Well, i am very happy there are more and more french speakers....but can they speak well? Also, this analysis lacks an important point: spoken language in store/restaurant or at work? French is declining at work. Because French professionnals have to be bilingual but english professionnal do not have to. 15 francophone professionnal on a zoom meeting and one unilingual Anglo...They will all switch to english because they are all polite and nice, want to appear competent etc.
is that the issue though? the politicians aren't arguing about quality they're talking about the number of speakers. Boulerice even said the problem is the demogrpahic weight of Francophones is too low. How do you fix that?
Also I've heard this argument about the 'anglo in the board room' and it's nonsense. Every job I ever worked in Montreal was all in French all the time, unless there was an American or Canadian present visiting from another office. The one job I had where we primarily worked with Americans was 60-40 French-English bilingual in the workplace, but that couldn't be avoided given who we were dealing with.
A team is 100% francophone and just switch overnight to english due to a recent hire who does not speak french (canadian hire, no plan to learn french), meaning 15 native french speak speaker have to ajust to another language at every morning meeting from now on. ( This is a francophone owned compagny). Why can't they work in their own language in the official language of the province they live in? noboby complain because they are proficient in english but to me it does not look like sucess. Sucess would me no one would be expected to switch to english, the english speaker would be expected to learn french or at least commit to it! I don't see the "we" in the "we are complaining", because this happened with no discussion whasoever.
Well yueah that's a great point and all but what can I say, empirical evidence, statistics, the Official Languages Commissioner and the OQLF all seem to disagree with your single annecdote. I have no idea why.
Well, there is a lot of difference on what people report and what they actually do. Plus there is a lot of other cultural factor, like speaking english is a way for a francophone to advance socially etc. The quality of the speaker is important to actually use the language in a work contact, not just "speaking" or even understanding. But i agree decision should be made on data.
Thanks for this article. I wish the language police would just leave Montreal alone. The rest of the province is tellement français, point final. In fact, anglo-ish areas like the so-called West Island and Eastern Townships have undergone substantial francisation in my time. At the last referendum, we used to joke that if Quebec separated from Canada, Montreal would separate from Quebec.
Well, i am very happy there are more and more french speakers....but can they speak well? Also, this analysis lacks an important point: spoken language in store/restaurant or at work? French is declining at work. Because French professionnals have to be bilingual but english professionnal do not have to. 15 francophone professionnal on a zoom meeting and one unilingual Anglo...They will all switch to english because they are all polite and nice, want to appear competent etc.
is that the issue though? the politicians aren't arguing about quality they're talking about the number of speakers. Boulerice even said the problem is the demogrpahic weight of Francophones is too low. How do you fix that?
Also I've heard this argument about the 'anglo in the board room' and it's nonsense. Every job I ever worked in Montreal was all in French all the time, unless there was an American or Canadian present visiting from another office. The one job I had where we primarily worked with Americans was 60-40 French-English bilingual in the workplace, but that couldn't be avoided given who we were dealing with.
Bill 101 succeeded - and we're still complaining?
A team is 100% francophone and just switch overnight to english due to a recent hire who does not speak french (canadian hire, no plan to learn french), meaning 15 native french speak speaker have to ajust to another language at every morning meeting from now on. ( This is a francophone owned compagny). Why can't they work in their own language in the official language of the province they live in? noboby complain because they are proficient in english but to me it does not look like sucess. Sucess would me no one would be expected to switch to english, the english speaker would be expected to learn french or at least commit to it! I don't see the "we" in the "we are complaining", because this happened with no discussion whasoever.
Well yueah that's a great point and all but what can I say, empirical evidence, statistics, the Official Languages Commissioner and the OQLF all seem to disagree with your single annecdote. I have no idea why.
Well, there is a lot of difference on what people report and what they actually do. Plus there is a lot of other cultural factor, like speaking english is a way for a francophone to advance socially etc. The quality of the speaker is important to actually use the language in a work contact, not just "speaking" or even understanding. But i agree decision should be made on data.
Thanks for this article. I wish the language police would just leave Montreal alone. The rest of the province is tellement français, point final. In fact, anglo-ish areas like the so-called West Island and Eastern Townships have undergone substantial francisation in my time. At the last referendum, we used to joke that if Quebec separated from Canada, Montreal would separate from Quebec.