How bilingual is Montreal?

[Jack]

I have a question some people on this board may know the answer to...

If, say in three years, an American went to Montreal to practice/learn French, would they be spoken to in English only because of their accent?

I've been told that a large number of people in Montreal are bilingual, while the more rural parts of Quebec speak French only, but nearly all the major schools for learning/staying are in Montreal (and it costs much more to go to Europe).

As far into Canada as I've ever been is Windsor, so I wouldn't know...

[MurphyStout]

If, say in three years, an American went to Montreal to practice/learn French, would they be spoken to in English only because of their accent?

I've been told that a large number of people in Montreal are bilingual, while the more rural parts of Quebec speak French only, but nearly all the major schools for learning/staying are in Montreal (and it costs much more to go to Europe).

It depends on who you were talking too, some french speaking canadians are very friend but I've heard some reports of French Canadians being rude and not so friendly to people who don't speak there langauge fluently. Perhaps Azalin can elaborate more on this.

As to the second paragraph, yes I think that is true. I was just in Montreal for a few days and yes it seemed most people in the city were bilingual and I heard people in rural areas speech mostly french.

Montreal is awesome though and I think it's a cool place to hang out. And from what I hear French Canadians don't speech proper French... I mean they throw in lots of slang and what not. But maybe I'm just an ignorant dumb American.

[izzarina]

And from what I hear French Canadians don't speech proper French... I mean they throw in lots of slang and what not. But maybe I'm just an ignorant dumb American.

The French is different if you are comparing those from Québec to those from France. Even the pronunciations are different for many words. I have a Canadian friend who speaks French to her children and she said something that I couldn't understand (not that my French is fluent...I've been away from it for far too long). It turned out that she was telling her son that something was "chaud" (hot) but her pronunciation was way different than the way I had learned it, which was pronounced "show". I can't remember how she said it, but it seemed way different. I don't know that I would say it's "incorrect"....perhaps it would be more correct to say that it's a different dialect.

[Unseen122]

When I went to Montreal back in December (it was very cold) mostly everyone spoke English and French the poeple were nice but if you bumped into someone on the street they wouldn't say any thing and just ignore that it happened. If you wanted to speak to them in French I don't think most people would care about your accent but to pick up the accent listen to a lot of French like learning where to put Rolls and Crans in Whistleing watch TV in French I am sure you would be able to pick up the accent.

[brewerpaul]

I often run into Montrealers when I go hiking in the Adirondacks, which are about halfway to Montreal from where I live. Their French does NOT sound a lot like what is taught in High School here in the US. I find it a harsher sounding version of the language-- sort of like American English compared to England English.

This is just hearsay, but I've been told that if you try to speak French in Montreal or Quebec the folks will take off at high speed in French. Not on the assumption that you are fluent, but almost like "Sacre Bleu! You think you can speak my language? I'll show you! Ha ha!!". Again, this is just hearsay-- I haven't tried it.

If anyone DOES decide to drive up there and passes via the Albany NY area, give a holler first and maybe we can do lunch...

[Unseen122]

If anyone DOES decide to drive up there and passes via the Albany NY area, give a holler first and maybe we can do lunch...

Now ya tell me.

[Lambchop]

This is just hearsay, but I've been told that if you try to speak French in Montreal or Quebec the folks will take off at high speed in French. Not on the assumption that you are fluent, but almost like "Sacre Bleu! You think you can speak my language? I'll show you! Ha ha!!". Again, this is just hearsay-- I haven't tried it.
...

Umm, yeah, that's been my experience. On one trip up there, my dad, who had not spoken English until he was 6, so must have spoken it with an accent, was literally tortured by folks in Quebec. As was my grandmother, who had spoken it all her life, but had an American accent. The Quebecois would simply pretend not to comprehend, rolling their eyes and making snide comments to each other. We couldn't even get a meal in a restaurant--they'd give us insane things. And they'd insist that they did NOT speak English--not one word.

After one disastrous breakfast, at which my dad ended up with one egg, my mother with two, my grandmother with three, my brother with four, and me with five, and nothing else--and I wouldn't eat eggs--I discovered a shop next door selling ice cream. In I went, ordered a double chocolate cone in French, paid for it, and sauntered back out to the car.

My dad realized that we were onto something. The rest of the trip went smoothly. They coached me in the car, then pretended to be a family of mutes as I handled the negotiations. I ordered meals, purchased services and gasoline, and arranged for hotel rooms. It worked, apparently, because I was cute and eight years old. They didn't care that my French had an American flavor.

The French Canadians who live here in the winter are generally very nice. However, they apparently cannot believe that any Americans speak another language. Once they discover that you can, they refuse to speak it with you. Nor do they become any nicer upon discovering that you have a classic French Canadian surname.

The French from France also act as if they do not believe any Americans speak another language. The French Canadian surname makes things much, much worse. They will reply politely, but will cease conversing rather than sully the language.

This is in marked contrast to the Spanish-speaking population here. They insist on speaking it so as to help you improve. In fact, if you tell them you don't speak it, they'll begin teaching you so that you can.

My town also has a very large group of expatriate Russians. They are utterly shocked to discover that you can speak even a single word of Russian, at which point they will delightedly tell everyone, and you are invited to join all the conversations, with someone helping you along.

So, yes, I'd have to say that French Canadians have a language thing.

[DCrom]

To be fair, French Canadiens also experience a fair amount of French language snobbery when they visit France.

My previous company's QA department was over 90% French-Canadian, though they may have been somewhat atypical because most of them were from Sudbury (sp?) - I gather that Sudbury is one of those places other Canadians make fun of.

But they were mostly bilingual, with French being their milk tongue - conversations between them were a weird melange of French and English (just enough that I could follow along, mostly).

The project we were working on (DOCSIS cable modems and head ends, for the curious) needed European certification (Euro DOCSIS is a bit different from the North American flavor) so our lead QA folks spent a fair amount of time attending events in Europe (mostly in the French speaking part of Belgium and France itself). They one and all complained that although they could get by in Belgium and Normandy (isn't the French-Canadian dialect essentially an archaic Norman dialect?) that in Paris people regarded them as uncivilized bumpkins because of the way they spoke. This was tempered by the fact that they were mostly large, burly, tough-looking hockey-playing guys that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley - the smallest of our Sudbury contingent was 6'1" and 220 lbs - but they were NOT happy about it at all, at all.

[s1m0n]

It depends what part of town you're in. Downtown or in the west end, expect to find a great deal of bilingual people. In the east end--or even just a few blocks east of St Denis--you can expect to find far less comfort with english.

You *can* immerse yourself in french in Montreal if you try, but if you want to be *forced* by circumstances to speak only french, you might be better off in Quebec City or a smaller centre like Joliet or St Jerome--these cities both get used a lot for immersion programs.

[Azalin]

So, yes, I'd have to say that French Canadians have a language thing.

Thanks for telling me, I'll go see a doctor tommorow, and try to get this "language thing" fixed!

:roll:

[bradhurley]

To get back to Cranberry's original question:

Although it's true that Québecois French is very different from continental French, there are plenty of transplanted French people here and you would have little trouble finding opportunities to learn continental French in Montréal. And people here are used to hearing continental French; Montréal is a cosmopolitan town and a lot of people emigrate here from other French-speaking countries. But the French you'll hear on the street is, as other people here have pointed out, almost unrecognizable at first if you've learned continental French. You can use your continental French and people will understand you just fine, but it may take a while for you to understand native Québecois speakers.

Québecois French is beautiful in its own way, I love it. To French people, listening to Québecois French is similar to what a New Englander might experience listening to someone from Alabama or Mississippi talking -- it's a sort of drawl. After a while you can start recognizing regional accents within Québec -- Montréalers, for example, have a very different accent than people from Québec City, and people from Lac St-Jean have their own accent.

I live in the eastern part of town, which is much more Francophone than the west, and a lot of the shopkeepers that I deal with only speak French. You can definitely have a French immersion experience here if you spend most of your time east of boulevard St-Laurent, which is the more interesting side of town anyway. I'm not fluent in French by any means, but I try to do all my business in French (shopping, banking, going to the doctor, etc.), and I'm only rarely answered in English.

It's also not unusual to hear bilingual conversations here, with one person talking in French and the other replying in English, or even conversations that veer back and forth between French and English, sometimes even within the same sentence.

[Flyingcursor]

Is there a similarity between Quebec French and Lousiana French?

More importantly is there a connection in the music?

I recently heard a show on NPR about some Cajun people going to Quebec to meet some ancestral relatives. It turned out they had more in common then one would expect. One of these was the famous Cajun fiddler, Waylon Thibodeaux, whom I had the opportunity to play with on stage in New Orleans one time.

[bradhurley]

Is there a similarity between Quebec French and Lousiana French?.

Louisiana French is more like Acadian French, which is spoken in eastern New Brunswick; the Louisiana French were mostly exiles from Acadian Canada and the two cultures are closely tied. The word "Cajun" comes from "Acadian."

[rich]

I've heard lots of second-hand horror stories about bilingual Quebecois, but having lived practically unilingually Anglophone in Montreal for seven years I view many of the stories with suspicion.

In working-class French neighbourhoods in Montreal you might have a hard time finding someone who <i>speaks</i> English. Other than that, business owners there know that bilingual staff means happy customers, and it's rare to find a place who won't at least try to serve you in English if need be. It differs neighbourhood to neighbourhood, but these days no-one's offended that you'd rather speak English any place you'd end up while visiting.

When your English is way better than your French but you <i>want</i> to speak French, it gets harder. The people you talk to will either switch to English because they think you're speaking bad French just to be polite (in the same way that if an American tourist came up to you speaking broken French on the streets of Montreal, you'd switch to English just because it's easier for both of you), or because they want to get your transaction over with and correct (especially if it's busy), or because they think you're a tourist and don't know that it's OK to speak English -- or they'll keep speaking French.

Now the problem is that they'll probably speak French the same way they'd speak French to their Francophone customers, which is not conducive for learning -- it's not because they're mean, it's because that's <i>how they talk every day of their lives</i>. Anglophones do this to French people too; I talk fast all the time and I found it hard to remember to slow down in mixed-language company. You can always ask someone to slow down, but that might also bring with it a change to English (but that's probably the same thing we'd do if the situation was reversed).

Regardless, it would be unusual for a Francophone to not appreciate your attempt to speak French first, even if they don't have the patience to stay in French with you. "Bonjour, ça va? I'll have a large coffee" is not the least bit unusual.

It's been a long time since the referendum and downtown Montreal and the Plateau and the tourist areas shouldn't bring any rude surprises.

[s1m0n]

More importantly is there a connection in the music?

Back before there was language to divide and colour every social interraction and public event in quebec, the same purpose was served by religion.

Your religion determined where you lived, worked, and most importantly went to school. As a consequence, a huge number of the post-famine Irish immigrants to canada intergrated into the french speaking communities rather than the english communities, which we almost entirely protestant lowland scots. This is why today in quebec you can find true bleu quebecois surnames like "Blackburn" or "Bourke" (ie, Burke) who don't speak a word of english.

These represent the descendants of Irish immigrants who spoke gaelic the day they landed at Grosse Ile or Black Rock, and thereupon entered the local french culture. As well, many of the orphans left behind after their parents died on the passage over were adopted by families in the catholic--that is, french--parishes.

The point I'm trying to make is that Quebec saw an influx of Irish influences that Louisianna largely missed out on. This shows up in the music of quebec; in the reels, in the mouth music (turlutage) and in the instrumentation.

As a consequence, Quebecois traditional music is much closer to ITM than the music of the cajuns.