this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2023
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In school. Started in grade 4, then did late immersion starting in grade 7 and stuck with it through junior high and high school, took the DELF and got a nice scrap of paper saying I was bilingual. I have tried to keep it up with Duolingo, but it was way too repetitive for me. I basically just read the odd article or book in French now, or occasionally eavesdrop on people from Québec or New Brunswick when I go to the mall in the city.
Damn, the anglophones are learning English to eavesdrop on us! /s
Though that's interesting. For a lot of Quebecers, we expect classes of French taken in the rest of Canada to be kinda useless as most don't seem to be learning much of anything. Definitely cool that you're trying to keep it up!
I assume you're in Nova Scotia or somewhere around that area?
I mean it takes a minute to even register, like "oh hey, they're speaking French over there 👀"
Tl;dr for the following 1 a.m. ramble: most folks only take core French, so yeah, they don't learn a whole lot. Those of us who go through either early or late immersion generally get a much better handle on the language, but nothing to the extent of a native speaker.
At least in my experience (in NS, you guessed correctly), French class was always pretty easy for me, since it was a lot of learning rules and patterns and I thrived on that sort of thing. Having all the other classes be in French was the really beneficial part of it, in terms of language application. There's also the French school system in NS (conseil scolaire acadien provincial) that does French from either pre-school or grade primary. I guess I could've gone into that system since I'm Acadian, but the French school in my area was right in town, while my family was way the hell out between the suburbs and the sticks.
Based on what I've heard from some if my friends who took just core French, where there's only one French class and you only take it up to grade 10, that's where you often get a class full of kids who either don't care or who just don't quite have the knack for language acquisition. Most people take core French, so you're right that most people come out of school with pretty well nothing. I'd wager that it's similar in other provinces.
We all love 1AM ramble, it's pretty coherent though.
Some of my family origins are Acadian as well in the New Brunswick region (though far enough in the genealogy that I don't know anyone from there). Kinda interesting they use that ethnicity (I'm not really sure what to call it?) in the name of the French school system there. I kinda would've expected government offices to avoid using the term after the huge deportations.
It makes sense that a lot of students don't bother with French outside of Quebec honestly. Unless they want to get into Federal politics or get a job in a federal office, they likely will never need it. It's my understanding there's still some small communities of French people in some provinces though so I guess that explains why there are French school systems, kinda out of obligation because of the law on the official languages of Canada?
Here's their about page. I just kinda skimmed it. Seems to be open to any francophone in the province, as well as newcomers who either speak French or speak neither French nor English and exchange students who speak French.
I would say that it's because of the grand dérangement that the term acadien is used in the name, so that those who are still here have the right to education in French, not that one necessarily has to be Acadian to go to a CSAP school. There's also Mi'kmaq immersion in at least some of the schools on reservations, and I believe there's a Gaelic immersion school somewhere in Cape Breton. Pretty neat that there's this push for language/cultural reclamation.
That makes sense.
Really surprising there's Gaelic immersion, I kinda assumed it was essentially no longer taught even in Ireland. Cool stuff!