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The vast majority will know French because they have learned it in school. Somehow I doubt the Quebec school system is going to dial down the level of French it teaches to students.
The vast majority will know French because they have learned it in school. Somehow I doubt the Quebec school system is going to dial down the level of French it teaches to students.
This. Virtually everyone in Quebec knows how to function on French regardless of their preferred language used among peers. It’s a no-brainer
The vast majority will know French because they have learned it in school. Somehow I doubt the Quebec school system is going to dial down the level of French it teaches to students.
So the original topic is bogus and nothing more than embellishment and cultural paranoia from a supposed francophone who has no faith in the strength of his culture..
How many minutes per week do your kids receive English lessons?
How many minutes per week is there instruction in English, in grade 4 and grade 10?
Has there been a change in the amount of minutes in the past 5 years?
Is English compulsory for 10 or 11 school years? And is it offered in eleventh grade or no choice to choose English for 11 years?
Does English still start in grade 1, or was it shifted back to grade 2?
And what happened to Anglais intensif, is Anglais intensif now more or less taught, do your kids have it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jambo101
So the original topic is bogus and nothing more than embellishment and cultural paranoia from a supposed francophone who has no faith in the strength of his culture..
Irish is mandatory in all Irish public schools, yet you see how powerful Irish is in Ireland...according to wikipedia English and Polish are more relevant in Ireland than Irish.
The Chinese are now massively buying on the West island and real estate prices are rising on the West Island, as the West Island itself becomes RELATIVELY more closer and more central to Ville Marie because the periphery of the metropolitan area keeps expanding beyond the western limits of West Island, which makes the West Island more attractive.
The Chinese involvement in real estate in Western countries is one of the great scams in recent decades. Corruption by government officials, real estate agents and developers has allowed foreign money to disrupt local housing markets in countries all over the world. Vancouver's housing market has been completely overturned. New Zealand is moving to ban foreigners from buying real estate.
The first thing Chinese do when they get money is buy real estate in foreign (read: Western) countries and send their kids there. Makes you wonder about their political system...
Quebec has mostly been spared of this, but I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal where a reporter went to a real estate investing conference in China. There, a company had a booth advertising Montreal as the hot new destination for Chinese real estate investment. There are taxes now in B.C., Australia, etc. The salesperson wore a beret and touted the "French flair" of Montreal, which is ironic because the industry is helping to disrupt the culture.
Quebec is uniquely vulnerable to this, as the Chinese are anglophones (as evidenced by the fact they are buying on the West Island). Anglo Canada, the U.S., etc. let this go on for years, but one hopes that when the CAQ is in power in the fall they will put the brakes on this scam.
Do your daughters who went to Sacred Heart and Royal West Academy use French frequently (50% + ) in their daily lives? Yes? No?
They came out of their education here in Quebec fluent in French, they dont use it because after graduation they both moved to Vancouver. where they both have high paying jobs in the tech industry
How many minutes per week do your kids receive English lessons?
How many minutes per week is there instruction in English, in grade 4 and grade 10?
Has there been a change in the amount of minutes in the past 5 years?
Is English compulsory for 10 or 11 school years? And is it offered in eleventh grade or no choice to choose English for 11 years?
Does English still start in grade 1, or was it shifted back to grade 2?
And what happened to Anglais intensif, is Anglais intensif now more or less taught, do your kids have it?
.
Wow. Lots of questions.
My kids are in high school.
Their schedule is set up on a day 1, day 2, day 3, etc. type of system with an irregular amount of days to mix things up. They don't have English every day but when they do they have it for one hour on those days. Overall it probably amounts to about 30 minutes of English per day. (Even though as I said it's not every day.)
In their school, kids are split up between advanced English and regular English. There is no difference in the number of hours per week or day. The difference is how fast they go and how difficult the lessons are, the complexity of the books they read, etc.
AFAIK in elementary school English starts in Grade 1. This has been the case for over 10 years I am pretty sure. Maybe 15. As in high school they don't have English every day. I can't recall the number of hours but it's probably about the same as in high school, or maybe a bit less. Certainly not more.
AFAIK2 English is compulsory in all years of elementary (6) and secondary (5) school in Quebec.
So the original topic is bogus and nothing more than embellishment and cultural paranoia from a supposed francophone who has no faith in the strength of his culture..
I don't agree with everything he says but while the policies in place seem to work reasonably well with people who grow up here, there is more of a challenge with people who arrive here as adults.
As I mentioned previously things need to be improved for immigrants but also for Canadians from other provinces who move here who I would argue don't have the resources that they should at their disposal in order to learn French.
In the case of immigrants we do have some leeway to strongly encourage them to take lessons, but with "other Canadians" we don't have much power at all.
This is not to say that immigrants and "other Canadians" don't learn French when they move to Quebec. A lot of them do, probably most - and many of them already know some French before they arrive here.
But if Montreal's economic fortunes continue to improve there is a good chance this will become more of an issue as it becomes a more attractive place to move for people from all over.
This. Virtually everyone in Quebec knows how to function on French regardless of their preferred language used among peers. It’s a no-brainer
The proportion of the population that can speak French in Quebec is about 95%. This is higher than the population share in the United States that can speak English. (BTW Quebec and the U.S. have similar shares of their population that is foreign-born - about 12%.)
Another thing is that due to the school system in Quebec, we're churning out more and more kids that are *better* in French than in English. This does not mean that they will know zero English - they will learn some from school, from popular culture and from anglophones (if there are enough of them in their midst).
If you think of my kids, they and their friends spend all day in French in school. They have one hour of French-French per day, plus all of the other subjects other than English are in French too. And that will be their lives for a full 12 years.
It's not really the same as with the Irish language in schools in Ireland. There it's just a couple of hours per week AFAIK and it's kind of taught as a "second" language. Similar to how English is taught in Quebec francophone schools in fact. All of the other subjects in Irish schools are taught in English.
In the English schools my kids attended it was 80% in French till grade 4 then switched to 60% French till the end of high school,not sure how prevalent this is in English schools in Quebec but it would be tough to go through this level of French instruction and not be very comfortable with French.
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There are no more really English schools left in Quebec. The vast majority of English elementary schools are immersion schools of one type or another. They seek to bring English-speaking kids to a high level of proficiency in French. Most subjects in schools in the English school system are actually taught in French.
From what I can tell from listening to the children of Anglophone friends speak French, these schools do a pretty good job. It is a well-documented fact that Anglophones living in Quebec are by far the most bilingual Canadians. Any child who has gone through a French immersion school in the English school system can hold his or her own in most contexts.
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What makes you so sure that it won't be like in Ottawa, where people ignore and don't learn and don't use French, that is geographically connected to the rest of English-speaking North America? Will anglophones will feel like in a francophone province or will they rather feel like the easternmost English-speaking part of Ontario?
where they both have high paying jobs in the tech industry
