Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Is it really? That's not the impression I get. At least not in a functional, tangible, everyday way.

I have two roommates in Toronto and the three of us combine for eight different languages spoken. French is certainly not the #2 most used amongst those, which probably goes without saying.

Their kids will likely narrow down the number of languages spoken given that they'll be growing up in Canada and not in countries with multiple various other languages spoken and taught in schools, but immigrant languages typically transfer over well to descendants depending on how well transmission and use in cities are represented. There's usefulness in knowing Mandarin in Markham or Richmond, and it'll be easy to retain, but less so in Medicine Hat or Yellowknife. Can be said for just about any other language, really, and places that insist on holding on to unilinguliam will simply be left behind or dragged forward by new immigrants.

Even in Quebec, unilingulism is quickly being replaced by bilingualism throughout the province, or by multi-lingualism in Montreal.

Originally Posted by Loco101

I would say that you are pretty accurate. There are some here who are almost entirely Franco-Ontarians who work and spend a lot of time just across the border who understand Quebec well. Just like northern NB, my region borders smaller almost 100% francophone places that will elect separatist candidates.

This is if you're painting Quebec with one wide brush, applicable to the entire province. Sherbrooke is not Chicoutimi, just as Gatineau is not Outremont. There are many different facets to Quebec as a whole and assuming it's all the same is like assuming if you get North Bay then you get Bay & King. You can paint provinces with a wide brush if you like but by doing so you'll be missing smaller regional and city-dependent intricacies.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JHikka

This is if you're painting Quebec with one wide brush, applicable to the entire province. Sherbrooke is not Chicoutimi, just as Gatineau is not Outremont. There are many different facets to Quebec as a whole and assuming it's all the same is like assuming if you get North Bay then you get Bay & King. You can paint provinces with a wide brush if you like but by doing so you'll be missing smaller regional and city-dependent intricacies.

These things tend to be concentric circles as opposed to silos.

There is still a Quebec "feel" that is present in Montreal just as it is in Rimouski. This does not preclude these areas from each having their own intricacies. Or even sub-intracacies within them, as with certain parts of Montreal.

The Quebec (or at least French Canada) feel even spills over outside of Quebec into places like Hawkesbury and Edmundston.

There are Ontario things (even non-administrative) that Toronto and North Bay have in common.

There is also a higher level "Canadian" feel that is present to some degree all across the country, including in the most francophone areas of Quebec.

As I said: concentric circles that overlap here and there.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JHikka

I have two roommates in Toronto and the three of us combine for eight different languages spoken. French is certainly not the #2 most used amongst those, which probably goes without saying.
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I don't have any reason to doubt the number of languages that can be spoken in your apartment, but I find it hard to believe that if you're all Canadians (in some way) that if by some magical occurrence all of you forgot all of a sudden how to speak English, that it would be a language other than French that you would converge to to communicate.

I mean, I guess it's possible but it seems like a pretty remote possibility.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Their kids will likely narrow down the number of languages spoken given that they'll be growing up in Canada and not in countries with multiple various other languages spoken and taught in schools, but immigrant languages typically transfer over well to descendants depending on how well transmission and use in cities are represented. There's usefulness in knowing Mandarin in Markham or Richmond, and it'll be easy to retain, but less so in Medicine Hat or Yellowknife. Can be said for just about any other language, really, and places that insist on holding on to unilinguliam will simply be left behind or dragged forward by new immigrants.
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Either for romantic/fanciful reasons or strategic/devious ones, I find that many Canadians (esp. ROCers) tend to over-estimate the staying power and long-term impacts of non-official languages.

I think that the future may well likely be one where there is more multilingualism, but probably not to the degree that some people are predicting or would like to see.

Even with a decent ethnic concentration in parts of metros, there is significant language loss from generation to generation, unless a community practices a high degree of endogamy (marrying one's own "kind").

And still. If you go to a place like Woodbridge, most families that have two Italian-Canadian parents (descended for mid to late 20th century immigration) have English as their family language.

But perhaps our more interconnected world will give immigrant languages more legs. I dunno. (Though I doubt it will be a truly transformational effect.)

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

But perhaps our more interconnected world will give immigrant languages more legs. I dunno. (Though I doubt it will be a truly transformational effect.)

For what it's worth my experience is that the many Canadian-born people of Chinese descent I know in Vancouver claim to have limited Chinese language skills and don't feel fully bilingual or like native speakers. They should not be conflated with young people living here who grew up partly or entirely in China. Many people in Canadian cities are foreign born and have a mother tongue other than English but that doesn't say much about future generations.

I've got some immigrants in my family and a bunch who are/were Francophone. The languages lasted about 0.5 generations on average. This includes family members who are in their teens and twenties now and have all the modern interconnection advantages. I think the retention might have actually been stronger in past generations. There are exceptions where some people are into learning languages but on average they don't seem to be retained for long. There are remnants that stick around for a while, a few bits and pieces of the language and culture (Italian-Americans being a good example of this), but that's a tiny fraction of the linguistic knowledge of a native speaker.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by someone123

For what it's worth my experience is that the many Canadian-born people of Chinese descent I know in Vancouver claim to have limited Chinese language skills. They should not be conflated with young people living here who grew up partly or entirely in China.

I've got some immigrants in my family and a bunch who are/were Francophone. The languages lasted about 0.5 generations on average. This includes family members who are in their teens and twenties now and have all the modern interconnection advantages. I think the retention might have actually been stronger in past generations.

In my family's experience the children of immigrants tend to be fluent (or close) in the non-official language even if they were born here. The third generation is at least conversant to be able to talk to grandma and grandpa, but that is usually where it drops off... culturally that third gen is Canadian, and often marries someone from a different ethnicity and their kids usually only speak English.

I wouldn't be shocked if that got stretched out a little for those belonging to very large groups of recent immigrants (thinking mainly of Asian backgrounds) partly because of the sheer sizes of those communities as well as the ease of maintaining links to the old country via TV, phone, internet, etc. But even then those links tend to give way. Again, this is my experience, but I find it rare to encounter people who speak the same language as their immigrant great-grandparents. Languages don't last long when you don't actually need them to function on a daily basis.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by esquire

In my family's experience the children of immigrants tend to be fluent (or close) in the non-official language even if they weren't born here. The third generation is at least conversant to be able to talk to grandma and grandpa, but that is usually where it drops off... culturally that third gen is Canadian, and often marries someone from a different ethnicity and their kids usually only speak English.

If we converted it to how much school you'd need to acquire the language skills, at an appropriate age, I'd guess the native speaker is about 13 years, the second generation is about a year, and the third is about a month.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by someone123

If we converted it to how much school you'd need to acquire the language skills, at an appropriate age, I'd guess the native speaker is about 13 years, the second generation is about a year, and the third is about a month.

Sounds about right. It is exceedingly rare in my experience to find situations where the fourth generation speaks the language fluently (outside of exceptional situations maybe like Hutterite colonies) but it does happen... mainly in situations where someone is especially attached to the culture and language, meets someone who is like-minded, and has children with them.

[Acajack]

Yeah, my views on the long-term prospects for minority languages are influenced by experiences and observations with minority francophone communities all across Canada.

In my immediate and extended family and entourage I have tons of kids who are under 18 and almost all of them (actually, all of them I have some degree of contact with) are in French-first (not French immersion) schools at the moment.

These range from schools in northern New Brunswick which are indistinguishable from schools in Quebec (everyone speaks French all the time, including in the schoolyard) to French schools in the GTA where the kids all naturally speak English amongst themselves and the teachers are constantly reminding them that on parle français ici.

Even with K-12 education all in French, French as an official language of the country they're growing up in, a largely francophone extended family, bilingual product labelling and (to some degree) public services, access to francophone media... I am not still not sure about French's prospects into adulthood for most of the kids in the latter group. (The former group will be fine of course. So much so that in some cases it's almost like they've grown up in a different country.)

It seems like French has a lot more going for it in that context than most any immigrant language, and intergenerational transmission of French is still not a given in so many regions of Canada.

So while there may be some freaks of nature that are born and raised in Edmonton and are good enough in Polish to host a TV show in Polish in Warsaw, they'll be extremely few and far between.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I don't have any reason to doubt the number of languages that can be spoken in your apartment, but I find it hard to believe that if you're all Canadians (in some way) that if by some magical occurrence all of you forgot all of a sudden how to speak English, that it would be a language other than French that you would converge to to communicate.

That's not the original point you doubted - the original point was that the number of uniligual Canadians is declining. This belief is supported by both flat bilingualism numbers (roughly at 18% nationally) as well as increasing immigrant language figures nationally. esquire's point is both accurate and able to be backed-up by StatCan language figures. Whether or not you want to shift the goalposts to suit your beliefs is up to you but it's accurate to say that fewer Canadians speak one language today compared to the past, especially if you're willing to venture to this country's major cities...

With recent immigration, even very unilingual places like PEI are becoming more multilingual as immigrants move in and ingrain themselves, people who are able to speak both official and non-official languages.

Originally Posted by esquire

Again, this is my experience, but I find it rare to encounter people who speak the same language as their immigrant great-grandparents. Languages don't last long when you don't actually need them to function on a daily basis.

I'm of the belief that these languages are becoming more useful and provide more reason to be retained as our cities grow and develop with a wider group of immigrants. Can you still get by with English? Of course, but Mandarin likely gets you further today than it did a hundred years ago. Non-English retention rates usually always bow to English regardless. It's becoming easier to live and work predominantly in specific ethnic languages in specific areas of Canada without the need for official languages.

It's an aside, but I recently worked on a contract gig in Toronto where my boss was selected for the position for his past experience but especially for his ability to speak to clients in five languages/dialects (English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Fukien/Fujian, and Hakka). I interviewed for the position but my French wasn't of as much use as the dialects.

Originally Posted by Acajack

So while there may be some freaks of nature that are born and raised in Edmonton and are good enough in Polish to host a TV show in Polish in Warsaw, they'll be extremely few and far between.

A bit offensive to call people who learn x language a 'freak'.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

Sounds about right. It is exceedingly rare in my experience to find situations where the fourth generation speaks the language fluently (outside of exceptional situations maybe like Hutterite colonies) but it does happen... mainly in situations where someone is especially attached to the culture and language, meets someone who is like-minded, and has children with them.

My kids have a significant number of friends who speak Arabic at home. I've probably had 20-30 come through my house over the years for dinners, sleep-overs, parties and as temporary significant others.

I've yet to meet one who can read and write Arabic. I know that's different than speaking it but it's still a pretty good sign of intergenerational transmission and how much effort and determination goes into it. Which for most people, means: not that much.

These families just speak Arabic mostly because they always have and it's natural. And of course because both parents speak it. In these cases it's simply the easiest thing to do.

Kids with only one parent fluent in an immigrant language will much much more rarely speak it. In my observation only a small number will actually pick up that language.

I'll report back in a few years when they start having kids of their own (with partners from their in-group or not) about what languages they're teaching them.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by jhikka

a bit offensive to call people who learn x language a 'freak'.

lol!

Originally Posted by JHikka

It's an aside, but I recently worked on a contract gig in Toronto where my boss was selected for the position for his past experience but especially for his ability to speak to clients in five languages/dialects (English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Fukien/Fujian, and Hakka). I interviewed for the position but my French wasn't of as much use as the dialects.

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Well, at least you're providing more clues about where you're situated on the romantic/fanciful vs. strategic/devious axis!

Originally Posted by JHikka

I'm of the belief that these languages are becoming more useful and provide more reason to be retained as our cities grow and develop with a wider group of immigrants. Can you still get by with English? Of course, but Mandarin likely gets you further today than it did a hundred years ago. Non-English retention rates usually always bow to English regardless. It's becoming easier to live and work predominantly in specific ethnic languages in specific areas of Canada without the need for official languages.
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It's always been possible to do that to some degree in Canada's major cities, provided you were willing to have a ghetto-like existence.

But sure, the ghetto might sometimes be a bit more posh today.

Originally Posted by JHikka

That's not the original point you doubted - the original point was that the number of uniligual Canadians is declining. This belief is supported by both flat bilingualism numbers (roughly at 18% nationally) as well as increasing immigrant language figures nationally. esquire's point is both accurate and able to be backed-up by StatCan language figures. Whether or not you want to shift the goalposts to suit your beliefs is up to you but it's accurate to say that fewer Canadians speak one language today compared to the past, especially if you're willing to venture to this country's major cities...

Animus doesn't make for the most interesting discussions in my experience, so... time for a noon-hour bike ride!

[thewave46]

Language retention of a community is also helped by the fact that more keep arriving.

If you look at the TFR for Canada in 2020, it's something like ~1.4-1.5 (replacement is 2.1, and it's been below replacement since 1972). So, even among the newly immigrated, it's not as if immigrants are having huge families as in days of yore. Sure, they might be larger, but not that large.

My point being that Canada (as far as the past 50+ years of history seems to show) will still require many immigrants if it even wants to retain the current population. Which is a different debate, but the point being that fresh newcomers will continue to arrive. Maybe from different parts of the globe in the same sense that European-based immigration declined in favour of more global sources.

Many second-spoken European languages died out in Canada because there stopped being new arrivals who struggled with English and English-language education became quite good in Europe.

[JHikka]

You don't need to flood the thread with quadposts. The multiquote function (or manual quoting) is available to you.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Many second-spoken European languages died out in Canada because there stopped being new arrivals who struggled with English (and English-language education became quite good in Europe).

The sources are still changing. China is now far behind India as a source country and other countries like Nigeria are becoming more prominent. It could turn out in retrospect that Chinese being a prominent and rapidly rising language family in Canada will look like a circa 1990's-2010's phenomenon.

China offers better economic opportunities than it used to and there might be less economic integration in the future. There is a kind of goldilocks zone for major immigrant source countries. They have to be wealthy and stable enough to offer educational and travel opportunities but generally offer lower economic opportunities overall or have other factors that push people to leave.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

My kids have a significant number of friends who speak Arabic at home. I've probably had 20-30 come through my house over the years for dinners, sleep-overs, parties and as temporary significant others.

I've yet to meet one who can read and write Arabic. I know that's different than speaking it but it's still a pretty good sign of intergenerational transmission and how much effort and determination goes into it. Which for most people, means: not that much.

This is basically me with Ukrainian... I can speak it in a rudimentary conversational way which I did growing up at home, but I can't read the Cyrillic alphabet and my parents never bothered to teach me or to send me somewhere to learn. By contrast, with Polish I can at least flip through a newspaper or magazine and get the gist of things, but don't ask me to write anything.

I suspect that for the vast majority of third/fourth gen Canadians, the main function of knowing some of the old country tongue is to communicate with older relatives or to be able to talk on family trips overseas. Beyond that there may be a small handful of culture enthusiasts, language fans or people who learn for business purposes but those are very much the exceptions. In my experience, at least.

Different story of course for those who speak officially-supported languages other than English, which in Canada means French and Indigenous languages. Those will maintain a critical mass for the distant foreseeable future, even if there is some loss to English.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by someone123

The sources are still changing. China is now far behind India as a source country and other countries like Nigeria are becoming more prominent. It could turn out in retrospect that Chinese being a prominent and rapidly rising language family in Canada will look like a circa 1990's-2010's phenomenon.

China offers better economic opportunities than it used to and there might be less economic integration in the future. There is a kind of goldilocks zone for major immigrant source countries. They have to be wealthy and stable enough to offer educational and travel opportunities but generally offer lower economic opportunities overall or have other factors that push people to leave.

Yes. China's demographics have changed too - it looks like it may peak population-wise much sooner and start declining than originally anticipated.

Anyway, even just to maintain Canada's population (assuming no big spike in the TFR) we'll need many new people in the future. Especially as death rates start to creep upwards.

Which seems to point to more second-language retention for starters. Also, it seems less likely we'll end up with Canada being Canada of the past where there was a unified majority (European-descended Anglo-Canadians) versus a single minority (European-descended Francophone Canadians), which is generally where the most viscous conflict happens.

With a lack of that 'unified majority' as in the past and the unlikelihood of that happening in the near future, I do not foresee the same levels of conflict between those particular groups.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Also, it seems less likely we'll end up with Canada being Canada of the past where there was a unified majority (European-descended Anglo-Canadians) versus a single minority (European-descended Francophone Canadians), which is generally where the most viscous conflict happens.

But there was a high rate of immigration going back many decades and the English-French divide is what we got. In Quebec there have been a lot of immigrants whose descendants became Francophone and a part of the majority culture, while it's the same in other provinces with English. What we call the Francophone minority in Canada today is made up of people from Italy, Lebanon, Haiti, China, etc.

We have not seen any provinces change their dominant or official language. The most important test there is whether outsiders from other groups start taking on the new language as the mother tongue for their kids and as their day to day language at work and at home in regionally demographically significant numbers. I don't think this is likely for the foreseeable future. Maybe it could have happened with Chinese with several generations of higher rates of immigration but instead it seems to be dropping off. The biggest immigrant language group coming to Canada amounts to somewhere south of 0.3% of the population per year; probably more like 0.1%.

[mousquet]

Acajack's current signature is the obvious sign that Canada is still a tribal nation, somehow.
He says:

It's really unfair to me as a Canadian that French should be a required job skill given that the language is totally useless to me.

Bah, French should neither be required nor useless. It's just an undeniable plus in your local curriculum vitae, isnt' it?

France has struggled for centuries against tribal tendencies over her natural territory that spreads from the North to the Mediterranean seas.
It took the tyranny of monarchy, then some excessively centralized Republican governments to make it, but I think our people feel as one today.
It eventually worked somehow. From Rennes, Brittany to Nice, French Riviera and from Strasbourg, Alsace down to Biarritz, French Basque Country, they all feel like they belong to a same weird nation called France today.
They all speak standard French with some various accents sometimes, because some still can speak their peculiar regional languages. But local languages are no longer felt as any threat to national unity, since the feeling of a same nation has been strong enough by now.
Foreign languages are all easier to teach here in this country. Myself, I was pretty good at speaking Spanish when I was a teen and I should learn about it again, because I miss it. It is some part of my youth.

Again, it was no easy matter to get to this state of mind across our nation. It took centuries and a lot of pain to make it.
But it works in the end, I guess.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by someone123

But there was a high rate of immigration going back many decades and the English-French divide is what we got. In Quebec there have been a lot of immigrants whose descendants became Francophone and a part of the majority culture, while it's the same in other provinces with English. What we call the Francophone minority in Canada today is made up of people from Italy, Lebanon, Haiti, China, etc.

We have not seen any provinces change their dominant or official language. The most important test there is whether outsiders from other groups start taking on the new language as the mother tongue for their kids and as their day to day language at work and at home. I don't think this is likely for the foreseeable future. It could have happened with Chinese with several generations of higher rates of immigration but instead it seems to be dropping off. The biggest immigrant language group coming to Canada amounts to somewhere south of 0.3% of the population per year; probably more like 0.1%.

Sure, but the animosity between Quebec and the ROC reached the fever pitch among the descendants of those groups, not the original immigrants AFAIK. The original immigrants were the outsiders to Canada.

In a sense a new homogeneous group emerged via the Baby Boom from those immigrants in the 1950s-1970s that integrated itself into preexisting British-Empire Anglo-Canadian prejudices. The most difficult years of the Quebec-ROC thing were the 1970s through the 1990s (admittedly for a bunch of reasons), but it was also when that group came to ascendancy.

Does that happen again when there are many more markers of differentiation today than of yore? Do Haitian Francophones in Quebec hold the same animosity for Bangladeshi Anglophones in Ontario that used to be the marker? Or does the glove not fit the same way?

I'm also looking in terms of generational change. What happens 50 years in the future, not the next decade.