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Precisely. I spent quite a bit of time in Jonquiere and Chicoutimi back in my hockey days, and I never got the impression that it was anything close to bilingual. I'm willing to be that 95% of the population there can't hold a conversation in English.
My gripes are not with the province of Quebec embracing its French roots; Quebec is French, and for the most part, most Quebecois have little to no reason to be fluent in English. Montreal, however, is a whole different species. There should be no laws limiting the use of English in a city like Montreal, which is so dependent on resources and direct trade from English regions. It can only hamper growth and economic development.
Well, according to Statistics Canada, 30,000 of the 140,000 francophones in Saguenay can speak English. That's 21%. They are completely isolated from anglo North America and there are virtually no anglos in the immediate vicinity.
According to Stats Can, 8000 out of 43000 anglophones in Moncton, NB are bilingual. That's about 18%.
And living where they are, these Moncton anglos have much more reason to be bilingual than people in Saguenay. And they tend to complain a lot about bilingualism requirements for jobs and such. Yet after several decades of official bilingualism, and a couple of centuries living side by side with tens of thousands of francophones, still less than a fifth of them are bilingual today.
I'll let others speculate on the reasons for this before I chime in.
Pure laine has been brought into the discussion three times on this thread over the past two years. All three times by anglophones.
Fair enough but I still maintain what I said. Before this thread I had honestly never heard the expression before. If you think most Anglophones go around talking about Pure Laine think again AJ. Maybe Anglophones in Quebec I don't know but I've never heard one use that expression in my whole life in T.dot.
Fair enough but I still maintain what I said. Before this thread I had honestly never heard the expression before. If you think most Anglophones go around talking about Pure Laine think again AJ. Maybe Anglophones in Quebec I don't know but I've never heard one use that expression in my whole life in T.dot.
Oh I believe you. But the term comes up often from those anglos who are "concerned" about the affairs of Quebec, including people who live both in the province and outside of it. Of course, this would not include most Torontonians!
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