Over the Labor Day weekend we went to a local fair, the 'Brome
Fair'. It was a bit nostalgic because when we lived in Connecticut,
every year we also went to a local fair - you know the kind, with
fried food, games, rides and farm animals. This was the same, but
was even more similar since Brome is in a part of Quebec that is
heavily anglophone. There are a few of those areas in Quebec,
including the West Island of Montreal. A region is termed
'anglophone' when a majority of families speak English at home as a
first language. What we've noticed is that most young people in
Quebec are bilingual, and talking to natives, it seems to be a
trend. The Quebec language law has done a good job keeping French
relevant (holding a job is impossible without at least an
intermediate level of spoken French), but parents are increasingly
realizing that English is important for their kids to learn.
Speaking of languages, my wife and I are starting a French
conversation class in a few weeks, offered by a local
non-profit. It's geared towards new immigrants, they call it
'francisation', since you not only learn to speak French, you learn
about local culture. I'm looking forward to it since improving my
spoken French has been difficult for me. I work remotely for an
American company, so I don't have much chance to practice
conversation, and most people we interact with on a day-to-day basis
(grocery store, coffee shop, etc) speak English. So that tends to be
the default language once they sense you struggling with French. I
continue to read and listen to French as much as I can in the
meantime, and I was pleased to see a french-language phlog in the
list here at SDF [0] (best viewed in elinks).
[0]
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/flonlo/
