As a student in linguistics I am aware of the language situation in Canada. Canada has two official languages, French and English; however English dominates in almost all Canadian provinces with the exception of Québec. During reading week I spent four nights in Québec skiing with U of T’s Ski club as I thought it would be nice to get away from the city for a bit. I tried my best to speak French- the local language while I was there. We visited Québec City which is a really beautiful city and while there we ate traditional Québécois food in a really nice restaurant in the old town. My friends and I gave French a good go for the most part. I studied French at GCSE level and in the first year at university so I am reasonable at speaking although I struggle with listening quite a lot.

I think it is nice to give it a try and I am certain that our waitress appreciated the effort. For a native English speaker it would be so easy to just speak English as practically everyone in Québec seems to have some kind of Bilingual capacity in both English and French. However I felt bad doing so in a province which shows such a strong preference for the French language. People in Québec are really proud to be French Canadian which you soon become aware of with the never-ending presence of the Fleurdelisé. I feel English people, me included can be quite bad with this. Although sometimes we simply lack the knowledge of the language, we could certainly make a bit more effort. I think French people; specifically French Canadians in this case appreciate you giving their language a try. I remember in my first week in Toronto I tried speaking French almost jokingly to a French girl that I live with and she really enjoyed it. It is a nice thing when someone makes the effort to speak to you in your own language even if you are not the best speaker.

Things literally as simple as going to the local store and saying ‘bonjour’ to the shop assistant and ‘merci’ goes some way towards doing this. After all most of the language used in everyday contexts such as restaurants, shops and bars is really simple to acquire and requires little thought. French is also a really cool language to speak so you might as well give it a go. I think living in Toronto has made me quite determined to learn another language since in some of my classes it seems as though I am the only person with no multilingual capacity. During one of my lectures before Christmas my teacher did a survey to establish the range of languages spoken by people in our lecture. There was 20+ languages spoken in total and monolingual students such as me were undoubtedly in the minority, which is really cool in a way but it can make you feel slightly inferior.