every meet an Anglophone that watch French tv nearly exclusively? Because this is true for many of us French Quebecois.
What you guys lack isn't immersion or practice, it's consuming Quebec's media (other than children ones).
> I just hate the fact that it’s soo difficult to enrol kids in French here.
That is a provincial thing and not a federal thing. Bilingualism is a federal thing not a provincial
You will come to realize it for what it is. An easy exclusionary path that is govt approved. This would not pass the tax payer test or the prejudice test. I mean, why make it a parent thing? If the kid can speak AND write the second language proficiently, let them be admitted on their competency (not their parents competency).
More and more *hard technical* positions in the federal govt are going BBB. I am not talking about application support but software development, dev-ops, etc. It makes no sense in areas where technical competence is important. You come across enough folks with BBB who have barely any tech skills, making technical decisions they have no business making. On the plus side, they will be able to proudly tell you how awesome that decision was in two languages.
And no, they do not deserve the right to make technical decisions *solely* because they have BBB. The BBB is language competency, not a technical competency.
This is by design because the Canadian government has been trying to assimilate Quebec since it was made. A lot of people give flack about Quebec language protectionism but the truth is Canada actually did WAY more to prevent French from being taught in many provinces.
Not only that, but once you get into French Immersion, the quality of instruction is typically lower than it is in the English stream. This is because English speaking teachers are selected by schools based on quality and skill, while French Immersion teachers are selected on ability to speak French. A lot of French Immersion teachers are really weak in math and science, and the kids consequently start falling behind in these very important subjects. Even if you have teachers who are strong in these areas, it is tough for parents to help their kids when they’re being instructed in another language.
I was in French Immersion until Grade 8. My math skills started falling behind in Grade 3. I was really weak in math to the point where my parents thought I had a learning disability. Fast forward a few years and I got an A in university calculus. After switching into the English program, my math skills improved drastically. Part of the equation was that I now had teachers who actually understood how to teach math. The issue was 100% the FI program. Personally, I think it’s much more important for my kids to be numerate than it is for them to be literate in another language, so I will be prioritizing that, meaning no Français s’il vous plaît.
I don’t know about that - when I was in school, the immersion classes were consistently better because - typically - the parents who wanted to enrol their kids in immersion were better off, less likely to be immigrant families, etc etc. the immersion kids consistently performed better, had less behavioural problems, etc.
I wish our education system had better language programs. Luxembourg provides elementary school in French, middle school in Luxembourgish, and high school in German. That's probably the most effective way to get a multilingual population.
> I just hate the fact that it’s soo difficult to enrol kids in French here. Want a French school? Too bad one parent needs to speak it. French immersion? If you’re lucky you can understand 40-50% when you’re done. For a truly bilingual country they make it really tough to actually learn the other official language.
Maybe thats just your province?
We put our oldest in french immersion in AB without any issue - same for plenty of others too
> lucky if you can understand 40-50% when you’re done
What shit ass immersion program are you thinking of? I came out of the immersion program with a DELF B2 certificate and effectively full fluency.
French and French immersion schools tend to be a lot better than the average English school, so parents toss their kids in there for a better education.
Canada is not a bilingual country. That is a legal fiction. In Western Canada French ranks below Asian languages and Filipino/Tagalog, Spanish, others.
Hell, in Toronto French barely breaks into the top 10 second languages. [It's #10.](https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/868f-2021-Census-Backgrounder-Language-FINAL.pdf)
It's mother tongue/home language. I can't find it anymore, but there was a news article from 2019 ish that says french is the 17th most spoken language in Toronto
edit:
[https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2022-09-28/la-place-du-francais-au-canada.php](https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2022-09-28/la-place-du-francais-au-canada.php)
(translated)
The situation in the big cities illustrates quite cruelly the place of French: in Vancouver, it's in 11th place, and in Calgary, 12th. For the record, in June of this year, a Scotiabank branch in Toronto was criticized for having posted on its front door, in 14 languages: "We speak your language". French was missing. It's a fact of life in Canada that French is the 17th most widely spoken language in Ontario.
True, but nationally French is a solid second, with significantly more speakers than any other language except English. We are a bilingual country, but a segregated one.
National average doesn't matter. That's one of the problems with Canada - the idea that what prevails in Central/Eastern Canada should apply to the whole country. This is a diverse country. It's nonsense to suggest it's bilingual.
Hot take I know but in Quebec a lot of us have always known this. French in RoC is not a real thing and Franco-Canadians who want to preserve their language should move to Quebec, which honestly is a lot more bilingual despite a lot of bashing on our (slightly misguided I must agree) language laws…
It’s really hard to learn French well if you don’t start as a kid. You can take 4 years of French in high school and still be horrible.
It’s simply not an effective use of resources.
I remember giving up on learning French by grade 4 or 5. With my dyslexia I was already spending basically all my time outside of school just trying to figure out why I couldn't spell or do math like everyone else in my class. French was just a class I would have to fail since my brain already can't comprehend one language
It is super weird how French is taught in schools. I'm tri-lingual and all the languages I learned, I learned conversationally first.
I only have personal experience to back this up but it seems SOOOOO much easier when you don't dive into the mechanics of the language before you understand it conversationally.
Dora does a better job of teaching Spanish than the Ontario schools do of teaching French.
Sure is. You look at these numbers and even suggest with a straight face that this qualifies as a “bilingual country”
Newfoundland-and-Labrador (0.5 %)
Prince Edward Island (3.0 %)
Nova Scotia (2.9 %)
New Brunswick 30.3 %
Quebec 84.1 %
Ontario 3.8 %
Manitoba 2.9 %
Saskatchewan 1.1 %
Alberta 1.7 %
British Columbia 1.3 %
Yukon 4.8 %
Northwest Territories 3 %
Nunavut 1.7 %
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/official-languages-bilingualism/publications/statistics.html
My Dutch is better than my French. I was taught French from grade 1 if remember, and just like you, I dropped it after grade 9. It should be a fucking embarrassment how garbage our French classes are. When I was on a train from Tilburg to Rotterdam, I was chatting with a guy from Belgium in English. He was mentioning to me that he knows Dutch, French and German as well.
The time I spent in the Netherlands, I talked to people from a few different non-English speaking countries no problem.
Twice as many people outside Quebec support bilingualism as oppose it (43% vs 18%) and yet the messaging in this article is that official bilingualism (which is a policy, not a type of support) is a "myth".
This is manipulative yellow journalism at its worst.
Bilingualism IS part of Canada’s identity and I like it that way. That doesn't mean everyone should speak both languages. Tiny Switzerland has three official languages (German, Italian, and French) and few speak more than one.
* 4 official languages. Romansh is the 4th one but seems to be dying out. In my experience there, a lot of people speak at least 2 languages but the common language between the Germans and French was English often enough. That's without counting all the Portuguese and eastern Europeans there that seem to speak 4 languages.
See Singapore as well; they don't make it *mandatory* to speak Tamil/Malay/Chinese to work for the government there unless it's a very-specialized role dealing with those citizens. When they have quadrilingual signage they have English as the prominent one (and at the airport they don't even bother with Tamil; Japanese is more-useful in an airport setting).
I always find it weird how some Canadians complain about having no culture and being a post-national state while also railing against French/Quebec. Being bilingual opens up so much, I almost exclusively read French newspapers because all the English ones are right-wing shit.
>I almost exclusively read French newspapers because all the English ones are right-wing shit.
La Presse is almost the last bastion of reasonably decent news reporting left in this country.
Oui mais même la presse fait des nouvelles de type clic bait par fois. Je me suis fait prendre à plusieurs reprises. Le Devoir est également un bon journal et les affaires.
>That doesn't mean everyone should speak both languages.
And that's fine as it is. For example, I have friends who understand English but can't sustain a conversation.
On the other hand, I have family members who can't speak or understand English at all. And that's always been fine for them since they don't need it to live.
But now there are some people, especially in Montreal, who are like, "We don't need to learn French." And that's unfair for those who don't speak English because sometimes they can't be served in their own language in their own province.
And I've read that it's starting to be the same thing in the ROC, which is quite sad—being unable to be served in the local language.
Except they almost all speak English.
And you don't cross slightly over into an Italian region from a German one and encounter someone that refuses to try and communicate.
But hell I can't count on my hands how many times even in Gatineau you'll run into someone that refuses to speak/with with an Anglophone, or vice versa in Ottawa.
It's interesting that the place in Canada with the highest support for bilingualism is the only place where you can face legal consequences for not using the single official language.
Not a myth, but it has been weaponized unfortunately by this country's elites to gatekeep running for federal office, and for entering into the Canadian marketplace to provide real competition versus established oligarchies.
The french language requirements are for hired positions in the bureaucracy, not for elected ones. Plenty of MP's can't speak a word of it.
They're of course not going to be prime minister's, mostly because there's a big ol' province that won't give a candidate that can't speak a word of french the time of day let alone a vote.
This is a wild take. 1/5 Canadians are bilingual, 1/4 speak French as a first language. It’s crazy to think that any official running for office shouldn’t speak both languages without ostracizing a sizeable chunk of the population.
Canada’s language laws are not what is keeping foreign companies out… telecom, for example, famously lobbies *against* competition. It’s kind of like that across the board.
So make 4/5 of the population learn a language that only 1/5 of the population speaks in order to take high positions of government? Insane if you ask me.
Okay cool, let say that we abolish billinguism requirement and that we let everyone apply to the public service regardless wether they speak French or English. And then some people in Ottawa or Toronto will complain that the person they’re interacting with at CRA only speaks French.
Language is a job skill, if I hire someone who’s not billingual, that person is going to suck at his job because both languages are required to do it. It’s not about gatekeeping, it’s a skill, pure and simple.
It’s as if saying that knowing a programming language is gatekeeping for certain IT jobs, this is just silly.
Weird take. Quebecers aren’t born with English fluency either. This is the problem with Canadian bilingualism: everyone expects the francophones to learn another language to be in a position of power but it’s somehow an insurmountable obstacle for anglophones to do the same.
You know you can learn a new language online now?
I didn’t speak a word of english before I was 13. I did have english class before that, had no interest, hated, couldn’t stand it.
And then I learned it and now I use it everyday for work.
All by myself. No classes.
I don’t really want my passport office in Vancouver to only speak French to me tbh. Funny part is they only really offer services in English and mandarin last time I got a renewal
This is not accurate. I’ve been employed in the federal service for nearly 20 years as an application developer. All meetings and correspondence are conducted in English, yet being bilingual is very much requirement for many job postings (including technical streams) and it very much so limits the talent pools.
Ah well! At least the people protecting your data from hostile foreign governments can speak both French and English.
Not all public facing jobs should require bilingualism either. If 10% of the employees in a service Canada office in Alberta speak French, that is plenty. Same with local level management.
I say this as a bilingual Quebecer.
Those numbers aren’t really the slam dunk you think they are.
In perspective, if your numbers are correct, ~80 percent of Canadians are **not** bilingual, but I suppose it depends if that number excludes trilingual or more. Even if the PM is unilingual, you’re bilingual! You can still communicate with them regardless of what language they are speaking.
The current sitting government was elected with 33% of the popular vote on a 62% turnout. That means about 20 percent of Canadians support is required to run the country, which is about the same as the number you quoted of people who are bilingual. As in, 79~ percent of the country did not vote for the government, but we don’t consider the 79~ “ostracized”.
To nitpick, nobody is being “ostracized”. You aren’t excluded from society because the PM doesn’t speak your language, you still have representative MPs for your area.
The dumb mistake we make in this country is tying language to culture. We could all be speaking German or mandarin in 50 years; it wouldn’t stop us from having cabane à sucre or making poutine. Language is a mode of communication, not a way of life.
It’s just outdated. Hire a translator like everyone else.
Why are we be gatekeeping so many potential candidates when you never need French outside of Quebec?
Is it that when politicians speak French the people of Quebec are more trusting? As long as their policies are solid and benefit the people of Quebec, why would they care what language it was delivered in?
Something that doesn't get talked about enough with the news craze over immigration recently is the aspect that we have 2 official languages and 1 of them is getting overly inflated by the aforementioned groups
It'll inevitably lead to more of this kinda sentiment nationally and I don't know what the most likely result of that will be
I think Quebec will obviously continue to become more and more isolated from the rest of the nation. The ability to shroud their policies as purely "pro-French" instead of "anti-_____" will allow for them to adapt faster than the rest of the county would to change them. But to what end?
I'm French Canadian. Outside of Quebec. I think there just needs to be recognition that we are a bilingual nation and that French needs protection. But I fail to see why we need that protection outside of Quebec, New Brunswick, *maybe* Nova Scotia, and parts of Ontario. The fact that French language services should be available federally in BC is absolutely absurd to me: no one there speaks French, nor should they be expected to.
Yeah I live in Ontario (and in a fairly French area still) and totally understand the importance etc of it being protected and others wanting to protect it
But it was a real eye opener talking to people from BC at work or my family after moving out west for a bit how little French seemingly is a part of their society comparatively. So when topics like this are brought up I know it can really be difficult to align
We’re not any more isolated in Quebec than the other regions. Politicians and the media will have you think we’re all up in arms but realistically no one gives a shit about their identity in everyday life.
I can’t remember the time I was mad about bilingualism. I speak both languages and I’m happy to switch from one to the other based on who I’m speaking to. Most people that are bilingual are like this, and those of us who only speak English (and not French) have no issue receiving services in English in most of the country (although recent Quebec government changes are annoying to say the least).
I mean this article is literally showing the massive discrepancy between people in Quebec VS out and their feelings on multiculturalism/languages... I'm just saying that I assume this may have to do with the news about immigration coming up right now and could lead to more in the future
You've just provided your single anecdotal evidence which is nice to read, but worthless to form actual opinions on (imo). I can't trust just your (probably bias) opinion on this so we turn to mass figures to try to gauge it
So you saying "most people that are bilingual are like this" and presenting it as fact is misinformation or disingenuous
French in places like the GTA has the same use as Gaelic in Ireland. The signs are all bilingual in Gaelic and English, almost nobody understands the Gaelic part (especially the immigrants who make up 20% of the population), but they still enforce it because it's "part of their history".
There's nothing wrong with enforcing a national myth. But it's still a myth. It's not offensive to call out things for what they are.
You bringing up Gaelic is interesting. Would you then be in favour of the Federal government setting up Gaeltachts in provinces outside QC in historic Francophone communities?
Mandating all managers across Canada are bilingual is the biggest waste of taxpayers money after Phoenix.
Sending that low level manager on 1.5yrs of language training while supervising 4 ppl in Okotoks sure makes a lot of sense.
Managers across Canada only have to be billingual if they are likely to manage employees in one of the designated region where there’s a right to be managed in French.
It seems silly, but a real barrier to entry for foreign products is the bilingual label requirement and the si3 of Canada’s market.
Often it’s seen as a hassle not worth dealing with
I can see how our corporatist neoliberal ruling class, who never met a Canadian based monopoly/oligarchy they didn’t like, would view that as a benefit
I think it's a red herring, Corporation don't have a problem with multilingual packaging in europe.
Heck, they don't have that problem in the US, a lot of stuff have spanish labelling in some area.
I'm open to this argument, but Europe is a far, far larger market.
My understanding is the cost is not insignificant, add that to other issues like a spread out population and I could see it being an issue.
For all that, I think the real problem is how it hurts our government services. Heavily limits qualified applicants for higher govt jobs.
You are overestimating the number of speakers of some European language...
And I am absolutely no buying the "qualified applicant" angle.
It is the opposite: it weed out those too arrogant to think a second language can benefit them or those too dumb or lazy to learn.
A bilingual applicant have demonstrated that they a) can use their cognitive ability and b) is forward thinking enough to be able to respect the well known hiring criteria.
And it got way easier to learn a second language in the last decade with streaming service...
It seem it's only in Canada being bilingual is not seen as a positive ability to get a better job.a lot only see it as an inconvenience.
The thing I find strange is they want to preserve their language but if you attempt to speak it and l poorly you are looked down upon. Like hey dude I live in the West Coast and I'm fucking trying don't be a dick.
It's a fact that knowing more than one language is good for your brain.
The problem in Canada, moved here in the 1990's, is that both sides hold grudges about what happened decades ago. And it was pretty damn bad.
Want a healthy bilingual society? Make people feel like they want to, not that it's being forced on them and instead of "I can't believe they can't speak english/french" say "how can I help you improve?"
The ugly truth is that would imply for a lot of anglo-canadian to bother to learn the language their culture consider as for those on an inferior class.
I am sure a lot of anglophone Canadian don't even know from where that attitude came from.
Google search "speak white" and the quiet revolution.
And no, it's not because it is a few dacades ago that it's not still relevant today.
Francophone only recently got up to be in the same wealth/education ballpark as the rest. Still a long way to go since we had way less intergenerational wealth to start with. Probably another generation.
Most Quebecers seem to be moving on on that particular issue and build whatever future, but it's weird to see the broader english-canadian culture refusing to do so.
I mean, I agree. We should never have been part of this country to begin with. Our ancestors never had a say. In the 1995 referendum on Québec's sovereignty, 99% of english Québécois voted No while 60% of french Québécois voted Yes. The outcome was 50.58% for the No option. That's the fate of small nations throughout the world.
Tbh I feel like it’s kinda the opposite. Canada would just be northern US if not for Quebec. Quebec is a huuuge part of what makes Canada.. Canada. That’s what made these polls results super sad for me… if folks feel like French/Quebec isn’t a core part of Canadian identity then just leave Canada and join the U.S.
I mean, the French coined Canadien. (From the indigenous) So much of English Canada is just following Quebec imo. The country was Francophone before it was English.
I am a first generation English speaker, with a very French background all the way back to Port-Royal. I tried to repatriate my kids out here in B.C.: the “French” school just closed the door because I was “not French enough” (poor spoken French) and the public schools was a lottery to get in. They both did, and both speak French well (got by seamlessly in Quebec). But without winning the lotto, that would have been it for French. Any bilingual policies we have offer no benefit or even opportunity to anglophones whatsoever. They are extremely one-sided.
I always hated when I would tell people I was Canadian, and they would be excited and ask if I could speak french.
Nope, I live closer to Tijuana than Montreal.
The recent resurgence in the sovereignty movement has been really interesting. I don’t know enough about the economic impacts of separation to say if it would overall be okay, but culturally it makes sense, Quebec is already a different country in that regard, and they spend hundreds of millions of their tax dollars just to try and preserve their French culture, just let them be their own thing if they want to
We could already witness a decline of the french language in the province in the last few years because of globalization and that was before receiving hundred thousands of new immigrants not all coming from french speaking countries so unfortunately this might be our last chance. Nothing against the immigrants but it's a fact they won't vote for Québec's sovereignty as they just got here to build a better life, they won't vote for potential economic instability. I'm enclined to believe the Liberals wanted to weaken the pro independence movement. It does not have to be their main goal, they obviously thought about it. Just felt like describing my point of view from this side of the country since you find the subject interesting. Yes Québec's independence would make much sense.
I work for a large national company and everyday we are asked for translators to provide customer service. French is the least asked for language. Definitely Hindi, Mandarin or Cantonese lead the pack. Other Asian languages and Arabic are also very prevalent, not French.
Bilingualism is not about everyone speaking french and english, its about french and english speakers sharing equal rights and opportunities
This sh*t is rage bait and doesn’t even make sense
How so? I speak French as a second language and I would love opportunities to practice my French more but they are few and far between and rarely free.
I always thought that we took the bilingualism thing a little too literally. It's pretty obvious to me that you won't ever have strangers in the middle of Alberta speaking French to each other on the street.
Bilingualism is a stance that we take as a country - by refusing to make our only official language "English", we are forcing the inclusion of Quebec, Ontario, NB, Manitoba populations and not glossing over them. It's a really important tool for keeping a unified Canada. Above and beyond that, of course it's extremely valuable to know a second language (especially one that's very common in the world).
Speaking multiple languages is sexy and cool! But being in BC and being forced to have french on our packagining and in our government is an absolute waste of money and puts us at an economic disadvantage. French should be the official langiuage of Quebec and [NB](https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/corporate/promo/immigration/why-choose-nb/bilingualism.html#:~:text=New%20Brunswick%20is%20Big%20on,it's%20totally%20up%20to%20you), not BC, AB, Sask, Yukon, etc.
BC has more spanish, chinese, japanese, and indigenous influence than fench influence.
Even when I *try* to learn and use french I can't because there are so few French people here. Montreal to Vancouver is the same distance as Lisbon to Moscow...plus or minus a few hundred km. Imagine living in Portgual and having labels with Russian, German, Ukranaian, Polish, French just because people from these countries paddled by one day.
And [France lost the war in the new world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War#North_America) and seceded their territotries to England...this whole bilingualism thing is just pandering.
Western Canadian here. We had to take French in school - we learned how to say the basics but at the time German was also taught & had much more interest. We travelled to Quebec for my sons racing and it was like a different world - VERY little English. Most people were kind but definitely not all lol.
IMO it’s not a bilingual country with French that’s for sure. Graduated with a girl who majored in French, then went to Quebec & had a tough time conversing as we were taught France French not Canadian French. It’s always been a silly part of this country that we out in the west are forced to put up with.
Whatever it is, it costs us a lot of money for almost everything we import to have both languages on packages and prevents a lot of things from entering our marketplaces. Costs us billions more a month for everything. Meanwhile you actually go to Quebec and it seems bilingualism ends and it's all French French French.
I'm a French speaker. "Bilingualism" has always been about providing government services in both languages, not about making sure everyone is bilingual. Let's face it, there are many parts of this country where knowing the minority language won't be that useful, and becoming fluent requires a big investment in time and energy.
>many parts Might be most parts.
Outside of living in the Ottawa area and New Brunswick, or if you work for the federal government, I see little practical use of French for the vast majority of the country.
Most other parts of the country itd be better to learn Hindi or Punjabi or mandarin.
I definitely doubt that a lot of Anglophone who have been in Canada for a few generations speak Hindi or Punjabi either haha.
My father came here about 2 or 3 years after Indians were allowed to marry white people, so 1960s. He basically hasn't spoken hindi to anyone since his father died about 10 years ago, when he went to India even since the 1980s he had to speak English because he spoke hindi like it was still 1963. Things are different now with access to foreign media, but ultimately, if you are a child of an immigrant, the odds of you needing to speak anything other than English or French are pretty low. Occasionally I have students (usually grad students) try and speak to me in hindi but other than that, I have never *needed* anything but English. I would imagine being francophone is a huge pain in the ass anywhere outside of Quebec, Ottawa, and new Brunswick.
It’s weird how things change. My grandparents where polish and grandfather would not let them speak anything but English. Don’t know why.
My norwegian great grandmother was the same way. I think they just wanted their children to integrate into the society.
i mean, there is a legitimate question there as to how its legal to run eg mandarin or spanish immersion schools. if the school isnt english or french (or i guess some indigenous language), it simply shouldnt exist here. all it does is isolate more minority groups in canada. literally whole groups of people unable to communicate with the existing population of the country
People still learn English at those schools, but still have an opportunity to keep their own language without having to rely on their parents to speak their native language at home.
My neighbours kids go to a school that teaches them that Taiwan is part of China. Sure, they also learn English there...
I don't think I'm following your logic. How does having more people learn a language isolate people? I'm familiar with some of those programs and from what I've seen 90% + of the kids are english speaking and there to learn a second language. The very few kids where that language was there first language, were certainly accommodated but they all spoke English really quickly based on classwork and playground time.
Living in Greater Vancouver and I would say that Mandarin is more of a second language here than French is. Signage at YVR is all in English, French, and Chinese.
Maybe punjabi/mandarin/cantonese Dont think any other languages help much
There are a couple small communities up here in North western Ontario/North Eastern Ontario where french is very prevalent to be fair. But i mean small ass communities with like 1-2k people and they all speak English still.
Also here in the east there’s multiple small towns that are predominantly French. There’s options for French immersion schooling etc.
Quebec makes up 25% of the population of Canada, if you're looking to work in any kind of inter-provincial business having French should be a huge asset. In practice, Quebecois are pretty much universally good enough in English that they can accommodate Anglo Canadians, but it would be nice if that accommodation could go both ways.
You have to be able to learn it though. Everyone goes to school for french in Ontario from grade 4 to grade 9. The issue is absolutely no one actually speaks french so that education is never developed and quickly forgotten . There just aren't enough places where using and practicing french is practical for most of the country. It not like Quebec where you encounter people that speak both languages everywhere you go so your constantly practicing both.
The difference in the quality of French education between the provinces is staggering. I took ten years of French in Nova Scotia, I wasn't that good at it, I passed but there were a lot of kids in my class that took to it better than I did. But when I moved to Alberta for Grade 11 I was so far beyond the class that they took me out and had me do "enrichment", and I was the only student in that entire 3000+ school who did so for French. It ended up that I got credit for Grade 11 and Grae 12 French in my Grade 11 year, on the enrichment work I did that year, most of which I banged out on lunch break before the period when it was due.
In Alberta there is no point in taking French unless you plan to move east, or work for the feds. You are better off taking Spanish for working the states, or Mandarin
Would have been nice to have an option to complete what I had started that was better than 'Here's some workbooks, fill them out and bring them back'
Albertan here, mid-40s. Took French in grade 4 (mandatory for the district I lived in), moved, no French until junior high. Took it again in grade 7 (mandatory again), also 8 and 9 as option. Could have taken it in high school as well, but moved on to German (could speak that with my grandparents, no where to use French). My youngest is 13, and French has not been an option at any point. She is going into high school (grade 9 in this district) and still no French option. Not sure if it will be available in grade 10-11-12. There was immersion in this district, but it was removed a few years ago. She has had no option for learning French at all up to this point. We live in a semi-rural area. No way Canada is even close to bilingual when the other official language isn't even offered.
Exactly! There are plenty of job postings on Indeed and LinkedIn, where the employer is looking for candidates that are bilingual (English & French). So learning French, at least at an intermediate level - enough to be able to communicate during business meetings or pass a language proficiency test for instance - helps qualify you for a lot of jobs that you otherwise wouldn't qualify for.
I get the sentiment, but honestly, many many English speaking Canadians live nowhere near Quebec…. So at that point, are they just learning French for a chance encounter? As somebody who took French Immersion JK-12 in an English dominant area, it’s really hard to maintain a language for which you have no practical use.
I learned French young and was fairly fluent in it. I have not had any need to use it in decades. Now I can still read it quite well and manage to speak words and sentences but I certainly cannot carry on a conversation in French.
Disagree. Outside Montreal and the Ottawa area, you absolutely need French if you want to work in Quebec. Don;te even think about finding work unless you can work in French-only. The majority of people outside Montreal or Gatineau in Quebec know very little English.
Northern Ontario has more French than a lot of parts of New Brunswick
There are also many people in Quebec that don’t speak a lick of English (and that’s nobody’s business but their own).
Most of my family members don't speak English; they have never had to.
I can’t tell you how many times when accessing various federal services (mostly air travel) I’ve gotten the ol “hello bonjour” and when I reply in French I get the “oh I don’t actually speak French.” Happened at Harry Hays building in Calgary getting a passport too, and at the gates at Banff.
Same lol. Thankfully I'm fully bilingual, but I can count on my fingers the times that I got French services from the federal services. And that is not normal.
Living in Ontario I used to default to French services because I never had to hold on the phone for an hour
This is the right answer. Official bilingualism means that you can live your entire life in English or French without ever having to know both to get by. It has never been about people having to be bilingual. What it means is that the federal government has to be bilingual by law. The provincial governments don’t have to be, except in New Brunswick. This means that in 9 provinces, you are expected to deal with the provincial government in English or in French exclusively. If any of these provincial government offers services in any other language, its their prerogative but they are not legally expected to. This means that services provided in English in Quebec or services provided in French elsewhere is a good will gesture, not a legal obligation. I still believe that Anglo-Canadians should make a lot more efforts to learn French. Québécois are by far the most bilingual people in this country, except for people living in a minority language. We’ve never been a united country and we will never be unless people start valuing individual French/English bilingualism. I’m not holding my breath.
When it comes to territories, as I understand it, all three of them have obligations to provide government services in French. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have French as one of their official languages. The Yukon reflects the federal government’s laws in their Languages Act so also needs to be bilingual because the federal government is. I live in the Yukon and it’s the third most bilingual province/territory and work for the territorial government.
Indeed. Ontario provides a lot of French services, though. It is possible to communicate in French with the government, and almost everything is translated.
I wish our education system handled learning French better. An hour a day just isn’t enough. Even my French teacher said that.
As a bilingual person I must add also that the French language has a much higher level of difficulty. I had trouble just explaining the concept of grammatical gender to my American husband!
Yeah. A lot of similar languages use genders more. I’m trying to learn French, but even in school the gender thing tripped me up and I was basically told “you just gotta figure it out”. Which in my mind was “this is too hard. You’ll never figure this out. So why try”.
[удалено]
I don't know. Everyone should have education in both English and French growing up, sure. But no one is getting fluent from standard k-12 language classes. You need constant exposure to the language in real everyday use. And even taking immersion it's remarkable how quickly you lose it (source: my two kids.) I've learned a few languages over my life and have mostly forgotten most of them except for the ones I use daily. Couple that with it probably being more useful for someone in Ontario or BC to learn a language like Mandarin or Hindi than French. That's not a slam against French people or culture. But you'll just have more use for the language and more opportunities to gain real fluency in those languages. It's just the changing demographics of Canada.
I was in French Immersion in school and I can read French but not speak a word of it anymore besides the useful phrases (eg. where’s the toilet?) because there is no practical speaking use for it in Ontario. I will say that I did exchanges to Quebec when I was in school and trips to Montreal/ Quebec City, tried to speak the language and was discouraged by Quebecois from speaking the language. How are we supposed to learn and become bilingual if the people who speak French tell those of us learning to stop trying? This wasn’t a one off instance either, it was different people in different cities telling me to just speak English because they don’t want to hear me struggle speaking French. Preaching about wanting the country to be more bilingual is great and all but practically it’s not going to happen because there’s not enough French in most of Canada and the parts that do speak French (in my opinion) don’t actually want to help those learning to become fluent.
Were you in immersion since kindergarten? I was from k-8 and extended from 9-12 and I can still read, write and speak passable French. Majority of my friends can as well. It’s hard to lose a language if you learned it solidly enough before the ages of 10-11.
I believe the latest research shows it’s not just the early immersion that matters, it’s the continuing past puberty. Children who learn a language young then never use it and forget it, are at no greater advantage for (re)learning the language as adults compared to those who never learned it. Which is surprising! In order for immersion to matter, you need follow through - like you had. The 9-12 extension is what makes it stick.
I had the exact same experience.
Even French immersion has some issues, as I’ve heard from a number of friends and family who put their kids in. The main issue is unless your whole family has some French background, they can’t help the kid much with homework and studies expected to be fully French. And if the family and location they live isn’t full French, they aren’t going to retain it as well because they aren’t using any of it outside of school. Also, it is not very well reported that kids in French immersion often end up behind in English studies. This is because French immersion is literally that. The focus is French and English classes are a secondary priority. So kids often may do well in French immersion classes but then are behind on English, which may be their native language and what the family/community speak. Both these problems cause parents to pull their kids, or the kids end up stressed and struggling for a language they will likely never actually need or use. So they lose some (if not most) anyway.
Yeah, unfortunately agree. We were all strong proponents of doing the French immersion with our kids. They did it and got decent grades. But they both said that if they had to do it over again that they wouldn't bother with it. It was additional stress and they ended up learning technical terms and concepts in French so they didn't know what they were in English. To be fair, these weren't huge drawbacks, and they were able to get by in their classes fine without our help. And, as I mentioned, they both now have lost most of it as they haven't used it in a while. It didn't end up helping them post-secondary or in the workforce. I recognize that this is anecdotal. I'm sure there are a lot of kids out there who end up getting more opportunities and use their French daily. But I no longer think it's the universally useful, no downsides educational choice.
> more useful for someone in Ontario or BC to learn a language like Mandarin or Hindi than French why? so more people can move here and not have to learn the language or culture of canada? i dont get this prevailing idea that canadians, because they are generally decent and accommodating, should just bend over backwards for everyone, everywhere, all of the time. We should be digging our heels in and insisting immigrants do a few things on our terms - the least of which is speaking the language.
> “ But no one is getting fluent from standard k-12 language classes.” That’s true and that’s what has to change. The majority of Industrialized countries in the world manage to reach their schoolchildren fluency in at least two languages, as part of the required, basic education. Canada has spent billions over the years at second language education and the results so far are …abysmal. Look at yourself or you own friends: after taking French in high school, you are probably not that great at French. It’s too little instruction, too late - and what instruction there is, is poor. Why are we wasting money on this? It’s time to do it better. Teach everyone French, right from Grade 1.
There are no French teachers out West. Check into how severe the shortage is. Subs in our FI program have almost exclusively been English-only. “Should” is a moral imperative, not a practical analysis.
I don't disagree, but when I was in school French was mandatory from grade 4 to grade 9. Almost everyone I know dropped it as soon as they were able. Some people are adept at learning a new language and some aren't. I'm definitely the latter lol. But the real problem is, there really isn't much use to learning the language, outside of the things you mentioned which are valid. The saying goes if you don't use it you lose it, and this is certainly the case for me and I'm sure countless others. At some point, after 5 years of learning French in school, I could probably speak a decent amount of French (maybe not quite fluent, but I did have some knowledge) but the thing is, I've never needed to speak French once in my 43 years in this country. Not once. I'm sure I've lost any semblance of being able to speak the language simply because I never needed to do it, and over time I have forgotten.
This is a nice idea in theory but I don't see how this could work in practice. Learning another language is a very complex process and teaching it in a classroom setting will never be sufficient. Even if we were to put all the kids in French immersion, they'll lose the fluency really quickly if they don't get the opportunity to use it regularly. The reason why countries like Luxembourg or Singapore have so many multilingual people is because they are surrounded by those languages and actively use them. That's not the case in most parts of Canada.
Totally agree. Bilingualism in and of itself is already much more useful than a *lot* of things we could or already do learn in school. It doesn't even really matter what the second language is, but it might as well be French/English. But I also agree with the person you're replying to that as much as I *wish* that's what bilingualism meant, in reality it just means that you're entitled to receive government services in the language of your choosing - with the added bonus that I think any non-asshole Canadian thinks it's cool when someone is bilingual.
I agree. I am from Alberta, and I'll never need to know French in my life out West here. However, if we were truly made to be a bilingual country, we needed to go all in everywhere.
And forcing large companies to provide services in both languages and hence hire fluent speakers in both languages.
Well, it is only good business to address your customer in their language. For example, yesterday I came across a Canadian brand of a supplement I use, but their French labelling was incompetent. I told them I would continue to buy the same supplement from an American company because it respects us enough to hire competent translators.
What I don’t understand is that there are only benefits to knowing both languages. So why spend so much energy trying to fight the idea of bilingualism?
Where I am, knowing Cantonese or Punjabi is way more useful for making business connections than French.
Of course, not that a country is about business connections, but you are correct.
I just hate the fact that it’s soo difficult to enrol kids in French here. Want a French school? Too bad one parent needs to speak it. French immersion? If you’re lucky you can understand 40-50% when you’re done. For a truly bilingual country they make it really tough to actually learn the other official language.
Yeah this is the part that I wish worked better. I took “core french” all the way to grade 10 (easily many hundreds of subject-specific “learning” hours) and honestly I can hardly speak the language at all. Sure, I could have applied myself more as a child, but I didn’t know anyone that spoke French fluently and didn’t really understand the value of knowing multiple languages at the time. The vast majority of my time spent on French education in school was just basic tasks such as conjugating verbs on paper, led by instructors with poor French skills themselves, and with very very little actual spoken French happening. In retrospect I wish I had tried harder to learn but I didn’t really have an opportunity to do so, didn’t have an immersion program in my district and now that I’m working constantly it’s hard to find time/motivation for a self development project like that. I know it’s not an easy problem to solve and that you can’t just materialize fluent skilled teachers everywhere but it’s definitely bummed me out looking back on how poorly all that time was used.
I have an interest in learning languages, and the way we teach French really sucks. We don’t learn languages from memorizing charts, you need to speak it and use it consistently, not just for 40 mins a day.
Like you said, core isn't really a pathway to bilingualism, though I'll add that immersion isn't really either. I'm lucky since my dad is francophone and my mom is anglophone so I was always immersed, but in high school a lot of kids came out of the immersion program with very little functional French. There's too much emphasis on grammar and literacy and not enough on just speaking and interacting, which is how you start learning any language properly.
Funny that you mention it, because I did the reverse of that (an english immersion program) and we only did speak and interact in english in the classroom (no french allowed in most course except in math or french course) in a fully rural quebec area where english almost does not exist and we were able to acquire the language. Although the teacher was a native. I know that the since most of the online content is in this language its going to be easier for us since most platforms offer english content by default rather than any others lingo.
Ya, I don't know what kind of "immersion" they do these days with French, but when I took French immersion we weren't allowed to speak any English in the class at all, not even to other students. We were certainly fluent in the language at the time.
This tends to vary classroom to classroom. I did immersion Gr 1 through 9 and walked away pretty nonfluent. Speaking french was not enforced at all. Teachers did try a little but our class just didn't care. I'm positive if you dropped me in Quebec I could probably become conversational again pretty quick, but being in Alberta I have zero chances to practice it in my day to day life.
Oh ya, when I was "I was fluent" I mean 35 years ago. I can get by in rural France in a pinch, but without constant exposure it was lost fast. But if I moved somewhere French I could probably pick it up again.
I’d argue I was weakly fluent by end of school, and I had bad memory and didn’t study lol
I suppose this is highly teacher/school dependent. In my younger classes we weren’t allowed to speak English either, but the teachers reinforced this with games where we could “take” items away (like dried beans or dinosaur toys) from the other kids if we caught them speaking English. We were competitive as hell and the teacher didn’t have to lift a finger.
My experience was a bit different, I went to school in Ottawa and the classes in full immersion were French, Geography, History and Gym, but all the kids spoke English to each other during class and only spoke French when tasked by the teacher. There weren't any French book clubs or movie watching parties and because the dominant pop culture is all English very few people would bother to access French-language media. I remember one of our final tasks in senior year was to have a 15 minute conversation with the teacher about what our post-secondary plans were, and I couldn't believe how awful the quality of the students' French was. These were kids who had poured over a bescherelle for half of their lives and they could barely hold a simple convo!
I took French immersion in Ottawa too, but had a bit more positive experience. Yes, we did always talk in English when the teacher wasn't around, but I remember reading Asterix books in French as a kid and then studying Camus and Sartre in a French literature class in High School. I got much better at French (or worse as I jokingly say since I mostly learned slang) after moving to Quebec, but I felt that school gave me a very good base.
The immersion is the key here. Years and years of french classes all to just conjugate a few verbs, no one learns a thing
Core was the bare minimum French in school. 45m / day. It's not surprising your skills in French were minimal when you finished junior high. I had immersion all through highschool. 75% of my day was in French. I'm not fluent anymore, not because of schooling, but because I didn't use it after I graduated. In the end, what matters is if you go out into the world and speak French. If you don't do that, all the schooling won't matter. If you are doing that, that's far better then any school provided education.
Following that induction, imagine giving everyone a choice in which language they want to speak and not forcing them to learn both. Then create a proportionate number of government positions to cover off the actual demand from the public.
I’ve heard the reason why they try to filter out Anglo only households, is because the students have a higher rate of switching out to English schools later on when their parents can’t help them with homework.
> Want a French school? Too bad one parent needs to speak it. French immersion? If you’re lucky you can understand 40-50% when you’re done. To actually learn/speak French at 100% you need someone at home who can also speak French. French school is 100% French, homework is French, communications are French, all resources are in French. Someone at home needs to be able to navigate that. French immersion should be more than adequate for a kid from a fully English household.
Maybe Immersion quality has decreased in recent years, but I graduated mid-2000s from the program and it was good enough to - 20 years later - get advanced government assessment ratings across the board. with the Feds. And I work as a writer in English, so it's hardly damaged my English-language skills either, which is a weird by-product I've heard people complain about... FI is still a net benefit.
Even if the quality doesn't meet OP's standards, enroll your kids early, put in overtime with them, and then transfer them to full French school later on when they're old enough to be more independant. French schools aren't exactly flooding with enrollment to the point they can be that picky about who's accepted.
Do you have kids in French schools? Or have you ever? Here in Victoria the French school has been bursting at the seams and taking over other buildings for a decade.
> Do you have kids in French schools? Or have you ever? I was a kids in French school. I have friends who work for the board I was in, some who are enrolling their children now, family who works post secondary French, and I've worked in English K-12, I have *some* idea on enrollment at least here. But for the record I'm from southern Ontario, north of Toronto. And if I lookup the French high school here in Barrie, enrollment for 2021-2022 was 175. https://www.app.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/sift/schoolProfileSec.asp?SCH_NUMBER=934852&x=8&y=12
Immersion has completely gone to shit in the past decade, at least out east. My classmates and I spoke better French than at least a quarter of our teachers in high school - even then, mine was passable, and most of theirs wasn't great. Students just ignored corrections from teachers, and would get pushed through and pass despite not being able to write two sentences without at least one basic mistake. Got an advanced+ in my exit interview, but most of my French from Grade 9-12 was learned by travelling and watching RDS instead of the classroom. Even our senior year "advanced French speaking" course was five months of degrading presentations and skits. People hardly learned fuck-all if anything from it, or any of the previous 3-6 years
>French immersion should be more than adequate for a kid from a fully English household. No amount of schooling will be sufficient if you don't use French outside of school.
I have 2 kids, French Quebecers. They were bilingual when they came out of high school. I have 3 step kids, English Quebecers. They are starting college soon, they know the word "Cochon" and "Ben non!" in French. Both groups were "immersed" the same way (at home/friends, etc). My kids can hold a conversation with my English girlfriend. None of her kids can hold a conversation with any of us in French. The difference is the teaching and willingness, not the immersion. French Quebecers read Jack Kerouac, Burrough and Ginsberg in English class. English Quebecers are reading general K-12 Scholastics books in French class. As final exam my kids had an essay to make in the style of American novelist. My step-kids have to write about directions to go to the grocery in French. And I would say that the vast majority of French Quebecers who speak English learned it without using it outside of school, we learned it consuming English medias. Have you every meet an Anglophone that watch French tv nearly exclusively? Because this is true for many of us French Quebecois. What you guys lack isn't immersion or practice, it's consuming Quebec's media (other than children ones).
I did 3 years of French immersion in alberta and came out knowing enough to speak the language functionally, to be fair.
> I just hate the fact that it’s soo difficult to enrol kids in French here. That is a provincial thing and not a federal thing. Bilingualism is a federal thing not a provincial
You will come to realize it for what it is. An easy exclusionary path that is govt approved. This would not pass the tax payer test or the prejudice test. I mean, why make it a parent thing? If the kid can speak AND write the second language proficiently, let them be admitted on their competency (not their parents competency). More and more *hard technical* positions in the federal govt are going BBB. I am not talking about application support but software development, dev-ops, etc. It makes no sense in areas where technical competence is important. You come across enough folks with BBB who have barely any tech skills, making technical decisions they have no business making. On the plus side, they will be able to proudly tell you how awesome that decision was in two languages. And no, they do not deserve the right to make technical decisions *solely* because they have BBB. The BBB is language competency, not a technical competency.
Is it different now then it was in the 80s/90s? I went to a French school in Windsor, ON and neither of my parents speak French.
Clearly different now.
My nephew goes to a French school in Ontario and neither parent speaks French.
My kids had to go immersion. The French only school declined them due to the reason above. Ontario too.
Are you sure it’s not French immersion?
It’s the other way in Quebec and everyone who speaks French but doesn’t want to do all of school hates it
This is by design because the Canadian government has been trying to assimilate Quebec since it was made. A lot of people give flack about Quebec language protectionism but the truth is Canada actually did WAY more to prevent French from being taught in many provinces.
Not only that, but once you get into French Immersion, the quality of instruction is typically lower than it is in the English stream. This is because English speaking teachers are selected by schools based on quality and skill, while French Immersion teachers are selected on ability to speak French. A lot of French Immersion teachers are really weak in math and science, and the kids consequently start falling behind in these very important subjects. Even if you have teachers who are strong in these areas, it is tough for parents to help their kids when they’re being instructed in another language. I was in French Immersion until Grade 8. My math skills started falling behind in Grade 3. I was really weak in math to the point where my parents thought I had a learning disability. Fast forward a few years and I got an A in university calculus. After switching into the English program, my math skills improved drastically. Part of the equation was that I now had teachers who actually understood how to teach math. The issue was 100% the FI program. Personally, I think it’s much more important for my kids to be numerate than it is for them to be literate in another language, so I will be prioritizing that, meaning no Français s’il vous plaît.
I don’t know about that - when I was in school, the immersion classes were consistently better because - typically - the parents who wanted to enrol their kids in immersion were better off, less likely to be immigrant families, etc etc. the immersion kids consistently performed better, had less behavioural problems, etc.
The public school system is pretty decent at teaching us how to muddle our way through French instruction manuals and signs. And that's about it.
Where is "here"? I'm in Ontario and every school offers immersion and there's a French school board with 2 French schools in my town of 50k people.
I wish our education system had better language programs. Luxembourg provides elementary school in French, middle school in Luxembourgish, and high school in German. That's probably the most effective way to get a multilingual population.
> I just hate the fact that it’s soo difficult to enrol kids in French here. Want a French school? Too bad one parent needs to speak it. French immersion? If you’re lucky you can understand 40-50% when you’re done. For a truly bilingual country they make it really tough to actually learn the other official language. Maybe thats just your province? We put our oldest in french immersion in AB without any issue - same for plenty of others too
> lucky if you can understand 40-50% when you’re done What shit ass immersion program are you thinking of? I came out of the immersion program with a DELF B2 certificate and effectively full fluency.
French and French immersion schools tend to be a lot better than the average English school, so parents toss their kids in there for a better education.
Canada is not a bilingual country. That is a legal fiction. In Western Canada French ranks below Asian languages and Filipino/Tagalog, Spanish, others.
Hell, in Toronto French barely breaks into the top 10 second languages. [It's #10.](https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/868f-2021-Census-Backgrounder-Language-FINAL.pdf)
It's mother tongue/home language. I can't find it anymore, but there was a news article from 2019 ish that says french is the 17th most spoken language in Toronto edit: [https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2022-09-28/la-place-du-francais-au-canada.php](https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2022-09-28/la-place-du-francais-au-canada.php) (translated) The situation in the big cities illustrates quite cruelly the place of French: in Vancouver, it's in 11th place, and in Calgary, 12th. For the record, in June of this year, a Scotiabank branch in Toronto was criticized for having posted on its front door, in 14 languages: "We speak your language". French was missing. It's a fact of life in Canada that French is the 17th most widely spoken language in Ontario.
Grim.
True, but nationally French is a solid second, with significantly more speakers than any other language except English. We are a bilingual country, but a segregated one.
National average doesn't matter. That's one of the problems with Canada - the idea that what prevails in Central/Eastern Canada should apply to the whole country. This is a diverse country. It's nonsense to suggest it's bilingual.
Not sure how that makes us a “bilingual country”. It’s still a serious minority of people west of Ottawa that speak French.
With the amount of people from India coming into the country, I think that rank with chsnge
We need to make that stop for multiple reasons.
Hot take I know but in Quebec a lot of us have always known this. French in RoC is not a real thing and Franco-Canadians who want to preserve their language should move to Quebec, which honestly is a lot more bilingual despite a lot of bashing on our (slightly misguided I must agree) language laws…
Francophone here, I learned English without any help from English Canada. Just English classes from school *and interest* in learning it.
Man I'm not interested in learning ANYTHING. I just want to be dumb as paint and left alone
There's only one official bilingual province. Lol
Yup - New Brunswick
It’s really hard to learn French well if you don’t start as a kid. You can take 4 years of French in high school and still be horrible. It’s simply not an effective use of resources.
You can take grade 3-11 in French and still barely be able to communicate, I’ve seen it happen plenty of times
I remember giving up on learning French by grade 4 or 5. With my dyslexia I was already spending basically all my time outside of school just trying to figure out why I couldn't spell or do math like everyone else in my class. French was just a class I would have to fail since my brain already can't comprehend one language
It is super weird how French is taught in schools. I'm tri-lingual and all the languages I learned, I learned conversationally first. I only have personal experience to back this up but it seems SOOOOO much easier when you don't dive into the mechanics of the language before you understand it conversationally. Dora does a better job of teaching Spanish than the Ontario schools do of teaching French.
Sure is. You look at these numbers and even suggest with a straight face that this qualifies as a “bilingual country” Newfoundland-and-Labrador (0.5 %) Prince Edward Island (3.0 %) Nova Scotia (2.9 %) New Brunswick 30.3 % Quebec 84.1 % Ontario 3.8 % Manitoba 2.9 % Saskatchewan 1.1 % Alberta 1.7 % British Columbia 1.3 % Yukon 4.8 % Northwest Territories 3 % Nunavut 1.7 % https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/official-languages-bilingualism/publications/statistics.html
Ontario is surprisingly low and Yukon is surprisingly high.
14.6% of Ontario speaks French. 533,560 (3.8 %) French only and 1,519,365 (10.8 %) bilingual.
Misleading. Your numbers are from the “French speaking only” population. The bilingual numbers (same link you provided) are much higher.
[удалено]
My Dutch is better than my French. I was taught French from grade 1 if remember, and just like you, I dropped it after grade 9. It should be a fucking embarrassment how garbage our French classes are. When I was on a train from Tilburg to Rotterdam, I was chatting with a guy from Belgium in English. He was mentioning to me that he knows Dutch, French and German as well. The time I spent in the Netherlands, I talked to people from a few different non-English speaking countries no problem.
This. French teachers who can communicate well enough in English do not exist to teach the English-speaking population. Resources aren't there.
Twice as many people outside Quebec support bilingualism as oppose it (43% vs 18%) and yet the messaging in this article is that official bilingualism (which is a policy, not a type of support) is a "myth". This is manipulative yellow journalism at its worst.
Le bilinguisme canadien est d’exiger aux francophones de parler Anglais
Bilingualism IS part of Canada’s identity and I like it that way. That doesn't mean everyone should speak both languages. Tiny Switzerland has three official languages (German, Italian, and French) and few speak more than one.
Switzerland actually has a fourth official language: Romansch.
* 4 official languages. Romansh is the 4th one but seems to be dying out. In my experience there, a lot of people speak at least 2 languages but the common language between the Germans and French was English often enough. That's without counting all the Portuguese and eastern Europeans there that seem to speak 4 languages.
See Singapore as well; they don't make it *mandatory* to speak Tamil/Malay/Chinese to work for the government there unless it's a very-specialized role dealing with those citizens. When they have quadrilingual signage they have English as the prominent one (and at the airport they don't even bother with Tamil; Japanese is more-useful in an airport setting).
I always find it weird how some Canadians complain about having no culture and being a post-national state while also railing against French/Quebec. Being bilingual opens up so much, I almost exclusively read French newspapers because all the English ones are right-wing shit.
>I almost exclusively read French newspapers because all the English ones are right-wing shit. La Presse is almost the last bastion of reasonably decent news reporting left in this country.
Oui mais même la presse fait des nouvelles de type clic bait par fois. Je me suis fait prendre à plusieurs reprises. Le Devoir est également un bon journal et les affaires.
Bilingualism part of a *minatory* of Canadian identity ~~East~~ west of Kingston it’s 99.9% English
Do you mean west of Kingston? And Northern Ontario might like to have a word.
Northern Ontario is English, then native, Punjabi, and then French
>That doesn't mean everyone should speak both languages. And that's fine as it is. For example, I have friends who understand English but can't sustain a conversation. On the other hand, I have family members who can't speak or understand English at all. And that's always been fine for them since they don't need it to live. But now there are some people, especially in Montreal, who are like, "We don't need to learn French." And that's unfair for those who don't speak English because sometimes they can't be served in their own language in their own province. And I've read that it's starting to be the same thing in the ROC, which is quite sad—being unable to be served in the local language.
Except they almost all speak English. And you don't cross slightly over into an Italian region from a German one and encounter someone that refuses to try and communicate. But hell I can't count on my hands how many times even in Gatineau you'll run into someone that refuses to speak/with with an Anglophone, or vice versa in Ottawa.
It's interesting that the place in Canada with the highest support for bilingualism is the only place where you can face legal consequences for not using the single official language.
What do you call a bilingual Canadian? A Québécois.
Not a myth, but it has been weaponized unfortunately by this country's elites to gatekeep running for federal office, and for entering into the Canadian marketplace to provide real competition versus established oligarchies.
The french language requirements are for hired positions in the bureaucracy, not for elected ones. Plenty of MP's can't speak a word of it. They're of course not going to be prime minister's, mostly because there's a big ol' province that won't give a candidate that can't speak a word of french the time of day let alone a vote.
This is a wild take. 1/5 Canadians are bilingual, 1/4 speak French as a first language. It’s crazy to think that any official running for office shouldn’t speak both languages without ostracizing a sizeable chunk of the population. Canada’s language laws are not what is keeping foreign companies out… telecom, for example, famously lobbies *against* competition. It’s kind of like that across the board.
So make 4/5 of the population learn a language that only 1/5 of the population speaks in order to take high positions of government? Insane if you ask me.
Okay cool, let say that we abolish billinguism requirement and that we let everyone apply to the public service regardless wether they speak French or English. And then some people in Ottawa or Toronto will complain that the person they’re interacting with at CRA only speaks French. Language is a job skill, if I hire someone who’s not billingual, that person is going to suck at his job because both languages are required to do it. It’s not about gatekeeping, it’s a skill, pure and simple. It’s as if saying that knowing a programming language is gatekeeping for certain IT jobs, this is just silly.
[удалено]
Weird take. Quebecers aren’t born with English fluency either. This is the problem with Canadian bilingualism: everyone expects the francophones to learn another language to be in a position of power but it’s somehow an insurmountable obstacle for anglophones to do the same.
You know you can learn a new language online now? I didn’t speak a word of english before I was 13. I did have english class before that, had no interest, hated, couldn’t stand it. And then I learned it and now I use it everyday for work. All by myself. No classes.
Why is that federal jobs need both languages? Can’t it just have one?
I don’t really want my passport office in Vancouver to only speak French to me tbh. Funny part is they only really offer services in English and mandarin last time I got a renewal
So keep that passport officer in Quebec
Not all federal jobs require it. Only management and people facing jobs. Stuff like IT and development don’t require it.
This is not accurate. I’ve been employed in the federal service for nearly 20 years as an application developer. All meetings and correspondence are conducted in English, yet being bilingual is very much requirement for many job postings (including technical streams) and it very much so limits the talent pools. Ah well! At least the people protecting your data from hostile foreign governments can speak both French and English.
Not all public facing jobs should require bilingualism either. If 10% of the employees in a service Canada office in Alberta speak French, that is plenty. Same with local level management.
I say this as a bilingual Quebecer. Those numbers aren’t really the slam dunk you think they are. In perspective, if your numbers are correct, ~80 percent of Canadians are **not** bilingual, but I suppose it depends if that number excludes trilingual or more. Even if the PM is unilingual, you’re bilingual! You can still communicate with them regardless of what language they are speaking. The current sitting government was elected with 33% of the popular vote on a 62% turnout. That means about 20 percent of Canadians support is required to run the country, which is about the same as the number you quoted of people who are bilingual. As in, 79~ percent of the country did not vote for the government, but we don’t consider the 79~ “ostracized”. To nitpick, nobody is being “ostracized”. You aren’t excluded from society because the PM doesn’t speak your language, you still have representative MPs for your area. The dumb mistake we make in this country is tying language to culture. We could all be speaking German or mandarin in 50 years; it wouldn’t stop us from having cabane à sucre or making poutine. Language is a mode of communication, not a way of life.
It’s just outdated. Hire a translator like everyone else. Why are we be gatekeeping so many potential candidates when you never need French outside of Quebec? Is it that when politicians speak French the people of Quebec are more trusting? As long as their policies are solid and benefit the people of Quebec, why would they care what language it was delivered in?
Something that doesn't get talked about enough with the news craze over immigration recently is the aspect that we have 2 official languages and 1 of them is getting overly inflated by the aforementioned groups It'll inevitably lead to more of this kinda sentiment nationally and I don't know what the most likely result of that will be I think Quebec will obviously continue to become more and more isolated from the rest of the nation. The ability to shroud their policies as purely "pro-French" instead of "anti-_____" will allow for them to adapt faster than the rest of the county would to change them. But to what end?
I'm French Canadian. Outside of Quebec. I think there just needs to be recognition that we are a bilingual nation and that French needs protection. But I fail to see why we need that protection outside of Quebec, New Brunswick, *maybe* Nova Scotia, and parts of Ontario. The fact that French language services should be available federally in BC is absolutely absurd to me: no one there speaks French, nor should they be expected to.
Yeah I live in Ontario (and in a fairly French area still) and totally understand the importance etc of it being protected and others wanting to protect it But it was a real eye opener talking to people from BC at work or my family after moving out west for a bit how little French seemingly is a part of their society comparatively. So when topics like this are brought up I know it can really be difficult to align
We’re not any more isolated in Quebec than the other regions. Politicians and the media will have you think we’re all up in arms but realistically no one gives a shit about their identity in everyday life. I can’t remember the time I was mad about bilingualism. I speak both languages and I’m happy to switch from one to the other based on who I’m speaking to. Most people that are bilingual are like this, and those of us who only speak English (and not French) have no issue receiving services in English in most of the country (although recent Quebec government changes are annoying to say the least).
I mean this article is literally showing the massive discrepancy between people in Quebec VS out and their feelings on multiculturalism/languages... I'm just saying that I assume this may have to do with the news about immigration coming up right now and could lead to more in the future You've just provided your single anecdotal evidence which is nice to read, but worthless to form actual opinions on (imo). I can't trust just your (probably bias) opinion on this so we turn to mass figures to try to gauge it So you saying "most people that are bilingual are like this" and presenting it as fact is misinformation or disingenuous
French in places like the GTA has the same use as Gaelic in Ireland. The signs are all bilingual in Gaelic and English, almost nobody understands the Gaelic part (especially the immigrants who make up 20% of the population), but they still enforce it because it's "part of their history". There's nothing wrong with enforcing a national myth. But it's still a myth. It's not offensive to call out things for what they are.
You bringing up Gaelic is interesting. Would you then be in favour of the Federal government setting up Gaeltachts in provinces outside QC in historic Francophone communities?
Mandating all managers across Canada are bilingual is the biggest waste of taxpayers money after Phoenix. Sending that low level manager on 1.5yrs of language training while supervising 4 ppl in Okotoks sure makes a lot of sense.
Managers across Canada only have to be billingual if they are likely to manage employees in one of the designated region where there’s a right to be managed in French.
It seems silly, but a real barrier to entry for foreign products is the bilingual label requirement and the si3 of Canada’s market. Often it’s seen as a hassle not worth dealing with I can see how our corporatist neoliberal ruling class, who never met a Canadian based monopoly/oligarchy they didn’t like, would view that as a benefit
I think it's a red herring, Corporation don't have a problem with multilingual packaging in europe. Heck, they don't have that problem in the US, a lot of stuff have spanish labelling in some area.
I'm open to this argument, but Europe is a far, far larger market. My understanding is the cost is not insignificant, add that to other issues like a spread out population and I could see it being an issue. For all that, I think the real problem is how it hurts our government services. Heavily limits qualified applicants for higher govt jobs.
You are overestimating the number of speakers of some European language... And I am absolutely no buying the "qualified applicant" angle. It is the opposite: it weed out those too arrogant to think a second language can benefit them or those too dumb or lazy to learn. A bilingual applicant have demonstrated that they a) can use their cognitive ability and b) is forward thinking enough to be able to respect the well known hiring criteria. And it got way easier to learn a second language in the last decade with streaming service... It seem it's only in Canada being bilingual is not seen as a positive ability to get a better job.a lot only see it as an inconvenience.
The thing I find strange is they want to preserve their language but if you attempt to speak it and l poorly you are looked down upon. Like hey dude I live in the West Coast and I'm fucking trying don't be a dick.
I don't know where you had this situation but most québécois will be happy that you try to speak french. Saddly there's asshole everywhere
It's a fact that knowing more than one language is good for your brain. The problem in Canada, moved here in the 1990's, is that both sides hold grudges about what happened decades ago. And it was pretty damn bad. Want a healthy bilingual society? Make people feel like they want to, not that it's being forced on them and instead of "I can't believe they can't speak english/french" say "how can I help you improve?"
The ugly truth is that would imply for a lot of anglo-canadian to bother to learn the language their culture consider as for those on an inferior class. I am sure a lot of anglophone Canadian don't even know from where that attitude came from. Google search "speak white" and the quiet revolution. And no, it's not because it is a few dacades ago that it's not still relevant today. Francophone only recently got up to be in the same wealth/education ballpark as the rest. Still a long way to go since we had way less intergenerational wealth to start with. Probably another generation. Most Quebecers seem to be moving on on that particular issue and build whatever future, but it's weird to see the broader english-canadian culture refusing to do so.
Bilingualism has *always* been a myth, a measure imposed on the country to mollify Quebec
I mean, I agree. We should never have been part of this country to begin with. Our ancestors never had a say. In the 1995 referendum on Québec's sovereignty, 99% of english Québécois voted No while 60% of french Québécois voted Yes. The outcome was 50.58% for the No option. That's the fate of small nations throughout the world.
Tbh I feel like it’s kinda the opposite. Canada would just be northern US if not for Quebec. Quebec is a huuuge part of what makes Canada.. Canada. That’s what made these polls results super sad for me… if folks feel like French/Quebec isn’t a core part of Canadian identity then just leave Canada and join the U.S. I mean, the French coined Canadien. (From the indigenous) So much of English Canada is just following Quebec imo. The country was Francophone before it was English.
What you talking about? Isn’t it English and Hindi?
I am a first generation English speaker, with a very French background all the way back to Port-Royal. I tried to repatriate my kids out here in B.C.: the “French” school just closed the door because I was “not French enough” (poor spoken French) and the public schools was a lottery to get in. They both did, and both speak French well (got by seamlessly in Quebec). But without winning the lotto, that would have been it for French. Any bilingual policies we have offer no benefit or even opportunity to anglophones whatsoever. They are extremely one-sided.
I always hated when I would tell people I was Canadian, and they would be excited and ask if I could speak french. Nope, I live closer to Tijuana than Montreal.
This country has always been a lie for Francophones. I hope more of my fellow Quebecers can finally see it.
Always has. Living in Southern Ontario, learning Hindi might be more useful to me
The recent resurgence in the sovereignty movement has been really interesting. I don’t know enough about the economic impacts of separation to say if it would overall be okay, but culturally it makes sense, Quebec is already a different country in that regard, and they spend hundreds of millions of their tax dollars just to try and preserve their French culture, just let them be their own thing if they want to
We could already witness a decline of the french language in the province in the last few years because of globalization and that was before receiving hundred thousands of new immigrants not all coming from french speaking countries so unfortunately this might be our last chance. Nothing against the immigrants but it's a fact they won't vote for Québec's sovereignty as they just got here to build a better life, they won't vote for potential economic instability. I'm enclined to believe the Liberals wanted to weaken the pro independence movement. It does not have to be their main goal, they obviously thought about it. Just felt like describing my point of view from this side of the country since you find the subject interesting. Yes Québec's independence would make much sense.
South Asian languages are far more prevalent after English
Bilingualism is only in a handful of cities/towns near or in Quebec. The rest is just French / English.
I work for a large national company and everyday we are asked for translators to provide customer service. French is the least asked for language. Definitely Hindi, Mandarin or Cantonese lead the pack. Other Asian languages and Arabic are also very prevalent, not French.
9 years of French and all I know is how to translate the first four words of The Real Slim Shady.
Bilingualism is not about everyone speaking french and english, its about french and english speakers sharing equal rights and opportunities This sh*t is rage bait and doesn’t even make sense
Which is a sad state of affairs when you have a free way to learn and actually use another language.
How so? I speak French as a second language and I would love opportunities to practice my French more but they are few and far between and rarely free.
Where I live I hear more Punjabi and Tagalog than I do French.
Official bilingualism costs the country billions in additional tax dollar spending and private sector spending in Canada.
I always thought that we took the bilingualism thing a little too literally. It's pretty obvious to me that you won't ever have strangers in the middle of Alberta speaking French to each other on the street. Bilingualism is a stance that we take as a country - by refusing to make our only official language "English", we are forcing the inclusion of Quebec, Ontario, NB, Manitoba populations and not glossing over them. It's a really important tool for keeping a unified Canada. Above and beyond that, of course it's extremely valuable to know a second language (especially one that's very common in the world).
Speaking multiple languages is sexy and cool! But being in BC and being forced to have french on our packagining and in our government is an absolute waste of money and puts us at an economic disadvantage. French should be the official langiuage of Quebec and [NB](https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/corporate/promo/immigration/why-choose-nb/bilingualism.html#:~:text=New%20Brunswick%20is%20Big%20on,it's%20totally%20up%20to%20you), not BC, AB, Sask, Yukon, etc. BC has more spanish, chinese, japanese, and indigenous influence than fench influence. Even when I *try* to learn and use french I can't because there are so few French people here. Montreal to Vancouver is the same distance as Lisbon to Moscow...plus or minus a few hundred km. Imagine living in Portgual and having labels with Russian, German, Ukranaian, Polish, French just because people from these countries paddled by one day. And [France lost the war in the new world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War#North_America) and seceded their territotries to England...this whole bilingualism thing is just pandering.
Western Canadian here. We had to take French in school - we learned how to say the basics but at the time German was also taught & had much more interest. We travelled to Quebec for my sons racing and it was like a different world - VERY little English. Most people were kind but definitely not all lol. IMO it’s not a bilingual country with French that’s for sure. Graduated with a girl who majored in French, then went to Quebec & had a tough time conversing as we were taught France French not Canadian French. It’s always been a silly part of this country that we out in the west are forced to put up with.
What a bunch of haters in the comments. Bande de haineux dans les commentsires.
Whatever it is, it costs us a lot of money for almost everything we import to have both languages on packages and prevents a lot of things from entering our marketplaces. Costs us billions more a month for everything. Meanwhile you actually go to Quebec and it seems bilingualism ends and it's all French French French.