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The article mentions that less than one percent of Quebecers are bilingual. There's something clearly wrong with that stat. A correction is in order. Loomis51 23:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I can accept that explanation. I'm an anglophone with french as my second language (I'm not quite as comfortable in French as in English so I suppose I'd be considered "anglophone" rather than bilingual). However, something still isn't right. I know so many near perfectly to perfectly bilingual people that the percentage still must be way higher than 0.8%. I just think of how many people I know born of one anglophone and one francophone parent and realize the number can't be right. Also, what qualifies as bilingual changes from place to place. In Quebec, my french is considered somewhat weak. In Ontario, I'm considered perfectly bilingual, and in the United States, my french skills are so impressive that they think I'm a francophone! I know it's a complicated issue and that raw stats can be misleading. Loomis51 03:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I took this out until its meaining could be clarified:
Seems to me Ontario was required to finance its minority education. Or am I misinterpeting "required to finance"? PBrain 17:23, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Prior to Ottawa putting a line on linguistic minority education in the Constitution of Canada, only Quebec was constitutionally "forced" to take care of the educational needs of its (protestant) minority. -- Mathieugp 18:54, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
And here's the text of section 93:
Section 93 [Education]
In and for each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to Education, subject and according to the following Provisions:
(1) Nothing in any such Law shall prejudicially affect any Right or Privilege with respect to Denominational Schools which any Class of Persons have by Law in the Province at the Union:
(2) All the Powers, Privileges and Duties at the Union by Law conferred and imposed in Upper Canada on the Separate Schools and School Trustees of the Queen's Roman Catholic Subjects shall be and the same are hereby extended to the Dissentient Schools of the Queen's Protestant and Roman Catholic Subjects in Quebec:
(3) Where in any Province a System of Separate or Dissentient Schools exists by Law at the Union or is thereafter established by the Legislature of the Province, an Appeal shall lie to the Governor General in Council from any Act or Decision of any Provincial Authority affecting any Right or Privilege of the Protestant or Roman Catholic Minority of the Queen's Subjects in relation to Education:
(4) In case any such Provincial Law as from Time to Time seems to the Governor General in Council requisite for the Execution of the Provisions of this section is not made, or in case any Decision of the Governor General in Council on any Appeal under this section is not duly executed by the proper Provincial Authority in that Behalf, then and in every such Case, and as far as the Circumstances of each Case require, the Parliament of Canada may make remedial Laws for the due Execution of the Provisions of this section and of any Decision of the Governor General in Council under this section.
Roman Catholic schools in Ontario already had the right to funding as a result of laws passed by the legislature of the Province of Canada.
PBrain 22:14, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I will need more time to look into this issue. You are bringing up things I will need to double-check. Right now, I think the confusion comes from the "Constitution Act, 1867". Does it mean the constitution as it was drafter originally in 1867 or is it not the constitution of Canada proper just before it was sort of replaced by the 1982 one? I know for a fact the Charter of rights is what forced all provincial governments to respect minority language rights. I know for a fact that Ontario started to be serious about the educational rights of the Francophones in the 1960s. Prior to that, it is legal battle over legal battle.
I think it may just be that the basis of a constitutional right was always there, but it was not fully recognized by the Ontario government. In which case, you would be entirely correct in correcting me. We will need to clarify all this anyway to keep improving this acticle (and start putting stuff in Demolinguistics of Canada). -- Mathieugp 03:21, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As for the educational rights of Catholics not being fully recognized, there are some pretty big Catholic school boards in Ontario that have been around since the 1850s. If you're talking about the rights of francophone Catholics I can see your point, but, even though I may be splitting hairs here, I see that as a separate issue. PBrain 12:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Législations linguistiques adoptées au Canada
Not related but maybe of interest to you, the history of the English language here:
Histoire de la langue anglaise
-- Mathieugp 14:53, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The best source I found for everything that pertains to language is here:
This site is a gold mine. If we can find a second source like that (in English), it will be even better. -- Mathieugp 20:30, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I tried to restore the pasage I excised with a clarification. It probably could be clearer yet. One issue I didn't get into was schools for anglophone Catholics, although maybe I've just thought of a way of doing it. I hope to get working on the other project next week. PBrain 12:48, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I have read some news articles lately which suggest that a law has been passed, or soon will be, that requires the children of allophone immigrants to enter francophone schools. Does anybody have information to support or deny this?
Hello, I've been reading this discussion with interest. I lived for many years in parts of Montreal with many immigrants, and these are afew of my observations:
1) Immigrant communities tend to come in waves that last a few decades (Eastern European Jews at the beginning of the 20th century, Italians after WWII, Vietnamese in the 80's, Lebanese and Algerians after 1990, and so on); 2) Most immigrant communities that arrived pre-1980 tend to assimilate to the anglophone community, while many who arrived generaly after 1980 tend to assimilate to the francophone community (ex. Vietnamnese, Arabs, Latin Americans); 3) Many immigrants have tried to immigrate to other countries before coming to Canada (UK, France, USA), and may have spent a few years living in these countries. They often have relatives scatered in countries all over the world. Typically immigrants to Montreal will have cousins in NYC, Miami, Los Angeles, Paris, etc. This is especially true of the more recent communities (Vietnamese, Arabs, Latin Amercians, etc. For this reason often the parents speak English, but the children because of bill 101 learn French at school. In these homes the native language is retained far more so that would be the case in Toronto or New York because it is the only language that parents and their Montreal born and raised children share. 4) The part of Montreal that allophones live in has a big influence on what community they will tend to assimilate to. The Western half of the Island of Montreal is still predominantly anglophone. For historical reasons the Italians who immigrated to Montreal after WWII sent their children to English schools, and many of their descendents still do today. In the Western part of the island the Italians are being assimilated to the anglophone community, but in the East End the situation is more complex. Althought the Italians tend to go to English schools and many consider themselves to be anglophone, there is so much interaction and intermarriage with francophones that they often end up speaking French at home and working in French. In other words they are nominally anglophone, but probalbly use more French and Italian in their daily lives than English.
Personaly I think geography will ultimately have the biggest influence on the proportion of allophone immigrants to Montreal assimilating to the English or French language communities. The Western part of the Island is and probably always will be predominantly English speaking, and probably accounts for 20% of the 3.5 million people in Greater Montreal (if you use a line roughly corresponding to Cote-des-Neiges as the East-West limit instead of the more traditional boul. St-Laurent, which I think reflects the linguistic division more accurately). The Eastern part of the Island as well as off-island suburbs (except for enclaves such as Chomedey, Brossard, Greenfield Park, etc.) are overwhelmingly French-speaking. Over time, as more immigrants to Quebec come from French-speaking countries, as their children go to French schools, and as they live incresingly in francophone areas in the East End and off the Island, I think you will see the proportion of immigrants being assimilated to the francophone community rise to about 70%, which is anyway roughly the francophone share of Greater Montreal's population.
- AP
Concerning the naming of various allophone groups, would it not be better to refer to them as "Chinese speakers", "Polish speakers" etc rather than "Chinese", "Polish" or whatever. You might be a Canadian citizen of Singaporean birth and still be a Chinese speaker. On a related note, does "French Creoles" mean Haitians? QuartierLatin1968 00:12, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
-- Mathieugp 03:26, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This might seem frivolous, but I'm curious about the word "Demolinguistics". I understand its meaning, but how common is its usage? Google only turned up about twenty sites that weren't this article, its Canadian counterpart, or a copy of the two, and all of the sites seemed to mention it only in passing. A search through the usually comprehensive online OED returned nothing. Is its usage primarily confined to the sociological/demolinguistic field? Is it just a pretty word that nobody really uses? When was it coined? If I used it, how many people are there who wouldn't go "what?" -- Words to sell 23:04, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
-- Mathieugp 22:33, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
Quebec nationalist bias has been balanced:
- The "demographic collapse" of French Quebec was one of perception and manipulated for political purposes. The data clearly shows a continued downward trend in anglophones since the 1950's.
...
- 50% value for allophone assimilation rates includes those that arrived before Bill 101, hence the statement was innaccurate.
-- Mathieugp 23:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
- The fact that Quebec currently experiences a linguistic balance in Montreal is not even mentioned;
- Demographic collapse of anglophone community outside Montreal addressed
- Need to add a section on anglophone outmigration (so-called "exodus" post 1976) and francophone in-migration from other provinces
- politicization of demographic interpretation in Quebec needs to be described and explained more thoroughly
- corrected erroneous imperssion created about bilbngualism in Quebec; with 70% of francophones never using any English, and 95% using mostly French, I think the extent of bilingualism in Quebec has been greatly exaggerated.
Mathieugp 15:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I have some observations on the linguistic situation in Montreal:
1) The public sector is overwhelmingly francophone. Even in Federal government offices and the municipal governments of cities and boroughs with anglophone majorities, the predominant language of work is French. About the only exception is English-language schools boards, universities and colleges, social welfare institutions and hospitals. I've noticed that as the English language population declines, traditionally English-language institutions, especially hospitals and universities, tend to become more bilingual as they cater to an increasingly francophone clientele. 2) As to personnal services, the language of work tends to reflect the locally predominant language. For example, in the Western part of the Island of Montreal, English will tend to predominate in shops and restaurants, etc.. but overwhelming in the rest of the Greater Montreal area French will be the dominant language of work. People who work downtown often have to be bilingual because of all the out-of-town tourists and business people. 3) English does tend to dominate in many of the multinationals and high-tech corporations, especially if they do most of their business outside Quebec. Often you'll see an internal linguistic division within the firm, where the technical and operations side of the company works in French (mainly because they deal only with local people), but the sales and accounting side works in English (because they deal mainly with people from outside Quebec). 4) In the case of very small businesses, the language of work tends to be the language of the entrepreneur, and if there are any employees, they are often the entrepreneurs own friends and relatives, so would tend to speak the same language.
As to the assimilation of francophones outside Quebec, I have to admit it's been over 10 years since I studied the question in detail, but here's a few observations:
1) Of the roughly million francophones living in the rest of Canada (ROC), you can divide them roughly evenly between those that live in predominantly francophone areas bordering on Quebec (Easten & North-Eastern Ontario, Northern New Brunswick), and the remainder who are scatered around the country. In short, the scattered francopnones are obviously being assimilated very rapidly, while the Quebec-bordering francophones are essentially holding their ground. 2) I think the basic problem of the Quebec-bordering francophones, is that, except for those that live in Ottawa, they tend to live in areas in economic decline (New Brunswick, Northern Ontario), and are suffering the same economically-driven demographic decline that francophones in the Gaspe , Saguenay and other isolated regions of Quebec are suffering. The general trend in Canada for the past 80 years at least is for the population to move to the big population centers (Windsor-Quebec axis + Vancouver-Edmonton-Calgary), while the rest of the country (except for the few areas experiencing resource booms such as Northern Alberta) stagnate. 3) So the real story is of francophones migrating from isolated Appalachian or Canadian shield communities to the big cities. Most will move to cities with large francophone populations (Montreal, Quebec City. Ottawa-Gatineau), but those who move to Toronto or Vancouver will eventually be (or rather their children will be) assimilated to the English language.
- AP
- AP
I believe this article needs to be refactored. The demographic terms are defined and then never used in the article. The Anglicization and Francization section is a mess and contains too much data that should be made more intellegible. There is no obvious place to insert information on the changes over the past 30 years and the current prediction for the future.
Here is what I suggest:
-- Mathieugp 20:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
From the Office québécois de la langue française:
Getting the facts straight on French : Reflections following the 1996 Census by Charles Castongay, in Inroads Journal, volume 8, 1999, pages 57 to 77
(These should be in the Wiktionary I guess)
On this very subject:
-- Mathieugp 15:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
1999 remains recent in 2012 ? Relative to 2001, je suis d'accord, mais en 2012 ?
G. Robert Shiplett 13:34, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
It is known that a substantial number of Scottish Gaelic-speaking settlers, almost entirely from the Isle of Lewis, settled in Quebec in areas such as Stornoway and Scotstown. There are several books written on the subject of the Gaelic in Quebec, the most notable (to my mind) being "Oatmeal and the Catechism" by Margaret Bennett, a respected authority on the history of Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and abroad. If I recall correctly, the book indicated that although Gaelic declined and ultimately withered away to nothing in the province, the language held on until roughly the 1960s-70s when the last Scottish Gaelic church services were held in certain key Highland-Quebecois settlements.
Many Quebecois Gaels apparently moved to the United States (Seattle) as they faced hardship in the province, rather than to other Gaelic-speaking areas such as Nova Scotia or Cape Breton Island. The descendants of these Quebecois Gaels subsequently lost their Gaelic and are now wholly assimilated, and although at least one man in the early 20th century was a self-styled "Gaelic bard" from Seattle, he largely wrote in English.
I believe that this would be a worthy expansion of the article, although I am unsure of exactly how to go about adding this information (with reference to the sources), considering that the article is written from a very contemporary perspective. Does anyone have any opinion on the matter?
-- Breatannach ( talk) 12:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
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I would like to know What the figures in the B and C columns of the table in the section "Anglicization and francization" really are. In 2001, the number of French speakers according to mother tongue was only 5,761,765 (counting only single responses) [1], thus the figure 5,787,012 in the table cannot be the increase of the number of native French speakers in Quebec. So which data were used to reflect the language shifts occurred in Quebec between 1971 and 2001? Onmaditque ( talk) 09:28, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
References
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The article mentions that less than one percent of Quebecers are bilingual. There's something clearly wrong with that stat. A correction is in order. Loomis51 23:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I can accept that explanation. I'm an anglophone with french as my second language (I'm not quite as comfortable in French as in English so I suppose I'd be considered "anglophone" rather than bilingual). However, something still isn't right. I know so many near perfectly to perfectly bilingual people that the percentage still must be way higher than 0.8%. I just think of how many people I know born of one anglophone and one francophone parent and realize the number can't be right. Also, what qualifies as bilingual changes from place to place. In Quebec, my french is considered somewhat weak. In Ontario, I'm considered perfectly bilingual, and in the United States, my french skills are so impressive that they think I'm a francophone! I know it's a complicated issue and that raw stats can be misleading. Loomis51 03:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I took this out until its meaining could be clarified:
Seems to me Ontario was required to finance its minority education. Or am I misinterpeting "required to finance"? PBrain 17:23, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Prior to Ottawa putting a line on linguistic minority education in the Constitution of Canada, only Quebec was constitutionally "forced" to take care of the educational needs of its (protestant) minority. -- Mathieugp 18:54, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
And here's the text of section 93:
Section 93 [Education]
In and for each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to Education, subject and according to the following Provisions:
(1) Nothing in any such Law shall prejudicially affect any Right or Privilege with respect to Denominational Schools which any Class of Persons have by Law in the Province at the Union:
(2) All the Powers, Privileges and Duties at the Union by Law conferred and imposed in Upper Canada on the Separate Schools and School Trustees of the Queen's Roman Catholic Subjects shall be and the same are hereby extended to the Dissentient Schools of the Queen's Protestant and Roman Catholic Subjects in Quebec:
(3) Where in any Province a System of Separate or Dissentient Schools exists by Law at the Union or is thereafter established by the Legislature of the Province, an Appeal shall lie to the Governor General in Council from any Act or Decision of any Provincial Authority affecting any Right or Privilege of the Protestant or Roman Catholic Minority of the Queen's Subjects in relation to Education:
(4) In case any such Provincial Law as from Time to Time seems to the Governor General in Council requisite for the Execution of the Provisions of this section is not made, or in case any Decision of the Governor General in Council on any Appeal under this section is not duly executed by the proper Provincial Authority in that Behalf, then and in every such Case, and as far as the Circumstances of each Case require, the Parliament of Canada may make remedial Laws for the due Execution of the Provisions of this section and of any Decision of the Governor General in Council under this section.
Roman Catholic schools in Ontario already had the right to funding as a result of laws passed by the legislature of the Province of Canada.
PBrain 22:14, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I will need more time to look into this issue. You are bringing up things I will need to double-check. Right now, I think the confusion comes from the "Constitution Act, 1867". Does it mean the constitution as it was drafter originally in 1867 or is it not the constitution of Canada proper just before it was sort of replaced by the 1982 one? I know for a fact the Charter of rights is what forced all provincial governments to respect minority language rights. I know for a fact that Ontario started to be serious about the educational rights of the Francophones in the 1960s. Prior to that, it is legal battle over legal battle.
I think it may just be that the basis of a constitutional right was always there, but it was not fully recognized by the Ontario government. In which case, you would be entirely correct in correcting me. We will need to clarify all this anyway to keep improving this acticle (and start putting stuff in Demolinguistics of Canada). -- Mathieugp 03:21, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
As for the educational rights of Catholics not being fully recognized, there are some pretty big Catholic school boards in Ontario that have been around since the 1850s. If you're talking about the rights of francophone Catholics I can see your point, but, even though I may be splitting hairs here, I see that as a separate issue. PBrain 12:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Législations linguistiques adoptées au Canada
Not related but maybe of interest to you, the history of the English language here:
Histoire de la langue anglaise
-- Mathieugp 14:53, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The best source I found for everything that pertains to language is here:
This site is a gold mine. If we can find a second source like that (in English), it will be even better. -- Mathieugp 20:30, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I tried to restore the pasage I excised with a clarification. It probably could be clearer yet. One issue I didn't get into was schools for anglophone Catholics, although maybe I've just thought of a way of doing it. I hope to get working on the other project next week. PBrain 12:48, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I have read some news articles lately which suggest that a law has been passed, or soon will be, that requires the children of allophone immigrants to enter francophone schools. Does anybody have information to support or deny this?
Hello, I've been reading this discussion with interest. I lived for many years in parts of Montreal with many immigrants, and these are afew of my observations:
1) Immigrant communities tend to come in waves that last a few decades (Eastern European Jews at the beginning of the 20th century, Italians after WWII, Vietnamese in the 80's, Lebanese and Algerians after 1990, and so on); 2) Most immigrant communities that arrived pre-1980 tend to assimilate to the anglophone community, while many who arrived generaly after 1980 tend to assimilate to the francophone community (ex. Vietnamnese, Arabs, Latin Americans); 3) Many immigrants have tried to immigrate to other countries before coming to Canada (UK, France, USA), and may have spent a few years living in these countries. They often have relatives scatered in countries all over the world. Typically immigrants to Montreal will have cousins in NYC, Miami, Los Angeles, Paris, etc. This is especially true of the more recent communities (Vietnamese, Arabs, Latin Amercians, etc. For this reason often the parents speak English, but the children because of bill 101 learn French at school. In these homes the native language is retained far more so that would be the case in Toronto or New York because it is the only language that parents and their Montreal born and raised children share. 4) The part of Montreal that allophones live in has a big influence on what community they will tend to assimilate to. The Western half of the Island of Montreal is still predominantly anglophone. For historical reasons the Italians who immigrated to Montreal after WWII sent their children to English schools, and many of their descendents still do today. In the Western part of the island the Italians are being assimilated to the anglophone community, but in the East End the situation is more complex. Althought the Italians tend to go to English schools and many consider themselves to be anglophone, there is so much interaction and intermarriage with francophones that they often end up speaking French at home and working in French. In other words they are nominally anglophone, but probalbly use more French and Italian in their daily lives than English.
Personaly I think geography will ultimately have the biggest influence on the proportion of allophone immigrants to Montreal assimilating to the English or French language communities. The Western part of the Island is and probably always will be predominantly English speaking, and probably accounts for 20% of the 3.5 million people in Greater Montreal (if you use a line roughly corresponding to Cote-des-Neiges as the East-West limit instead of the more traditional boul. St-Laurent, which I think reflects the linguistic division more accurately). The Eastern part of the Island as well as off-island suburbs (except for enclaves such as Chomedey, Brossard, Greenfield Park, etc.) are overwhelmingly French-speaking. Over time, as more immigrants to Quebec come from French-speaking countries, as their children go to French schools, and as they live incresingly in francophone areas in the East End and off the Island, I think you will see the proportion of immigrants being assimilated to the francophone community rise to about 70%, which is anyway roughly the francophone share of Greater Montreal's population.
- AP
Concerning the naming of various allophone groups, would it not be better to refer to them as "Chinese speakers", "Polish speakers" etc rather than "Chinese", "Polish" or whatever. You might be a Canadian citizen of Singaporean birth and still be a Chinese speaker. On a related note, does "French Creoles" mean Haitians? QuartierLatin1968 00:12, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
-- Mathieugp 03:26, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This might seem frivolous, but I'm curious about the word "Demolinguistics". I understand its meaning, but how common is its usage? Google only turned up about twenty sites that weren't this article, its Canadian counterpart, or a copy of the two, and all of the sites seemed to mention it only in passing. A search through the usually comprehensive online OED returned nothing. Is its usage primarily confined to the sociological/demolinguistic field? Is it just a pretty word that nobody really uses? When was it coined? If I used it, how many people are there who wouldn't go "what?" -- Words to sell 23:04, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
-- Mathieugp 22:33, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
Quebec nationalist bias has been balanced:
- The "demographic collapse" of French Quebec was one of perception and manipulated for political purposes. The data clearly shows a continued downward trend in anglophones since the 1950's.
...
- 50% value for allophone assimilation rates includes those that arrived before Bill 101, hence the statement was innaccurate.
-- Mathieugp 23:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
- The fact that Quebec currently experiences a linguistic balance in Montreal is not even mentioned;
- Demographic collapse of anglophone community outside Montreal addressed
- Need to add a section on anglophone outmigration (so-called "exodus" post 1976) and francophone in-migration from other provinces
- politicization of demographic interpretation in Quebec needs to be described and explained more thoroughly
- corrected erroneous imperssion created about bilbngualism in Quebec; with 70% of francophones never using any English, and 95% using mostly French, I think the extent of bilingualism in Quebec has been greatly exaggerated.
Mathieugp 15:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I have some observations on the linguistic situation in Montreal:
1) The public sector is overwhelmingly francophone. Even in Federal government offices and the municipal governments of cities and boroughs with anglophone majorities, the predominant language of work is French. About the only exception is English-language schools boards, universities and colleges, social welfare institutions and hospitals. I've noticed that as the English language population declines, traditionally English-language institutions, especially hospitals and universities, tend to become more bilingual as they cater to an increasingly francophone clientele. 2) As to personnal services, the language of work tends to reflect the locally predominant language. For example, in the Western part of the Island of Montreal, English will tend to predominate in shops and restaurants, etc.. but overwhelming in the rest of the Greater Montreal area French will be the dominant language of work. People who work downtown often have to be bilingual because of all the out-of-town tourists and business people. 3) English does tend to dominate in many of the multinationals and high-tech corporations, especially if they do most of their business outside Quebec. Often you'll see an internal linguistic division within the firm, where the technical and operations side of the company works in French (mainly because they deal only with local people), but the sales and accounting side works in English (because they deal mainly with people from outside Quebec). 4) In the case of very small businesses, the language of work tends to be the language of the entrepreneur, and if there are any employees, they are often the entrepreneurs own friends and relatives, so would tend to speak the same language.
As to the assimilation of francophones outside Quebec, I have to admit it's been over 10 years since I studied the question in detail, but here's a few observations:
1) Of the roughly million francophones living in the rest of Canada (ROC), you can divide them roughly evenly between those that live in predominantly francophone areas bordering on Quebec (Easten & North-Eastern Ontario, Northern New Brunswick), and the remainder who are scatered around the country. In short, the scattered francopnones are obviously being assimilated very rapidly, while the Quebec-bordering francophones are essentially holding their ground. 2) I think the basic problem of the Quebec-bordering francophones, is that, except for those that live in Ottawa, they tend to live in areas in economic decline (New Brunswick, Northern Ontario), and are suffering the same economically-driven demographic decline that francophones in the Gaspe , Saguenay and other isolated regions of Quebec are suffering. The general trend in Canada for the past 80 years at least is for the population to move to the big population centers (Windsor-Quebec axis + Vancouver-Edmonton-Calgary), while the rest of the country (except for the few areas experiencing resource booms such as Northern Alberta) stagnate. 3) So the real story is of francophones migrating from isolated Appalachian or Canadian shield communities to the big cities. Most will move to cities with large francophone populations (Montreal, Quebec City. Ottawa-Gatineau), but those who move to Toronto or Vancouver will eventually be (or rather their children will be) assimilated to the English language.
- AP
- AP
I believe this article needs to be refactored. The demographic terms are defined and then never used in the article. The Anglicization and Francization section is a mess and contains too much data that should be made more intellegible. There is no obvious place to insert information on the changes over the past 30 years and the current prediction for the future.
Here is what I suggest:
-- Mathieugp 20:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
From the Office québécois de la langue française:
Getting the facts straight on French : Reflections following the 1996 Census by Charles Castongay, in Inroads Journal, volume 8, 1999, pages 57 to 77
(These should be in the Wiktionary I guess)
On this very subject:
-- Mathieugp 15:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
1999 remains recent in 2012 ? Relative to 2001, je suis d'accord, mais en 2012 ?
G. Robert Shiplett 13:34, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
It is known that a substantial number of Scottish Gaelic-speaking settlers, almost entirely from the Isle of Lewis, settled in Quebec in areas such as Stornoway and Scotstown. There are several books written on the subject of the Gaelic in Quebec, the most notable (to my mind) being "Oatmeal and the Catechism" by Margaret Bennett, a respected authority on the history of Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and abroad. If I recall correctly, the book indicated that although Gaelic declined and ultimately withered away to nothing in the province, the language held on until roughly the 1960s-70s when the last Scottish Gaelic church services were held in certain key Highland-Quebecois settlements.
Many Quebecois Gaels apparently moved to the United States (Seattle) as they faced hardship in the province, rather than to other Gaelic-speaking areas such as Nova Scotia or Cape Breton Island. The descendants of these Quebecois Gaels subsequently lost their Gaelic and are now wholly assimilated, and although at least one man in the early 20th century was a self-styled "Gaelic bard" from Seattle, he largely wrote in English.
I believe that this would be a worthy expansion of the article, although I am unsure of exactly how to go about adding this information (with reference to the sources), considering that the article is written from a very contemporary perspective. Does anyone have any opinion on the matter?
-- Breatannach ( talk) 12:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
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I would like to know What the figures in the B and C columns of the table in the section "Anglicization and francization" really are. In 2001, the number of French speakers according to mother tongue was only 5,761,765 (counting only single responses) [1], thus the figure 5,787,012 in the table cannot be the increase of the number of native French speakers in Quebec. So which data were used to reflect the language shifts occurred in Quebec between 1971 and 2001? Onmaditque ( talk) 09:28, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 21:53, 16 December 2017 (UTC)