Making a Move: Vancouver or Victoria?

[QuebecOpec]

People replying here should know that his topic is ten years old and that your advice won't help anymore the person who asked it a decade ago.

Anyway, since this topic has already been pushed up by others users, I'm also going to add some thoughts. Maybe the user is still active.

Why didn't you want to learn French? You grew up knowing that New Brunswick is a bilingual province.
So instead of learning French, you prefer to migrate 4000 kilometers, all across Canada from the eastern-most point to the western-most point? I'm astounded.

Is is too much to learn a foreign language? French is not a difficult language, much of English's vocabulary derives either from French or German. And French's grammar is similar to English.

Le français n'est pas une langue difficile. Le vocabulaire anglais dérive du français ou de l'allemand. La grammaire française est similaire à celle de l'anglais.

Also stating that fluent French is very often required in your city in New Brunswick is a bit exaggerated. It is most often enough to hold a conversation in French, those jobs that require fluency are most likely to be occupied by bilingual native French speakers anyway.
After all Fredericton is a predominantly English city... You would work most of the time in English and some French from time to time would be enough for you.

Since you moved to British Columbia, Vancouver.... Well, I don't know how things are going to develop there. Migrants assimilate but they assimilate at a lower speed the higher their number is.
I suppose in the 2020s and in the 2030s it will become more common that - sometimes - Mandarin/Cantonese will be required besides English to become a job in Greater Vancouver are; at least there will be parallel to New Brunswick. What are you going to do then...? Migrate 4000 kilometers again to the US-American East Coast to escape language requirements? Chinese won't be as easy as French for you...

[smihaila]

Originally Posted by QuebecOpec

And French's grammar is similar to English.
La grammaire française est similaire à celle de l'anglais.

This is one of the best jokes ... ever. Although I had exposure to both French and English during my middle school and high school years back in Europe (in a country that is considered francophone or at least French-friendly / having a special alliance and many economical and cultural exchange programs with France) - about 5 year of French - let me tell you - English caught me almost instantly thanks to its logical, crystal clear grammar.

French grammar is anything but logical (too many "exceptions" to its rules for my taste). Not to mention this funny thing - a word is not considered to officially exist in French, unless L'Academie Francaise approves it and publishes it in some official stuff :-)

[QuebecOpec]

Originally Posted by smihaila

French grammar is anything but logical (too many "exceptions" to its rules for my taste). Not to mention this funny thing - a word is not considered to officially exist in French, unless L'Academie Francaise approves it and publishes it in some official stuff :-)

Could you please provide some examples, where you think that French grammar is not logical?
I'm really curious. I want to understand what is not logical in your opinion.

[smihaila]

What was particularly not "cutting it" to me, were things like:
- Too many irregular verbs
- 2nd form and third form verbs, subjonctifs etc - very complicated structures.
- La langue Francaise being too "particuliere" i.e. to many prepositions and other constructs to link words together. Yup I do get that its topic of the phrase is different, like many other Latin/Romance languages (my mother's tongue also falls into Latin/Romance langs). Take for example: Place d'Armes vs. Place des Armes.
- Many words are contextual and may have many meanings (I do know that English and even others have the same characteristic, but not so pronounced).
- Too many accented chars (it's even hard for me to type them properly here with my anglophone keyboard :-) )

The first 2 items in the list above simply made me dislike it, sorry to say. With the other aspects (i.e. vocabulary) I can cope, and if I need to speak it, actually it is a funny thing - I need to first think what I want to say in my mother tongue (which from a point of view of how a phrase is constructed or even the vocabulary - is similar), as the structure is different from English, in order to achieve some sort of fluidity on how the words are put and linked together.

With English I just go with it. Boom. Logical grammar and very well fitting with logical / structured / more right-side type of brain. It may be that the influence of the profession (IT) has a played a role in getting biased towards English, but at the end of the day it is what is for me.

Not saying that it's not awesome to know as many langs as you can, but French, along with so many other langs, has a different grammar, and harder to master. At least for me, who I'm not a great linguist. And my brain works in a funny way: it allocates more resources to abstract, math and Computer Science thinking and less to "linguistic I/O parts of the brains". It is very interesting: if you hear me speaking calmly and a very clear / perfect English (and less perfect French) on a specific day and time of the day - it is a sign that I am slacking at my job. It's something like the "give more power to the shields" in StarTrek - very curious phenomenon.