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It is not really that hard to get books and magazines in French in Quebec. In fact, most of the stuff available here is in French.
Try getting time magazine ,people magazine ,scientific American or popular mechanics so on they are American magazines I don't think the company will translate it.
Most books and magazine are American because they have 10 times the people of Canada they publish alot of books and magazine every year.I don't think they will translate most of them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
My kids are not better in English than me and I am not sure they ever will be.
I can't predict the future but at their age I already spoke English almost like a native speaker and they certainly do not. Of course I was not living in Quebec at the time.
If you kids are learning English in school and speak English at least three times a week there should be no problem.
Try getting time magazine ,people magazine ,scientific American or popular mechanics so on they are American magazines I don't think the company will translate it.
Most books and magazine are American because they have 10 times the people of Canada they publish alot of books and magazine every year.I don't think they will translate most of them.
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They are not translated you are right but there are French-language equivalents for all of them and these are by far the top sellers.
If you kids are learning English in school and speak English at least three times a week there should be no problem.
Yes, my kids will speak English for sure but quite a few of their friends do not seem to be on that path.
Also, unless they leave Quebec to live, my kids won't likely speak it like I do, which is close to native speaker fluency. It will always be a second and less effective language for them.
I know the conversation has sort of drifted along to a different discussion but I thought I would chime in since the original strain of the thread is somewhat relevant to me. I lived in Montreal for a couple of years and went to Concordia, when I moved there I came with a lot of expectations that I had taken away from other people.
A few of the commonly repeated stereotypes that I had heard about French Canadians and about living in Quebec in general:
- People will not speak English to you and will be insulted if you don't know how to speak French
- The police and other officials are arrogant and will treat you especially badly if they know you aren't from the province
- All Quebecois are separatist and it's all they care about/talk about
Of course, in my two year experience, all of these things turned out to be completely untrue. I lived in Notre Dame De Grace in Montreal and traveled a lot around the city, almost every single person I encountered was perfectly fluent in English, and more than that, did not want to communicate in French. Here's what would happen. I would begin speaking terrible French, they could immediately detect that my French was terrible and obviously not my first language, they would switch to English and that was the end of it. No one wants to have a disjointed conversation and nobody ever behaved in a way that was arrogant or superior.
Speaking for Montreal only, you should keep in mind that it is a hugely ethnically diverse city. In my neighbourhood there were loads of people from all over the place, in particular Arabs, Persians, Chinese, Jamaicans, Russians, Spanish and more. There are all kinds of languages flying around. You can get on a bus and listen to four conversations in four different languages.
Interestingly, I have spent a week in France and the attitude was very different there. People were still totally civil to me but they were in favour of communicating in French even when it was obvious that it wasn't my first language (which was probably all the time). They seemed to appreciate the effort. Of course Quebec and France are two completely different cultures and both approaches make sense. Quebec is surrounded by English-speaking provinces and have a huge population of English speakers, so it would probably be a hassle having broken conversations with people just to say that you were communicating in French. France is of course the home of the French language and is not a multi-lingual country (as far as I know) and there are probably far fewer people speaking English.
That being said, there are plenty of people I met in Quebec who spoke barely a word of English or none at all. Like others have said, for some people it's just something you learn in school and then fall out of practice, the same as learning French in a primarily English-speaking province.
I only spent a couple days in Quebec city but my experience there was about the same as Montreal. I would think that they would be even more tolerant of English speakers because the tourism industry in Quebec city brings in so much money.
The only "bad" experiences I ever had with the language difference in Quebec was on one occasion I went into a big box women's clothing store which had signs posted stating that the employees would communicate only in French. It didn't exactly invite me to shop there but I can understand the logic, given that having to speak two languages to work in retail in your own province puts a lot of people at a disadvantage and could be considered an unfair requirement.
The second incident was a protest I encountered in downtown Montreal which had something to do with abolishing the law which allows English to be written as a secondary language on products/signage etc. It sticks out in my mind because the hostility made me uncomfortable and I felt personally attacked, given that something which directly attacks the English language in Quebec can be expected to be felt as an attack against English speakers in Quebec.
However, that incident was isolated. Quebec, in my mind, is the province of protest and there is a lot more going on. I went to Concordia during the year in which the protests against rising student tuition fees first started and participated in a few protests myself. I can only say that Montreal is a city in which every person seems to have a cause and every person participates and supports protesting for the rights of people who are in any way marginalized. Amongst those of us protesting the rising student fees were people rallying for women's day, trans and gay rights, and hare krishnas just out doing their hare krishna thing.
Just as a last note, I had brought up this idea that some people have that the police in Quebec are somehow arrogant or superior and will treat you badly as an English speaker, I never experienced this at all. Montreal had a pretty average police presence for a city of it's size and if anything was unusual about the police force it was that there were a lot of female police officers (compared to what I'm used to seeing in Newfoundland) and the cops were very laid back, many wearing shorts, riding bikes, seeming to just hang out, etc.
That's because most of them in that neighborhood are actually native English-speakers or if not, just use it as the primary language in their daily lives.
Reading this thread would have one think that Quebec is just a clone of France with absolutely no history of any English-speaking culture.
Nationalistdefeator...all you have done is just repeated what I said in fewer words. I understand that NDG is full of people who have English as a first language and that is why a lot of people choose to use it as their primary language. How could I live there for two years and not get that? In saying that though, I traveled all around Montreal and experienced basically the same environment of general acceptance.
I live in Quebec. I am a native French speaker and I speak 5-6 languages.
The language I know is a function of my curiosity. The language I speak is function of my geographic location.
See, as soon as I cross the border to go to the US or Ontario, I start speaking English right away.
When I come back to Quebec, I start speaking French right away just like I started speaking Italian when I went to Italy.
If I am asked directions in English in Quebec and it's not urgent, I kindly ask whether or not they speak French. Otherwise, if it's an accent of a language I know be it German Italian or Spanish, I take the opportunity to practice it.
If he or she only speak English only has they just arrived here or also language that I'm not familiar with, I give directions in English.
If he or she has been living here for more than 2-3 years and does not yet speak French to be functional (I don't ask for philosophical discussions), then this is obviously a lack of respect and I tell them. Another lack of respect would be to be asked to speak English in Quebec (outside English classes, of course). Whoever does it deserves a finger.
I think so. When I was in Quebec City's International Airport at Tim Hortons the lady serving us said she didn't know how to speak English. This is obviously a lie as I doubt they would hire someone at an International airport if they didn't know how to speak English. I think many Quebeckers are proud of their language and that's why they say they don't speak English even if they do because they don't want to speak it because they feel French is important to their culture. It's also similar in France as well. I think it's because French is the second most important language in the world (So many countries speak it as well as Spanish) So they want to emphasize the languages importance and don't want English to take over it and everything. :P
This has been going on for decades, nothing new here.
While responsible for convening business meetings with various offices scattered across Canada I was virtually forced to accommodate by having meetings more frequently scheduled in Quebec due to their reluctance to travel to the great satan of the ROC.
It was not unusual for a translator hired by me or one of the other provincial multi-lingual rep's. to sidle up to me during a coffee break and inform me that I had wasted my money on a translator due to all of the Quebec contingent being fluent in English but merely refusing to admit it, or to speak it during formal discussions
The first time that happened to me was in the 70's and I recall being completely confused as to why they would have demanded the accommodation. All I got for my queries was a shrug of the shoulders and a "you'll never understand them" given with a " it's that kind of stuff that made us leave the province and we were born there".
The rep's from New Brunswick, French speakers themselves, threw the cat amongst the pigeons one year by flat out refusing to come to the meetings scheduled in Quebec because of this stupidity of having to sit through meetings extended exponentially in time consumed, and at great expense for no good reason other than the Quebecer's intransigence.
This practice went on for at least twenty or more years of bi-annual meetings with the bulk of them being held in Quebec and having to hire translators for no good reason other than petty nonsense to prove they could force compliance from people who would go to additional inconvenience and expense rather than engage in a fruitless confrontation. One or two department heads even rubbed salt, after having demanded this feature, by speaking perfect English to me during private discussions.
If he or she only speak English only has they just arrived here or also language that I'm not familiar with, I give directions in English.
If he or she has been living here for more than 2-3 years and does not yet speak French to be functional (I don't ask for philosophical discussions), then this is obviously a lack of respect and I tell them. Another lack of respect would be to be asked to speak English in Quebec (outside English classes, of course). Whoever does it deserves a finger.
Why not just answer the person in the language the question was asked? Why should people have to pass some form of inquisition for you to reply in English .How do you make the judgement as to whether some one asking you a question in English has been in Quebec 3 minutes or 3 years?
And you finding it deserving of a finger if you have to speak English in Quebec doesnt strike me as having much tolerance for respect.
A great deal of my neighbours do not speak any English. They simply don't need it and had no reason to learn.
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