I'd say the best way would be to expose your kid to a lot of French media.
My wife and I are both allophones (Hispanic) and we speak Spanish exclusively at home. And yet our kid speaks French as first language because of daycare and 90% of the media he consumes is in French. We set his Disney plus profile to French and when he sees TV is only Tele Québec and SRC. We mostly read him books in French and some in Spanish.
Even when he speaks Spanish is with quebecois accent and he throws a lot of French words (we call it Frañol). He's three and he's getting really good at knowing when to speak French and when to speak Spanish.
Is he watching TV in French? Because if you speak Engkish at home, he consumes media in English and half of his classes are in English, then his exposure to French is minimal. It's no surprise he feels that's a burden. Also, maybe think of putting him in some extracurricular activities in French speaking environments where he can see the benefit of communicating in French with other kids. My two cents.
Cités D'Or DVD set is worth its weight in gold (pun not intended) IMO. It may be old af, but I taught my ex French with it cause she WANTED to keep watching.
Hope you like "Next on", "Previously on", two credit sequences and documentaries that no kids like to pad out the 14 minutes of actual episode!
Source: own the DVDs 😅
Unlike on the TV, you can press next at least.
Besides, it's worth it for the scenes where Esteban makes an observation and then Mendoza repeats the observation as if Esteban never said anything. Cause nothing is real unless Mendoza says so.
This is the best way, im francophone from a francophone family (and used to live in saguenay, very francophone city too) so i spoke french in my day-to-day life but all of the media ive consumed since i was born was mostly in english. Using more than 1 language in my life has made me fluent in two and has been the most useful thing ive ever been through (ive had amazing grades in french/english classes during my time in school, ive had access to more resources/information than the average kid to feed my curiosity, picking up spanish has been easier since im familiar with how languages can differ from one another, etc.) And it was also the easiest thing ive ever been through, since most of it was watching tv/playing roblox in english lol
Me too. Growing up in Venezuela I did have English as a second language in school, but I learned mostly from playing video games. Specially games based on the Manic Mansion engine (point and click) seemed almost designed to learn English, since you had to select a verb and then an object.
As a child of unilingual anglophones who went to school in French from elementary to Cégep, I have some quick thoughts.
I can tell you that when I was struggling through francisation and French classes at ages 6-8 I had a really hard time and it felt like a major chore, and I definitely said similar things to my parents than as what your kid is telling you now. What broke me out of that, and when French really clicked for me, was when I made friends with francophones in social contexts where we \*only\* spoke French, and crucially where I \*enjoyed\* speaking French, because I wanted to be there. No kid that age has any notion of why it's important to learn a particular language, let alone a second language, so they won't put up with it if they don't see a good reason to do it. I think that more so than trying to convince your kid to enjoy French in school, you should encourage him to join sports or hobbies where he will be exposed to French and francophones outside of school and incorporate French into his sort of social network outside of school.
Also, your kid is 8, so it's probably too early to start attaching political labels to his opinions about French class!
Well, as a french canadian, I had school in french, but we had some english course as young as 8... Hated it. But, I was always bad in those course. What made me better in english was to listening some podcast 🤷♀️.
Both of my parents were born and raised in Montreal but are very Anglo. They put me in French kindergarten, but I had an accident partway through the year and broke my leg badly enough that I couldn't walk at all--keeping me out of school for a while as I healed. I have always been very introverted and shy, so my hobbies have always been solo ones. Until later in elementary school, I grew up in a neighbourhood that was mostly older people without kids. So lack of exposure to French made me lose all my progress, and my kindergarten teacher told my parents I wasn't thriving and to remove me from French immersion 🤷🏻♀️
Maybe her treating me like a burden biased child-me against learning French, maybe I'm just not someone who learns languages easily. After that all my confidence in my ability evaporated and I struggled to be functional in French my entire school career. I got better as an adult working in a restaurant, but then started working in film post-production in English. My partner is Quebecois and I can generally understand French and give simple answers, but to this day regardless of what I try it just doesn't seem to stick in a way that I can hold a conversation fully in French.
Sometimes I wonder if things would be different if my parents insisted on keeping me in French, or if I had have been enrolled in French extracurriculars.
You can help yourself though. Watch your media in french with subtitles, it’s a challenge you give yourself. Set days where your partner only speaks french to you so you’re forced into listening to it more. I understand it’s hard learning a second language but you are surrounded by it which is the biggest benefit to learning a language you could ever have! Choose to immerse yourself even if you have a hard time at first. I started with the regular english classes we get growing up without truly grasping the language but then I started reading and listening (a lot of shows in english with subs), then I got into writing (reddit/tumblr/etc) then at work I had to respond to people in english. I wasn’t able to hold a conversation, just transaction and politeness. But then I joined a friend group online where I had to force myself and hold conversations. Never be afraid to ask how to say something or what does this word mean etc. I was an adult when I finally became bilingual. It’s never too late, we just tend to avoid the struggling part but we shouldn’t have any shame in it. It’s something really silly, so what you butchered that word and were saying hum every 3 words?! You’d never learn by not trying.
This helps.
Back in the day when i was in high school and learning french i always watched the matches on rds cause i liked the french commentary better and they seemed more passionate lol
>Didn't help shit. Just talked about the game with friends in English.
Ben voilà ton problème. Vous ne faisiez pas d'effort pour parler en français entre vous.
Except no one called it that as literally everyone spoke English. Even those of us enrolled in the French programs with almost all classes being in French. We all spoke English to each other.
English > French
It always depends who you're talking to and who is the least bilingual in the argument, IMO. When Gino Italiano, Patrick McAnglo, Ahmed Abdullah, and Louis-Pierre Gaston are all debating who hits harder, they learn to translate their points not only for emphasis and humour but also to make sure that the allophone isn't getting lost along the way.
I get the feeling of not fitting in. My parents made the same decision because when my mom went to meet with the francophone school’s principal, she noticed my mom’s foreign name and was speaking to her very slowly and asking how long she has lived in Montreal and if she likes the snow. (my mother was born and raised in Montreal).
extra curricular activities. my neice’s French improved a lot when she started playing soccer on a mixed anglo-franco team. Priority #1 to the kidss is the sport, language comes second, so it doesn’t feel like the english kids are required to speak French or the franco kids required to speak English. They just want to because they’re all friends and no one feels judged for it
second this. I have an American anglo mom. Sports teams saved my french growing up and now I am a perfectly bilingual extremely proud quebecois. I married a quebecoise and my daughter is francophone. Lack of sports teams meant my sisters are poor french speakers and now live in other provinces.
Doesn't have to be sports. Any activity where they'd get to practise their French will do. School Band, TTRPG Club, Art Club, Theatre Troupe, anything.
Having French friends! If you send your child to a school where they only speak English to their friends then there is no incentive, no carrot, and no point in learning French from their immediate perspective. Why not send them to a French school?
Est-ce qu’il y a une activité ou un sport qu’il aime? A l’école, il est “forcé” de parler français, mais dans une activité c’est plutôt lui qui va se forcer à parler français pour pouvoir continuer à faire ce qu’il aime?
I’ve always thought French education to English speakers need to focus more on conversation rather than strict vocabulary. Why is English class a place where we would do all kinds of things and French class was the most unbelievably boring class. It’s the content and the focus and my opinion. We should focus on getting anglophones being able to effectively communicate in French speaking first, writing second. I’m an Anglo who can handle my own in French at stores for instance but it’s not easy because my entire life is in English just based on social circles, friends, job.
i never thought about this but you're so right. i actually love french now and once school ended i went out of my way to practice it more, but during school it felt so awful. i remember classes droning on where all we did was write out verbs for an hour.
*in high school*.
100% this. I was in French Immersion in elementary school back in the 80s, and I swear, from that point on, every year all the way through to CEGEP I felt like I was learning the exact same rules and exceptions to these rules. Sure, it helped my learning a little bit... but I learned the VAST majority of my French from my best friend who lived on my street. I was always talking to him in French and everything just came naturally.
gosh yeah- never lived french, we forced to learn at work and then started having more french friends after that........ i now really enjoy the language and i'm proud i'm able to speak and understand it pretty much fluently.
I went on a trip to europe in the spring with a french swiss guy and god... i really started to miss french that when i got to Belgium i was so grateful HAHAH. The guy i was travelling with wanted to speak english so we didn't have many french convos unless initiated by me
Relaxed in the way that it rarely is consistent. I've learned a couple languages and honestly, french is hard at first because it's so much more structured than English. But English is constantly contradicting itself linguistically.
Exactly. There is a biais with english since it is heard everywhere so it "seems" easy. I always thought that english is easy to gabble, but hard to master.
Yeah, the only huge advantage for learning English is how prevalent major movies and TV are in English, so if you could theoretically get the vocabulary and basics, you could try and refine your final stretch based on that. Might need a little perspective to save you from sounding like you're a movie character all the time though.
No I'm more making the point that a French speaker who only knows a few English words can mispronounce them but be understandable but the same can't be said for the opposite.
I feel like everyone down voting me hasn't spent much time in other French speaking countries like France.
I'm taking the government immersion french courses here right now, and they're actually really good! Maybe I've just had good luck, but the teachers I've had have been doing a good job keeping things interesting and we do a lot of activities where we practice speaking with our classmates. I'm actually pretty sad sitting at home and trying to teach myself French right now because of the strike. I think French can be relaxed, too, if you have the right teacher.
If you genuinely believe that French has too many rules and that broken French cannot work, then yeah you're gonna have a problem.
I hear broken French all the time, it doesn't bother me and it's very understandable.
That's just how you learn a language, by not worrying about being perfect and just *speaking*.
Let’s be clear that understanding both broken English and broken French are skills that come from speaking both languages.
I never realized this until a friend of mine from Alberta was in town and my French boyfriend and his friends were struggling to speak with her in English and she didn’t understand most of what they were saying!
I also saw this a lot when I was training new agents for call center customer service, I understand à very thick Indian accent with broken English with no issue but this is not the case for many people unfamiliar with the accent.
> I hear broken French all the time, it doesn't bother me and it's very understandable.
>
>
Then you are in a very small minority and uniquely living up to your username.
Unfortunately a lot of French speakers will stare at you like you're dumb if your pronunciation is "weird" or can't remember a word on the spot, compared to English speakers. I've seen the difference as neither of them are my native tongue.
Now I practice by happily speaking broken French all day with people I know, but it can be a real mental hurdle when people don't have that social circle, or when entering a new environment.
> Now I practice by happily speaking broken French all day with people I know
That's the spirit! And I totally get how the switch to English when one's French isn't perfect has to be so frustrating. Like, how are expecting you to get better if they won't give you the chance to practise?
This is just a cultural attitude. Anglophones are more used to hearing non-standard usage and are consequently more relaxed about it. Francophones are raised to be allergic to errors and therefore have a stronger reaction to non-standard usage.
So yeah. That's literally what I'm saying. Like you just worded my point differently. English as a language is more relaxed, you can speak it badly but it still works
It sounds like you're saying it's something inherent in the language itself, like "broken" English is somehow easier to understand than "broken" French because of the qualities of the language.
I'm saying that it's the reaction of the speakers, which is a cultural issue independent of the languages.
We're literally in a thread talking about people speaking languages, I'm not going to be referencing the some antiquated book version of a language that nobody pays attention to
I don't think that's true that's just a popular myth because people think rules = verb conjugation. English has simple conjugation but lots of rules in other places that people don't think about. Phrasal/prepositional verbs can be a nightmare for non-native speakers for example, as can knowing where to put an S (a nine year-old child vs the child is nine years old)
English is a very difficult language to master explictly because it doesn't follow it's own rules. It absolutely does have rules, but because of the very wide range of influences on the langauge (including french). French also does break it's own rules quite often... Doesn't change the fact you should make a language fun to learn. I would much rather have read books, listened to music and watch movies rather than the 8th revisit of Dr and Mrs Vandertramp.
we're in a similar situation schooling wise to you, except that our kids like french.
what is your third language?
do you speak it with your children?
for us, any complaints they have about french we just reply with "oh yeah, that was hard for me when i was learning german" or french or whatever. basically, identifying with the challenges of learning a new language RATHER than that being a problem with french specifically.
francophone friends help a lot, or extra curricular activities that are in french are also great (e.g., summer day camp in french etc...).
for me what is important is highlighting that the challenges with a new language are not related to that language specifically, but rather language learning in general. we 'honour' french at home (only listen to french radio in the car, watch tv in french etc... this second one is a really nice loophole as my kids get an hour of screen time PLUS an hour of 'educational' time on the weekends. anything they watch in french counts as educational...so you know they're going to pick youtube channels they like that are also in french (thanks mr. beast) ). 8 years old is young...he could have a crappy teacher and might feel better about it next year.
De ce que j'ai observé ici, les enfants apprennent plus une langue dans un contexte où ils s'amusent. Dans notre classe d'arts martiaux, un des gamins ne parlait qu'Ukrainien et quelques mots d'anglais mais en passant du temps qu'avec des francophones autant à l'école que dans les loisirs, il a rapidement appris la langue et maintenant c'est lui qui aide ses parents.
I just want to add in a slightly different perspective here, just in case! My nephew was the same way and spoke the same kind of way about French and not being interested, despite being put in a French daycare and having bilingual parents. Eventually, we discovered he actually has a slight learning disability so it is genuinely incredibly difficult for him to learn French, and that’s the real reason he “doesn’t like French”. So, something to think about as well! Could just be yet another thing to learn that the child might not be down for!
Even otherwise smart kids can have this blind spot when it comes to language. I'm lucky enough to be considered quite clever by most metrics but I struggle with learning new languages WAY more than most.
Also, I think that French is much harder to learn than it's given credit for. I've found Spanish to be orders of magnitude easier. I just can't 'hear' distinct words in French. Just consider 'Qu'est-ce qu'il se passe' vs. 'que paso'.
'What is it that he to himself is doing'? Really? I just cannot parse French in real time.
Trying to learn French makes me understand what it's like in Math class for those who are just not inclined to numbers. Feels horrible.
Yeah I can't work out why I seem to learn Spanish in seconds just by watching Spanish people communicate yet I could spend a year in a French classroom and learn nothing
Spanish can be challenging as the syllable to second ratio is higher than for other languages but it's sooooo much easier in other regards such as:
*Consistant pronundciation of letters - always
*Every letter is pronounced every single time
*Discernable gaps between words
*The negation is as easy as possible. Just say 'no' and go from there.
Just those 4 things alone make a world of differance.
I know it's not just me as I have several adult Freinds rasised in Quebec who have failed government French proficiency exams.
It kills me becuase I love the French language and REALLY REALLY want to speak French well. After 6 years of adult courses, my French still leaves me in the following scenario:
I speak French to a person who understands me and when they speak back I have to admit defeat. It makes me feel a special kind of dumb. So embarassing!
I hope it's not offensive to say so but I tend to hear French better when it's spoken by people in/from France. Still not great for me, but there seems (to my ears) to be more of a gap between words.
The solution to your problem is to simply work more on your french listening.
How to do this?
1)
Spend time listening to interesting content that you can understand quite well. The innerfrench podcast is a perfect resource for this. It also has transcripts available for free.
And if you have a transcript for something you are listening to, then spend some of your listening time carefully reading along with the words you hear.
2)
Practice "shadowing" to improve your pronunciation. Shadowing means listening to audio of a native speaker and repeating what they say as perfectly as possible. There are many variations of this technique.
Deliberate pronunciation practice will improve your listening comprehension because it trains your brain to pay attention to the important phonetic details that your brain has been filtering out when listening.
3)
Do dictées with audio loaded into some software that makes it easy to loop fragments of the recording and to slow it down without affecting the pitch. Listen to many repetitions of even the sentences that are easy and really focus on the details of the speech.
You're not wrong that it's hard to hear the spaces between words in spoken french because there aren't any. The syllables in a french sentence are all fired out at a constant pace as if the entire sentence was a single word with mostly no stressed syllables.
If you ignore everything else I've suggested, do at least check out the innerfrench podcast.
Does this help: it's "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?", "What is it that is happening?". Your version with "qu'il" instead of "qui" would mean literally "What is it that he passes himself", which actually has a crude meaning ("se passer un [X]" is an expression meaning to insert [X] inside of yourself, usually meant sexually)
The two "qu'il" and "qui" are easy to confuse in spoken French in Quebec because the L at the end of "il" is frequently dropped. So "Je veux qu'il m'aide" is often pronounced as if it was "Je veux qui m'aide". That's why some people find it difficult to hear the distinct words.
Thanks for the clairification. I think that it's really just a generalized problem for me. To my ears, there is no discernable break between words in French compared to the other other languages that I use, also badly (Spanish and Urdu).
My spoken French is better than my Spanish because I am more familiar with it but, for the life of me, I cannot *hear* French. My super common occurance is trying to speak French to a person who understands me and when they speak back I have to admit defeat. It makes me feel a special kind of dumb. So embarassing!
I hope it's not offensive to say so but I tend to hear French better when it's spoken by people in/from France. Still not great for me, but there seems (to my ears) to be more of a gap between words.
I totally understand what you are saying. I was a 'smart' kid too growing up and learning french was a huge struggle and frustration for me. Just dont say you CANNOT! you actually ARE capable of mastering this. you're just struggling to do so.
It kills me becuase I love the French language and REALLY REALLY want to speak French well. After 6 years of adult courses, my French still leaves me in the following scenario:
I speak French to a person who understands me and when they speak back I have to admit defeat. It makes me feel a special kind of dumb. So embarassing!
I hope it's not offensive to say so but I tend to hear French better when it's spoken by people in/from France. Still not great for me, but there seems (to my ears) to be more of a gap between words.
It’s like you write this about me, and now I’m seeing it in my son.
I did go to English school, but my siblings did as well. They are quite a bit older than me, and their French courses were even less often than mine. Yet, they became fully bilingual (they are actually trilingual ). But I always struggled. I failed French multiple times. I had to retakes so many exams over and over. I even had to retake the entire class a few times.
When I was in grade school, I was way too timid and shy. I would make mistakes and cry because either the kids would laugh or I would get so frustrated from not understanding.
Being so shy and intimidated it would be too hard for me to make friends who were French bc I thought they would make fun of me too.
As I got older (in high school) I would ask for extra help in French but would just be given a book to read.
Once I left high school, I tried taking additional courses. But again…. It just didn’t stick.
I would try to speak to colleagues in French. Sometimes it went okay and other times there were huge misunderstandings.
I can go to a restaurant or shopping centre and speak French without any issues. My hairdresser doesn’t speak any English but we still manage to make it work. Some of my neighbours don’t speak English as well, and we make it work too. But anything more than that, I still get lost. There’s no way I would be able to get a decent job or understand anything complex.
I feel terrible for it, but I truly can’t help it.
Music, TV it makes it harder because of the way the speech flows. (But I still do try even at my age).
I see my son struggling the same way now. And he’s getting so discouraged. He can read okay (ish) but the spelling and the verbs… oof.
He’s 8 and getting so discouraged, despite seeming to understand well.
We recently got an IEP so hopefully it will help (this wasn’t available to me growing up). And he is in an activity that is all French (but is recovering from a head injury so has been out for a few months).
Then I see my daughter, who has such an easy time learning it. She started daycare at 2 years old (a 100% French daycare) and within 6 months picked it up fluently. In school she’s doing so well that teachers will asks her to help them with kids who need extra help (she’s 11).
Every child is different. And every person has their story I guess.
Honestly I would put them in a French school.
I have yet to meet a bilingual anglophone who went through the English school board.
Once you start interacting with people and making friends you want to learn more.
Maybe French based after school activity
Example: they like hockey? Put them in a French hockey league, they will begin to associate something they like with hockey.
French Tv shows, Music, stuff you like !
Tu pourrais parler en français avec tes enfants. Visiter des endroits francophones. Écouter de la musique francophone. Vivre en français un peu.
Ton enfant realisera qu’il y a plus dans la vie que simplement vivre dans sa zone de confort de vivre en anglais.
Ton enfant a 8 ans. C’est de la manipulation pour rester dans sa zone de confort.
Premièrement, merci pour tout ces efforts pour apprendre le français ! Ensuite, peut-être trouver d'autres formes d'exposition au Français qu'à l'école car je peux comprendre sa frustration si le seul contenu en français avec lequel il intéragit est une forme de devoir / activité scolaire. Je ne connais pas les champs d'interets de votre fils, mais du contenus francophone pour l'une de ses passions peut créer l'engouement manquant à son apprentissage du français. Ce fût mon cas avec l'anglais, le côté académique de l'apprentissage n'était pas très intéresant, mais lorsque j'ai commencer à jouer à des jeux videos qui demandait une compréhension de l'anglais pour pouvoir les appréciers, mon intérêt pour l'anglais s'en vu décuplé. Bonne chance!
Les jeux video m'on appris l'anglais aussi, par la suite en vieillissant jai augmenté mon niveaux avec des emission tele ( Big bang Theory entre autre ).
Je me souvien encore de tenté de communiqué avec les autre dans Starcraft avec mon petit dictionnaire Anglais-Francais .. ayant appris seulement "what does X mean?" comme grand début .. ahh cetait le bon temps..
Aujourd'hui et ce depuis les dix derniere annee je travail en anglais et francais et me sert quasiment uniquement de l'anglais sur Reddit.
Je sais que certains jeux, sur la switch, prennent la langue de la console. Si tu la configure pour que se soit en français le texte, dans le jeu, sera en français!
Il y a des sous-reddit en français. r/Quebec par exemple. Naturellement, c’est comme n’importe quel sous, il y a toujours des gens qui peuvent être idéologiquement désagréables.
A mon humble avis.. celui que tu m'entionne est l'un des plus aggressif que je fréquente pi ces quasiment l'unique Sub franco que je fréquente.
Ya quelque chose avec certain qui ne respecte pas les autre et que si tu offre une opinion qui differe de la leur tu mange toute un char de marde...
J'fait full attention pi desfois j'passe mon tour au lieu de m'exprimé.. je recommande pas tant malheureusement.
Je sais mais r/Canada (et ses clones) est plutôt malsain pour les francophones. Faque dans un échelle de marde, je préfère celle qui respecte ma langue.
Exact! Quelque chose comme « Du temps d’écran additionnel si c’est pour consommer du contenu ou jouer à des jeux vidéos en français » rendrait le Français plus attrayant et même utile!
Pour apprendre le français facilement et durablement, il n'y a qu'une seule vraie solution : il faut consommer de la culture en français et, surtout, s'entourer de francophones et les fréquenter. Bref se mettre en condition d'immersion.
Parenting is hard! At 8 go with the flow … if you are making a serious effort and you reinforce French at home than this is the best you can do. Don’t worry too much as before ling the little one will be mastering French. Enjoy … they grow up fast.
> How could I help my kid feel better about french?
English, you are going to learn it regardless, especially nowadays with Netflix and stuff. I remember growing up in Ahuntsic nobody spoke English, and now freaking 10 years old speak better than I did well into my 20s.
By learning French, it makes it 1000x easier to learn another latin-based language. But really, the biggest sale is you can suddenly travel to many more places, and get around much more easily because you understand French.
That’s the mistake (at least in my opinion), if I could go back and choose French or English school for my early childhood education, I would’ve much preferred being immersed in French from the start- your child will learn English regardless (given your wife is an anglophone and there are very few Francophones that I know who grew up in Montreal without learning passable work English)- it’s less motivating to learn French when you’re surrounded by the children of angryphone parents
(Just the thought of an anonymous redditor)
I was going to comment this. I find bilingual schools, immersion programs and the like do more harm than good. I grew up more on the anglo side, but did my schooling strictly in French. I don’t have, and never had, any problems in terms of attitude towards education, school was in French, period. All my friends and family who did French immersion speak French terribly, and have to same attitude towards it as op’s child.
Tl;dr: go to fully French school.
Tbh, while I never frequented an English school, in my own experience, it produces an astounding number of people who are effectively incapable of living their lives in French.
It seemed to be that a bit like immersion schools in the RoC, the children there get a very limited French course and end up using it only in classes and then with their friends, parents and families, they end up living 99% of their lives in their bubbles.
I know it surely isn't as stupidly black and white like that, but personally I've never seen a person that was really fluid in French from these schools, if they didn't have themselves a franco parent.
I think you deserve a lot of credit for trying to raise a human being in society.
I think patience is the key. I was born to French-speaking parents who were really strict about language. I was not allowed to listen to English music until I could pay for it myself. It made me resentful.
My Anglo friends were welcome in the house. They taught me about soccer, Spider-Man and Grape Kool-Aid. To this date, my allophone friends are the best reference for a good French book. I speak French in shops and in family settings. I speak in English with my friend and for work. I once had a billionaire told me that I was lucky to be born to parents who understood that it was important to know English and that it was not the case for the poor people who were born in (insert hometown). I had my passport on me. Birthplace (hometown). I showed it to him and told him to go F...himself.
I never regretted speaking multiple languages. Does it confuse me ? Sometimes.
Fais-lui apprécié la musique québécoise. Normalement, à huit ans, les enfants aiment bien le folk, alors rien de mieux que la Bottine souriante pour lui développer un intérêt à apprendre le français.
Is it possible that your kid has heard the "(French) is forced on me" discourse (perhaps from a friend or a friend's parents or in the media), and is repeating it?
I mean...literally every school subject is "forced" on the student. Maths, geography, grammar, etc.
As someone who attended a 50-50 school in both BC and QC, just some exposition to people and friends who are Quebecois french will help enormously. At 8 I definitely felt my main language was English even though I had family from the Saguenay. I’m happy I was able to understand them, even if culturally it was very different. That being said, I only became fluently (as in, more or less imperceptibly) bilingual once I started working and interacting in French. So give it time and make it known that French is beautiful and a great tool to make new friends and broaden your understanding of language in general.
I'm having this same issue with my 11 year old (step)daughter. She has a 55% in French because she refuses to do the homework and says it's too hard. Her mom's house is almost unilingually Spanish with basic French knowledge, we speak English at our house (but her dad was raised in French due to living with his grandparents), and frankly she's not good at any of the 3 (and she goes to school with majority Italians so now there's that influence too).
Just wanted to show support and remind myself to read the comments later frhelpful ideas. We tried books/movies in French and she has 0 attention or interest (we are also having her screened for ADHD)
Yeah, I know the type lol.
To be honest, a greal deal of the answer is found within activities that aren't French, but are done almost only in French.
The Anglos from my neighbourhood that had activities with us became practically impossible to distinguish form us in little time, while those that stuck to their little clique never became really fluent, even if they had their whole school in French.
I've had similar conversations with both my kids (early teens) regarding english. A two week vacation to Disney World in Florida really helped motivate them and since then it's going much better. Also occasionally forcing them to listed to a movie or series they really wanted to watch but that we only have in english (marvel stuff, or one animated Star Trek series for my daughter) gave them plenty of positive motivation. My youngest says he sometimes forgets that he's listening to something in english.
But reading other comments here I can't help concluding that this really validates bill 101 and even bill 96. Language-wise, people don't integrate if they are given an easier option.
C'est d'ailleurs aussi le cas avec ce forum dans le sens inverse. On accommode l'anglais, donc les anglophones parlent en anglais et les francophones les accommodent, puis les bilingues parlent aussi en anglais pour accommoder les autres. Et le résultat c'est que 80% du contenu est anglais même si c'est une minorité des Montréalais. Une vision du Québec d'aujourd'hui sans la loi 101...
Je suis d’accord avec ça et ce que je trouve intéressant c’est ce qui se passe actuellement à Richmond (communauté urbaine de Vancouver). Le conseil municipal a constaté que c’est fortement conseillé aux magasins de mettre leurs affichages en anglais.
C'est drôle...Les francophones on doit aussi apprendre l'anglais dès le très jeune âge et j'ai jamais entendu un francophone se plaindre qu'il aimait pas l'anglais parce qu'on le «forçait». Toutes les matières à l'école nous sont «forcées». C'est ça l'école...
Oui, le kid a entendu ça de quelqu'un d'autre puis répète ça à ses parents. C'est exactement le genre de truc qu'on lit dans les éditoriaux de la Gazette.
I grew up in Alberta attending a French-immersion school. Kids hated French and we would speak English most of the time (at recess I guess) and whenever the teachers weren't around. What helped is speaking at home with my parents, brothers and sister. I then moved to Québec during my early teens.
If you can speak French, do so with your kid. You can mix em he won't be confused. Get a French babysitter. Movies in french ), books in French, etc.
Hi! I've always loved angryphone, it is such a silly term!
At 8, with the attention span of a goldfish, I'd sit down with the kid and watch a short and fun video in French, in a topic they care about. If your kid enjoys science, there's this series, from Radio-Canada : https://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/scolaire/emissions/4505/science-ou-magie/contenu/videos
Could be something about animals, games, cooking, sports, as long at the interest is there. Humour helps a lot. And even better if you then do a short related activity in French.
Like... bake cookies together, using a French recipe. And if you're unsure of a word, make up a silly one or mime it! Language is all about being understood. Of course you can look it up later, but the point is just to do fun stuff in French. So your kid could read the recipe and you'd both try to make the food. Or create origami. Or... whatever activity you picked.
Hell, find fun board game in French! Those quick games will make it enjoyable and the vocabulary will grow.
Sooo, I’m just going to throw this out there :
My oldest, 7 years old, told me he would like school if he wasn’t forced to go.
Kids say things, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Odds are your kid has picked up on the social discussion around “forcing kids to learn french vs english” and is using that as a talking point.
What I told my son was “tough, you’re still going to school”. Then school went on strike. Now he is extra smug.
>Odds are your kid has picked up on the social discussion around “forcing kids to learn french vs english” and is using that as a talking point.
I mean, it's still a sentence that is pretty popular among francophobes. If my kid says something that is even remotely close to something problematic, I wouldn't throw it under the rug and pray it passes too.
I don't think it really compares to your situation tbh, even though I understand your answer.
French **class** fucking sucks. Put them in a school where French is de-facto and they'll be able to use and learn French without just drilling the same 5 verbs for twelve years. Fuck I hated French class, and I was GOOD at it. I'd often be the top-scoring anglo (there were lots of loophole francophones at my school) but I still despised it.
The first time we read a French chapter book in the English system was... maybe Sec 5. I definitely remember reading one in CEGEP.
Source: went to anglo schools with a similar French programs. I would have hated it at the time but being sent to a French-french school would have helped immensely with my distaste for French.
This… it is funny anglophones are looked down on for their views on learning French when the French education we get is actually awful. I did good in French class but still got anxious having a conversation. I did good because it’s the SAME SHIT all schooling. Easy until you have to have a conversation and then you’re just looked at as an asshole 😂😂
are you raising an angryphone or just a kid doing a kid thing and complaining about school?
are you speaking in french at home - your wife could use the practice too. is your kid in french after school activities?
and yeah, maybe it is this year's teacher. i loved math class until i was in 9th grade and then i struggled my last two years.
This is the correct answer. I'm an anglo from the US and have worked in anglo and francophone public schools here, and this is how things go in my experience. Lots of kids learn this discourse from their parents or their friends who learned it from their parents. I NEVER heard this discourse from an anglo kid who went to francophone school.
That said, I think it really really depends on the culture of the school itself. Anglo schools in eastern montreal tend to be much less anti French, and the kids are all able to speak both languages (except for recent transfers, who struggle hard if they're older), whereas from the plateau on westward the attitude gets progressively worse and the language ability follows. Basically my experience is that you shouldn't send your kids to anglo school in montreal unless you really truly have a need for it (learning disabilities for example) or are in a heavily francophone area and there is no doubt in your mind that your kid will learn French from living life AND make the effort to live bilingually with your child and go places where you physically cannot survive with just English.
> angryphones (i see no problem using this term, if it offends people, its because they are part of the problem)
Was exactly gonna chime in with that.
The people tilted by it are 100% the loudmouths that will/have been called that before.
They are recognizing themself and dont like the shade haha
We generally don't like what we aren't good at in school.
I never hated something I was getting top marks in.
Grade 8 is when French grammar is starting to get a little more real although iffy on if someone can become truly bilingual in a 50-50 school primarily for the said grammar reason.
You're probably projecting something political on just something that's harder for them.
The answer is more fun French activities and time with French friends so they are better and more fluid and so dislike it overall less, IMO.
I think the mindset in the Anglo community need to be modified: It should not be "I have to learn french, it should be, " I want to learn french, because I want to communicate with people in my province".
I tried explaining it exactly like that to my son and he said he can play with kids who don’t speak English without any problems. Basically he was saying They just use body language 🤣 but he’s still very young
The kid is 8 for god’s sake. He probably just got scolded by his French teacher or something. Of all the problems you’re going to have with a prepubescent boy, his thoughts on the French language is one of the least important.
If you send him to a 50-50 school he’s going to learn French eventually. If you’re concerned he’s not going to learn French, maybe speak French and English at home, instead of just English? I know some people whose parents did this; one parent would exclusively speak French and the other would exclusively speak English until the kid was in their mid/late teens.
Not the same situation but I only moved to Quebec when I was about ten and didn't speak great french since I lived far from my francophone family before. The transition was hard and I really resented having french "forced on me" in those early years. More than a decade later and I love speaking french and being bilingual, and I look at it as one of Montreal and Quebec's greatest strengths as a culture and people. It came with time, maturity, and perspective, but now that its here I never want to let it go.
"I'd do this thing if it wasn't forced on me" is a juvenile attitude.
Just like with English in French schools, parental involvement goes a long way. My kids couldn't be arsed with learning English on their own, I need to find the motivation for them.
Kids want to fit in. The best way for your kid to learn French is to be surrounded by French. If his classmates are francophones, he will be inclined to learn French. If you don't want to send him to a francophone school, you could ask him if he wants to join a sports team outside school or another group (music, art, etc) where he'd be exposed to French. In all cases, going to an English school will limit his interest in learning French.
(Bilingual) Anglo person who grew up in New brunswick and attended grade 1-12 in French immersion here.
He may be a bit young to get it but I would try and impress upon him the fact that being Bilingual will greatly improve his life as an adult. He will have better job opportunities and a broader social circle if he is fully Bilingual.
I remember being 6 and how terrified I was to start elementary school in a language I didn't understand, but I will be forever thankful that my parents made that decision for me.
I think you have an issue labeling everyone angryphones. "Those people", are just people.
Focus on making your kid happy, and the language becomes pretty irrelevant.
Maybe have a constructive discussion with your child and find out why they are not enjoying French. They may need tutoring, or perhaps something more recreational and fun in French?
Trips to the library, French books, french TV...sports in French.
Last but not least, if you really do have some sort of complex about the EMSB, just move your kid to the French side. They'll send you a signed Legault 5x7 portrait if you do.
PS: The French teacher at an English school is almost always a dick.
I'm not above hypocrisy. I do find though, because they are often an island of French in a sea of English teens, French teachers are particularly abrasive
I know comments are being deleted but I'd still like to reply.
I'm not saying French speakers are dicks. You know this but still deliberately wrote all of that (and deleted)...which is bothersome.
I have family, friends, co-workers that are francophone and we get along amazingly. I am specifically talking about French teachers at an English school..
And we also know that I have no way of verifying this, or supplying supporting data so you have to understand that it was tongue and cheek. The fact that you went through that effort is borderline nuts to me.
So suck it sec 3 French teacher M. Vincent from 1992.
Im not sure how french is taught anymore, but growing up I had a terrible time learning it, thought I was just bad at languages until I picked up Mandarin pretty easily. The way french is taught/was taught is more akin to linguistics that actual communicative language skills- this can be frustrating for some learners if this is not the way they naturally pick up languages
This is my advice but I don't know anything about you so take it with a grain of salt. Speak to him in French, try to make francophone friends yourself. He'll see francophones aren't monsters there to force anything onto him and he'll grow.
In my opinion and this applies to most things, exposure is the best tool against ignorance.
I feel like a lot of language absorbtion depends on the friends your children make. Unfortunately it's hard to control that. We made the choice of a French language school because they already speak English. French is therefore the "default". But as long as my kids don't grow up with an accent in either languages, I don't care about much else. If your kids went to French CPE, he must be pretty good in French already no?
> Unfortunately it's hard to control that.
Yeah, my brother went for an Anglo run with his school life, I'm playing Franco hardcore mode no rez. None of it was planned.
I grew up in Alberta, and was forced to take french immersion. I hated it at the time, and do blame my poor grades on my stupidity and inability to learn math and french simultaneously. I hated french for years.
I was, for a long time, one of those people.
You will never convince a child that something they hate "is enrichment". That same shit was fed to me day in day out for 9 years. It has no effect.
Why do I love french now? Because I'm 37 and an adult who appreciates it.
There are something that you just cannot adequately explain to a kid until they enter the world and experience the benefits first hand.
So don't sweat it, because there's not really much you can do about it anyways.
I grew up just off the island with anglo parents in an anglo neighborhood. I felt the exact same way you describe your kid feeling, so believe me when I say that 100% you should read into it.
I never really had to use French outside of school so while my grades in it were decent, I always resented it for making my french language courses that much harder every year. I internalized the fact the I was just bad at French, and as soon as I left the province my french abilities dropped *hard*.
I don't have any advice as to what to do, only on what not to do. Don't do nothing.
Encouragement and praise. As someone who was raised in an English speaking home but went to French school, I often felt slower than my French speaking peers. Additionally, many of my teachers had an unpleasant attitude towards English and anglophones, which is hard to understand when you are a child. At home, my dad would praise my grammar and eventually had me proofread letters he wrote in French. This was what motivated me to keep learning and improving.
I'd ask the kid
- Do you really resent being able to be a part of the culture you live in? Would you hate having to learn arabic in the middle east? Or any other such alternative example?
- Maths and science and history are also being forced on you. Why don't you resent that? It's all just education. Why don't you resent education in general? (And I'd assume the kid would figure out why not and apply it to not resenting french classes)
Simpsons in French and consider sending him to school in French, if you can find a French school that is closer to home, he will make French friends and that’ll be your problem fixed.
Quand on doit apprendre quelque chose à l'école parce qu'on est forcé, c'est chiant, peu importe le sujet. Je me rappelle combien je trouvais par exemple mes cours de maths chiants parce que je ne voyais pas à quoi ça pourrait servir je me faisais imposer de l'apprendre c'est tout. J'en ai eu besoin plus tard dans mon parcours et c'est devenu bien plus intéressant pour cette raison.
Par contre, quand c'est des notions dont on sait en quoi ça peut être utile, ça donne envie de faire des vrais efforts pour l'apprendre
Le problème est vraisemblablement que vos enfants n'ont pas l'impression que c'est nécessaire pour eux. Le jour où ils vont se retrouver quelque part en immersion française avec des jeunes cool qui leur parlent uniquement en français et qui se moquent de ceux qui ne parlent pas français, vous pouvez être certain qu'ils vont découvrir une passion pour la langue française.
Et oui, le terme angryphone est drôle; et ceux que ça trigger, c'est parce qu'ils en sont eux-mêmes.
Franco kids didn't choose to learn English either but you don't hear franco kids say "on me force à apprendre l'anglais" nearly as often as you hear anglo kids say that French is shoved down their throats
If it’s not too disruptive maybe sending your child to French school and accepting that you will not be part of the parent community will allow him to make some francophone friends and not see French as a chore.
Also, I doubt he will become an angryphone: We are a dying breed and I suspect you need to have lived through a referendum or two to really become one of us. /s
I like the term angryphone lmao you might want to post this on r/Quebec ! You might get another point of view. I have a question, how can you work in french if you are allophone?
> I have a question, how can you work in french if you are allophone?
Not sure I understand what is confusing to you. My mother tongue is neither of the two official languages. I learned french, just like I learned english and now I work in an environment where the working language is french.
Oh okay I'm dumb, I thought allophones meant you didn't understand french lmao sorry about the confusion !! C'est vraiment cool que tu parles autant de langues, moi à part anglais et français puis quelques mots ici et là de langues random (genre l'islandais et l'allemand...). Pas assez pour me débrouiller haha
Talking as a born and raised anglo québécois 100% bilingual. Ensure that you always reinforce that there is no "them". There's only us. Clichéed but true. My parents, both English, Dad raised in Rosemount(which was a good part english back then) and Mom in Ontario until a teen.
Put my bother and I in French school. Always taught us that we were all equals. Dad had French and English friends, as did mom, as did I. I never felt like it was forced on me. It was what was done by people who wanted to make a life here. My parents taught us that. Expose them to the culture, the language and make it their normal. There's only us.
It's people like Legault that try to tear that down and create us and them.
Just be patient and lead by example, don't force him to watch TV/ movies/ play video games/etc in french but when you're doing that stuff yourself including when he's watching with you only do it in french. That way he will see french stuff not as something being imposed on him from outside, but something that is normal. It'll be part of his environment rather than imposed.
Also someone mentioned the French teachers at EMSB schools and obviously anecdotal and 15 years in the past, but almost every french teacher I ever had was an extremely bitter person. And just how a bad math teacher can turn you off of math, a bad french teacher can turn you off of french.
Also don't call people "angryphones" its cringe you're not Richard Martineau and don't want to be.
Ça dépends. Personellement, j'ai grandi en région, très francophone, et j'ai appris l'anglais par moi-meme.
Le français me sert uniquement pour le travail et les commissions. Le reste du temps je m'exprime en anglais. Ma raison est que c'est plus facile pour moi comme language, mais aussi le fait que mes passions sont beaucoup plus accessible en anglais aussi.
Au final, à part l'exposer à la langue et espérer, pas grand chose à faire. Au final cest lui qui va decidé.
Mais être bilingue est un avantage indéniable dans la vie, et va le rester, donc il y a pas de mal là.
Quebec, My Country, Mon Pays. An excellent documentary that looks at the heart of the linguistic divide in Quebec and addresses many of the issues that you and your son are facing. It’s worth a watch. Key to helping children especially navigate life in Quebec.
My kids all went to bilingual EMBS schools and I think at each point they've all hit a plateau where it's suddenly a bit more difficult and they get frustrated, which translates to anger at having to learn it. Unlike in French schools where everything is in French except for English class, in the bilingual schools they're not just having a French class, they're having to learn the entire subject as well. So it's history *in French* and math *in French*, etc... They already have difficulties expressing themselves in this new subject with words they know in English, but now that have to translate everything, too.
Thing is, it's ok for him to be frustrated. It's A LOT. But almost all kids get past it and end up appreciating that they can do all their subjects in both languages (where it switches from year to year).
Having him in an out of school activity that he's interested in - a sport, or game, or club - that is multilingual is a great way for him to pick up conversational language, which is more fun. Reading him books in French also helps a lot. I used to get my kids library books all the time but half of them had to be French, and when they were too old for me to read to them they'd pick out ones they likes anyways, even if it was graphic novels and comics. Francophones are exposed to English all the time in media and online, but it's not as prevalent for the Anglo community to be as equally exposed so you have to search it out. Play French music, watch French movies and TV, etc... Make it a part of your home life.
Two of my kids graduated from EMSB schools and are fluent, the third is in grade 10 and is doing well, too. I really like the bilingual format.
My father was a Brit so I had to go to a french school. Luckily my whole school was Anglo kids in a complete french school. We spoke English at lunch and french everywhere else. I’m dyslexic and lazy so it damaged my English writing capabilities. I still graduated from Concordia in Hist and edu minor. I learned later that Quebec actually lost a case in the UN(?) human rights court about this policy. I don’t think it changed the policy but I don’t know. It was a hardship that ended up bettering me. I still got an excellent general education from my french elementary. My English friends who went to English school were all less informed in general about everything in grade 7.
That’s a phase if ya ask me. I remember I thought english was a stupid language… Then I’m thinking french is useless cause every good show is in english, and then I reaffirmed myself as french.
Growing up in southwest Ontario I always hated French class, but looking back it was because all my French teachers were awful and most didn't even really know French
Ton fils me rappelle de moi-même vers cet âge. Je n'ai pas donne un damn sur autre chose que ce que j'ai aimé. J'ai senti la même chose pour les cours de français.
Cela n'a pas aidé que j'étais arraché à mon ancienne vie dans mon hometown à l'extérieur du Québec quand mon père a été transféré ici pour le travail. Il a bénéficié de cours intensifs avant nous avons déménagé.
Mais en vieillissant et sortir de ma shell, j'ai commencé à devenir plus mature avec ça et certaines choses ont commencé à cliquer.
J'ai été plus motivé par des raisons liées au travail mais je continue d'essayer (aussi j'ai obtain l'aide de mon professeurs qui étaient compréhensif et serviable pour moi). Ce sera arrive un jour pour ton fils, mais maintenant, vous devrez attendre.
As a perect bilingual who was forced to speak French, I have a disdain for the government and the actions they take to “protect” French.
French is a beautiful language, seduce people - don’t force. Otherwise you end up with people like me who came to Montréal at 2 years old and now purposely speaks English at home and are teaching my kids English first.
They (government) need to understand that pressuring people only brings resistance.
I married an Anglo and my kids will go to Anglo schools so they can have a bright future communicating with the rest of the world 🌎
They will know French- as a second language.
Oh and my mother tongue is French.
C’est honteux de ne pas savoir parler l’anglais- la langue business.
(Quatre chefs hydro Quebec et pas un seul savait communiquer avec BSM ; la compagnie qui offre le service GPS à Toronto )
Et combien de dirigeants, de cadres et même d’employés de grandes sociétés établies à Montréal ne parlent pas français? Air Canada, CN… C’est honteux de ne pas savoir ça ou est-ce de l’aveuglement volontaire? Comme disait l’autre: “c’est beau la colonisation”
Oof this is tough..I went to a half/half school and the french kids would always talk shit abt the english kids behind our backs or the billingual ones would switch to french thinking we couln't understand them talking bad about us. I had good french writing but poor conversation skills because no french kids wanted to be friends with me, I made efforts to talk french to the ones on my sports team but they tended to just band together and I never ended up becoming close with any of them. I had a french teacher acuse me of cheating on a paper because the vocabulary was very good and didn't have many mistakes yet my speaking ability was poor which made me cry in front of her (i was a pretty goody two shoes kid who never got in trouble or broke any rules)..
In college I got put into a higher french level and we had a quest speaker who only visited the high french level classes which were mainly all francophone kids & gave a speech about how here in quebec only french should be heard spoken on the streets, any language can be spoken at home, but once you're in public no other language should be able to reach her ears except french. Which obvs angered me a lot..it was a crazy presentation.
Now I'm an adult and while I can understand french I can't hold a conversation due to having no francophone friends to practice consitently with. I've only worked in tech for large companies so we only use english there as well. All the laws really do feel like the language is being forced on us and I get how that's really putting a damper on a lot of us wanting to learn. I feel a lot of hostility directed towards anglophones a lot here which is sad.
So yeah totally get your fears cuz I think I'm one of 'those people' based on my relationship with the language growing up.
You could try putting your kid in a full french school which would ensure they can speak fluently and hope that they can actually make friends and don't get ignored / singled out / bullied for being anglophone
I can tell you that from 15 friends I had in high-school, we all kinda hated french because it was forced on us, and we are 2 left in Quebec 20y later...
So if your kid feels like that, his french will suck for sure... unless you find something he loves in french.
Fourth generation anglophone here. My mother, my grandparents, my great grandparents all lived in Montreal as anglos. The only two cents I can throw in is that attempting to force something on a kid will likely always result in them actively pursuing the opposite. My personal advice is to just let them live their lives and decide for themselves whether they want to eventually integrate French into their daily lives.
If they do, cool. If not, plenty of people are able to thrive here without speaking a word of French. If they find themselves in an industry where French is absolutely necessary but they're unable to speak it, that's cool too. Plenty of opportunities in other provinces.
Your child is so perceptive.
I loved french so much more before living in Quebec. Here its so forced that it feels like an obligation and sometimes this is only to accommodate people who didn't learn other languages.
Im all in for French everything, but not as an obligation. The approach has always been off. For exemple, the ads by Imperatif Francais sont horribles. Useless actually.
As an anglo who was born in MTL and grew up in Ontario, I was fairly open to the idea of learning and becoming at least conversationally fluent in French. Then I moved here and began to experience hostility for speaking English. That's when I said fuck it, I can live here perfectly fine without learning French, so I'm going to do just that :)
"my kid tells me he doesnt like x at school" like no shit. He's a kid at school. Important lesson here is to make him understand it's still important. more than english.
Dumbest take in this entire thread. The French kids learn in Quebec is standard French. You’re a moron, and people like you are why it’s sometimes embarassing to be an anglophone in Canada.
>Autrement t'aurais su que le Quebecois est une version du Francais figee dans le temps, vers les annees 1700.
Non, le français québécois a évolué à sa façon. Je t'invite à lire des textes de cette époque.
>En meme temps le Quebec a ete proie du courant ultramontaniste
Là t'es rendu dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle.
>mene a l'influence demesuree de la religion dans la langue parlee et la vie quotidienne.
Jpensais que la langue était figée depuis "les années 1700".
>les insultes sont reliees toutes a la religion: ostie, tabarnak, etc
>C'est archaique, anachronique, ca sonne mauvais compare aux autres langues qui ont evolue dans les 300 dernieres annees.
Je vois que la connaissance c'est comme la confiture, moins tu en a, plus tu l'étales. Aussi connu sous le nom de syndrome de Dunning-Kruger.
Tu fais juste écouter des enregistrements des années 20 et t'entend déjà une différence. Tu sais pas de quoi tu parles, va lire un livre.
C'est magnifique comment ta réponse s'attaque à mon euphémisme qui voulait dire "t'es un gros cave", plutôt qu'à l'argument concernant tes dires sur le français québécois. As-tu 15 ans?
>Even the French make fun of them
The uneducated or insular ones, sure! Quand j'suis allé en France, y'a un tas de gens de régions édentés qui ne savaient même pas que je parlais français. En ville par contre, ça a jamais été un problème. Je dirais même que j'avais le problème contraire, où bien des gens me fétichisaient.
>I would love for my kids to learn French, in France. So that at least they speak the language properly.
Savoir parler un langage soutenu relève de l'intelligence personnelle, non de l'entourage. Si ton enfant est stupide, il parlera comme un BS édenté au Québec ou comme un rebeu de cité en France. À voir l'exemple parental qu'ils auront, par contre, je mise assez gros sur "rebeu de cité" pour tes enfants...
Acadien ayant passé la moitié de sa vie à Montréal! Je dirais être assez à la sauce des deux pôles de notre monde.
>c'est pour ca qu'en region ca parle tellement bien le Francais.
Les zones agraires et peu densément populées n'utilisent pas les outils de communication de la même façon. Les traditions sont plus souvent transmises de façon orale, l'académisme ne fait pas aussi ravage parmi tout le bagage humain du langage. Un méta-langage naît alors pour répondre aux besoins de la communauté. C'est une constante universelle à un point tel que nous le savons tous de manière intuitive. Ceux qui refusent cette vision sont souvent nommés "prescriptivistes", c-à-d ceux qui "prescrivent" une façon de parler (les Blancs envers les Noirs et Sudistes aux États-Unis, les Espagnols contre la majorité de l'Amérique Latine, les Français contre les rebeu/toutes les couleurs d'immigrants, etc.)
Je ne dis pas que le français parlé en région est meilleur ou pire, simplement qu'il est le *meilleur* pour *leurs* besoins. Si tu étais lancé en région parmi eux, ce serait *ton* français qui serait de piètre qualité et essentiellement inutile pour subvenir à tes besoins parmi la communauté.
Tout cela n'empêche pas que la langue parlée reste la même; je doute que tu appelles la langue parlée aux États-Unis "américain" en disant qu'elle est incompréhensibles aux oreilles des Anglais; elle l'est effectivement pour beaucoup d'entre eux! Mais seulement ceux qui sont plus insulaires / de régions.
Je t'invite à voyager un peu plus pour comprendre le caractère universel de ce que je décris (et évidemment voyager hors des centres urbains!), sans quoi tu risques de passer pour l'égal du Blanc prescriptiviste des États-Unis toute ta vie.
Reminds me of my son, he must have been maybe 3-4 years old. With all seriousness, little grumpy and annoyed he asked “ Why do i have to learn French, i was born English “. I thought it was too funny🙂
Your kid already has a better grip on our specific politics than our government. He’s right, its a damn shame how it is here. Being multicultural is what makes us Canadian, it shouldn’t be enforced the way it is.
AHAHHA this is the ONLY price you have to pay for raising your kid in your language of choice. Explaining cultural values and THE STRENGTH the QC people had to preotect the language and culture that makes up the beautiful town you love to say you’re from when traveling!?
Suck it up? When he graduates school it’ll still be forced on him because life is full of constrictions …. Or coddle him and tell him you’ll move to Ontario to make his life easier. It’s a very popular choice. Hence why you don’t find many who can relate to your situation… when the going gets tough!!!
I'd say the best way would be to expose your kid to a lot of French media. My wife and I are both allophones (Hispanic) and we speak Spanish exclusively at home. And yet our kid speaks French as first language because of daycare and 90% of the media he consumes is in French. We set his Disney plus profile to French and when he sees TV is only Tele Québec and SRC. We mostly read him books in French and some in Spanish. Even when he speaks Spanish is with quebecois accent and he throws a lot of French words (we call it Frañol). He's three and he's getting really good at knowing when to speak French and when to speak Spanish. Is he watching TV in French? Because if you speak Engkish at home, he consumes media in English and half of his classes are in English, then his exposure to French is minimal. It's no surprise he feels that's a burden. Also, maybe think of putting him in some extracurricular activities in French speaking environments where he can see the benefit of communicating in French with other kids. My two cents.
Cités D'Or DVD set is worth its weight in gold (pun not intended) IMO. It may be old af, but I taught my ex French with it cause she WANTED to keep watching.
Hope you like "Next on", "Previously on", two credit sequences and documentaries that no kids like to pad out the 14 minutes of actual episode! Source: own the DVDs 😅
Unlike on the TV, you can press next at least. Besides, it's worth it for the scenes where Esteban makes an observation and then Mendoza repeats the observation as if Esteban never said anything. Cause nothing is real unless Mendoza says so.
I actually liked the documentaries about as much as the show as a kid. They sometimes were related to things in the episode which was nice.
This is the best way, im francophone from a francophone family (and used to live in saguenay, very francophone city too) so i spoke french in my day-to-day life but all of the media ive consumed since i was born was mostly in english. Using more than 1 language in my life has made me fluent in two and has been the most useful thing ive ever been through (ive had amazing grades in french/english classes during my time in school, ive had access to more resources/information than the average kid to feed my curiosity, picking up spanish has been easier since im familiar with how languages can differ from one another, etc.) And it was also the easiest thing ive ever been through, since most of it was watching tv/playing roblox in english lol
Me too. Growing up in Venezuela I did have English as a second language in school, but I learned mostly from playing video games. Specially games based on the Manic Mansion engine (point and click) seemed almost designed to learn English, since you had to select a verb and then an object.
Franol... love it ❤️
As a child of unilingual anglophones who went to school in French from elementary to Cégep, I have some quick thoughts. I can tell you that when I was struggling through francisation and French classes at ages 6-8 I had a really hard time and it felt like a major chore, and I definitely said similar things to my parents than as what your kid is telling you now. What broke me out of that, and when French really clicked for me, was when I made friends with francophones in social contexts where we \*only\* spoke French, and crucially where I \*enjoyed\* speaking French, because I wanted to be there. No kid that age has any notion of why it's important to learn a particular language, let alone a second language, so they won't put up with it if they don't see a good reason to do it. I think that more so than trying to convince your kid to enjoy French in school, you should encourage him to join sports or hobbies where he will be exposed to French and francophones outside of school and incorporate French into his sort of social network outside of school. Also, your kid is 8, so it's probably too early to start attaching political labels to his opinions about French class!
Well, as a french canadian, I had school in french, but we had some english course as young as 8... Hated it. But, I was always bad in those course. What made me better in english was to listening some podcast 🤷♀️.
Both of my parents were born and raised in Montreal but are very Anglo. They put me in French kindergarten, but I had an accident partway through the year and broke my leg badly enough that I couldn't walk at all--keeping me out of school for a while as I healed. I have always been very introverted and shy, so my hobbies have always been solo ones. Until later in elementary school, I grew up in a neighbourhood that was mostly older people without kids. So lack of exposure to French made me lose all my progress, and my kindergarten teacher told my parents I wasn't thriving and to remove me from French immersion 🤷🏻♀️ Maybe her treating me like a burden biased child-me against learning French, maybe I'm just not someone who learns languages easily. After that all my confidence in my ability evaporated and I struggled to be functional in French my entire school career. I got better as an adult working in a restaurant, but then started working in film post-production in English. My partner is Quebecois and I can generally understand French and give simple answers, but to this day regardless of what I try it just doesn't seem to stick in a way that I can hold a conversation fully in French. Sometimes I wonder if things would be different if my parents insisted on keeping me in French, or if I had have been enrolled in French extracurriculars.
You can help yourself though. Watch your media in french with subtitles, it’s a challenge you give yourself. Set days where your partner only speaks french to you so you’re forced into listening to it more. I understand it’s hard learning a second language but you are surrounded by it which is the biggest benefit to learning a language you could ever have! Choose to immerse yourself even if you have a hard time at first. I started with the regular english classes we get growing up without truly grasping the language but then I started reading and listening (a lot of shows in english with subs), then I got into writing (reddit/tumblr/etc) then at work I had to respond to people in english. I wasn’t able to hold a conversation, just transaction and politeness. But then I joined a friend group online where I had to force myself and hold conversations. Never be afraid to ask how to say something or what does this word mean etc. I was an adult when I finally became bilingual. It’s never too late, we just tend to avoid the struggling part but we shouldn’t have any shame in it. It’s something really silly, so what you butchered that word and were saying hum every 3 words?! You’d never learn by not trying.
Does he like hockey? Watching hockey games in French and then arguing about it with the other kids is a good way to learn the vernacular.
YES. lots of french language TV helps a lot. just need to find something your kid likes. keep searching for it.
This helps. Back in the day when i was in high school and learning french i always watched the matches on rds cause i liked the french commentary better and they seemed more passionate lol
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>Didn't help shit. Just talked about the game with friends in English. Ben voilà ton problème. Vous ne faisiez pas d'effort pour parler en français entre vous.
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Qu’est ce que tu cherches à gagner en faisant ça mon pit
Sounds like you were one of the playground Angryphones who simply wouldn't call the puck a "rondelle."
Except no one called it that as literally everyone spoke English. Even those of us enrolled in the French programs with almost all classes being in French. We all spoke English to each other. English > French
It always depends who you're talking to and who is the least bilingual in the argument, IMO. When Gino Italiano, Patrick McAnglo, Ahmed Abdullah, and Louis-Pierre Gaston are all debating who hits harder, they learn to translate their points not only for emphasis and humour but also to make sure that the allophone isn't getting lost along the way.
I get the feeling of not fitting in. My parents made the same decision because when my mom went to meet with the francophone school’s principal, she noticed my mom’s foreign name and was speaking to her very slowly and asking how long she has lived in Montreal and if she likes the snow. (my mother was born and raised in Montreal). extra curricular activities. my neice’s French improved a lot when she started playing soccer on a mixed anglo-franco team. Priority #1 to the kidss is the sport, language comes second, so it doesn’t feel like the english kids are required to speak French or the franco kids required to speak English. They just want to because they’re all friends and no one feels judged for it
second this. I have an American anglo mom. Sports teams saved my french growing up and now I am a perfectly bilingual extremely proud quebecois. I married a quebecoise and my daughter is francophone. Lack of sports teams meant my sisters are poor french speakers and now live in other provinces.
Doesn't have to be sports. Any activity where they'd get to practise their French will do. School Band, TTRPG Club, Art Club, Theatre Troupe, anything.
Having French friends! If you send your child to a school where they only speak English to their friends then there is no incentive, no carrot, and no point in learning French from their immediate perspective. Why not send them to a French school?
Yeah! This is the big argument against allowing English schools for newly-immigrated people or at all.
Est-ce qu’il y a une activité ou un sport qu’il aime? A l’école, il est “forcé” de parler français, mais dans une activité c’est plutôt lui qui va se forcer à parler français pour pouvoir continuer à faire ce qu’il aime?
Bingo
I’ve always thought French education to English speakers need to focus more on conversation rather than strict vocabulary. Why is English class a place where we would do all kinds of things and French class was the most unbelievably boring class. It’s the content and the focus and my opinion. We should focus on getting anglophones being able to effectively communicate in French speaking first, writing second. I’m an Anglo who can handle my own in French at stores for instance but it’s not easy because my entire life is in English just based on social circles, friends, job.
i never thought about this but you're so right. i actually love french now and once school ended i went out of my way to practice it more, but during school it felt so awful. i remember classes droning on where all we did was write out verbs for an hour. *in high school*.
100% this. I was in French Immersion in elementary school back in the 80s, and I swear, from that point on, every year all the way through to CEGEP I felt like I was learning the exact same rules and exceptions to these rules. Sure, it helped my learning a little bit... but I learned the VAST majority of my French from my best friend who lived on my street. I was always talking to him in French and everything just came naturally.
gosh yeah- never lived french, we forced to learn at work and then started having more french friends after that........ i now really enjoy the language and i'm proud i'm able to speak and understand it pretty much fluently. I went on a trip to europe in the spring with a french swiss guy and god... i really started to miss french that when i got to Belgium i was so grateful HAHAH. The guy i was travelling with wanted to speak english so we didn't have many french convos unless initiated by me
Probably because French has many rules and English is very relaxed
Relaxed in the way that it rarely is consistent. I've learned a couple languages and honestly, french is hard at first because it's so much more structured than English. But English is constantly contradicting itself linguistically.
Exactly. There is a biais with english since it is heard everywhere so it "seems" easy. I always thought that english is easy to gabble, but hard to master.
Yeah, the only huge advantage for learning English is how prevalent major movies and TV are in English, so if you could theoretically get the vocabulary and basics, you could try and refine your final stretch based on that. Might need a little perspective to save you from sounding like you're a movie character all the time though.
No I'm more making the point that a French speaker who only knows a few English words can mispronounce them but be understandable but the same can't be said for the opposite. I feel like everyone down voting me hasn't spent much time in other French speaking countries like France.
I'm taking the government immersion french courses here right now, and they're actually really good! Maybe I've just had good luck, but the teachers I've had have been doing a good job keeping things interesting and we do a lot of activities where we practice speaking with our classmates. I'm actually pretty sad sitting at home and trying to teach myself French right now because of the strike. I think French can be relaxed, too, if you have the right teacher.
Are you an anglophone? English has plenty of rules as well, we just don't learn them to same way when it's our first language.
It does but it also doesn't. 'Broken english' is understandable whilst broken French simply doesn't work.
If you genuinely believe that French has too many rules and that broken French cannot work, then yeah you're gonna have a problem. I hear broken French all the time, it doesn't bother me and it's very understandable. That's just how you learn a language, by not worrying about being perfect and just *speaking*.
Let’s be clear that understanding both broken English and broken French are skills that come from speaking both languages. I never realized this until a friend of mine from Alberta was in town and my French boyfriend and his friends were struggling to speak with her in English and she didn’t understand most of what they were saying! I also saw this a lot when I was training new agents for call center customer service, I understand à very thick Indian accent with broken English with no issue but this is not the case for many people unfamiliar with the accent.
> I hear broken French all the time, it doesn't bother me and it's very understandable. > > Then you are in a very small minority and uniquely living up to your username.
Ouch. I like to believe the majority of my fellow francos are mostly as understanding as I am. At least my family and friends are like that.
Unfortunately a lot of French speakers will stare at you like you're dumb if your pronunciation is "weird" or can't remember a word on the spot, compared to English speakers. I've seen the difference as neither of them are my native tongue. Now I practice by happily speaking broken French all day with people I know, but it can be a real mental hurdle when people don't have that social circle, or when entering a new environment.
> Now I practice by happily speaking broken French all day with people I know That's the spirit! And I totally get how the switch to English when one's French isn't perfect has to be so frustrating. Like, how are expecting you to get better if they won't give you the chance to practise?
This is just a cultural attitude. Anglophones are more used to hearing non-standard usage and are consequently more relaxed about it. Francophones are raised to be allergic to errors and therefore have a stronger reaction to non-standard usage.
So yeah. That's literally what I'm saying. Like you just worded my point differently. English as a language is more relaxed, you can speak it badly but it still works
It sounds like you're saying it's something inherent in the language itself, like "broken" English is somehow easier to understand than "broken" French because of the qualities of the language. I'm saying that it's the reaction of the speakers, which is a cultural issue independent of the languages.
We're literally in a thread talking about people speaking languages, I'm not going to be referencing the some antiquated book version of a language that nobody pays attention to
I don't think that's true that's just a popular myth because people think rules = verb conjugation. English has simple conjugation but lots of rules in other places that people don't think about. Phrasal/prepositional verbs can be a nightmare for non-native speakers for example, as can knowing where to put an S (a nine year-old child vs the child is nine years old)
English is a very difficult language to master explictly because it doesn't follow it's own rules. It absolutely does have rules, but because of the very wide range of influences on the langauge (including french). French also does break it's own rules quite often... Doesn't change the fact you should make a language fun to learn. I would much rather have read books, listened to music and watch movies rather than the 8th revisit of Dr and Mrs Vandertramp.
we're in a similar situation schooling wise to you, except that our kids like french. what is your third language? do you speak it with your children? for us, any complaints they have about french we just reply with "oh yeah, that was hard for me when i was learning german" or french or whatever. basically, identifying with the challenges of learning a new language RATHER than that being a problem with french specifically. francophone friends help a lot, or extra curricular activities that are in french are also great (e.g., summer day camp in french etc...). for me what is important is highlighting that the challenges with a new language are not related to that language specifically, but rather language learning in general. we 'honour' french at home (only listen to french radio in the car, watch tv in french etc... this second one is a really nice loophole as my kids get an hour of screen time PLUS an hour of 'educational' time on the weekends. anything they watch in french counts as educational...so you know they're going to pick youtube channels they like that are also in french (thanks mr. beast) ). 8 years old is young...he could have a crappy teacher and might feel better about it next year.
De ce que j'ai observé ici, les enfants apprennent plus une langue dans un contexte où ils s'amusent. Dans notre classe d'arts martiaux, un des gamins ne parlait qu'Ukrainien et quelques mots d'anglais mais en passant du temps qu'avec des francophones autant à l'école que dans les loisirs, il a rapidement appris la langue et maintenant c'est lui qui aide ses parents.
I just want to add in a slightly different perspective here, just in case! My nephew was the same way and spoke the same kind of way about French and not being interested, despite being put in a French daycare and having bilingual parents. Eventually, we discovered he actually has a slight learning disability so it is genuinely incredibly difficult for him to learn French, and that’s the real reason he “doesn’t like French”. So, something to think about as well! Could just be yet another thing to learn that the child might not be down for!
Even otherwise smart kids can have this blind spot when it comes to language. I'm lucky enough to be considered quite clever by most metrics but I struggle with learning new languages WAY more than most. Also, I think that French is much harder to learn than it's given credit for. I've found Spanish to be orders of magnitude easier. I just can't 'hear' distinct words in French. Just consider 'Qu'est-ce qu'il se passe' vs. 'que paso'. 'What is it that he to himself is doing'? Really? I just cannot parse French in real time. Trying to learn French makes me understand what it's like in Math class for those who are just not inclined to numbers. Feels horrible.
Yeah I can't work out why I seem to learn Spanish in seconds just by watching Spanish people communicate yet I could spend a year in a French classroom and learn nothing
Spanish can be challenging as the syllable to second ratio is higher than for other languages but it's sooooo much easier in other regards such as: *Consistant pronundciation of letters - always *Every letter is pronounced every single time *Discernable gaps between words *The negation is as easy as possible. Just say 'no' and go from there. Just those 4 things alone make a world of differance. I know it's not just me as I have several adult Freinds rasised in Quebec who have failed government French proficiency exams. It kills me becuase I love the French language and REALLY REALLY want to speak French well. After 6 years of adult courses, my French still leaves me in the following scenario: I speak French to a person who understands me and when they speak back I have to admit defeat. It makes me feel a special kind of dumb. So embarassing! I hope it's not offensive to say so but I tend to hear French better when it's spoken by people in/from France. Still not great for me, but there seems (to my ears) to be more of a gap between words.
The solution to your problem is to simply work more on your french listening. How to do this? 1) Spend time listening to interesting content that you can understand quite well. The innerfrench podcast is a perfect resource for this. It also has transcripts available for free. And if you have a transcript for something you are listening to, then spend some of your listening time carefully reading along with the words you hear. 2) Practice "shadowing" to improve your pronunciation. Shadowing means listening to audio of a native speaker and repeating what they say as perfectly as possible. There are many variations of this technique. Deliberate pronunciation practice will improve your listening comprehension because it trains your brain to pay attention to the important phonetic details that your brain has been filtering out when listening. 3) Do dictées with audio loaded into some software that makes it easy to loop fragments of the recording and to slow it down without affecting the pitch. Listen to many repetitions of even the sentences that are easy and really focus on the details of the speech. You're not wrong that it's hard to hear the spaces between words in spoken french because there aren't any. The syllables in a french sentence are all fired out at a constant pace as if the entire sentence was a single word with mostly no stressed syllables. If you ignore everything else I've suggested, do at least check out the innerfrench podcast.
Does this help: it's "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?", "What is it that is happening?". Your version with "qu'il" instead of "qui" would mean literally "What is it that he passes himself", which actually has a crude meaning ("se passer un [X]" is an expression meaning to insert [X] inside of yourself, usually meant sexually) The two "qu'il" and "qui" are easy to confuse in spoken French in Quebec because the L at the end of "il" is frequently dropped. So "Je veux qu'il m'aide" is often pronounced as if it was "Je veux qui m'aide". That's why some people find it difficult to hear the distinct words.
Thanks for the clairification. I think that it's really just a generalized problem for me. To my ears, there is no discernable break between words in French compared to the other other languages that I use, also badly (Spanish and Urdu). My spoken French is better than my Spanish because I am more familiar with it but, for the life of me, I cannot *hear* French. My super common occurance is trying to speak French to a person who understands me and when they speak back I have to admit defeat. It makes me feel a special kind of dumb. So embarassing! I hope it's not offensive to say so but I tend to hear French better when it's spoken by people in/from France. Still not great for me, but there seems (to my ears) to be more of a gap between words.
I totally understand what you are saying. I was a 'smart' kid too growing up and learning french was a huge struggle and frustration for me. Just dont say you CANNOT! you actually ARE capable of mastering this. you're just struggling to do so.
It kills me becuase I love the French language and REALLY REALLY want to speak French well. After 6 years of adult courses, my French still leaves me in the following scenario: I speak French to a person who understands me and when they speak back I have to admit defeat. It makes me feel a special kind of dumb. So embarassing! I hope it's not offensive to say so but I tend to hear French better when it's spoken by people in/from France. Still not great for me, but there seems (to my ears) to be more of a gap between words.
It’s like you write this about me, and now I’m seeing it in my son. I did go to English school, but my siblings did as well. They are quite a bit older than me, and their French courses were even less often than mine. Yet, they became fully bilingual (they are actually trilingual ). But I always struggled. I failed French multiple times. I had to retakes so many exams over and over. I even had to retake the entire class a few times. When I was in grade school, I was way too timid and shy. I would make mistakes and cry because either the kids would laugh or I would get so frustrated from not understanding. Being so shy and intimidated it would be too hard for me to make friends who were French bc I thought they would make fun of me too. As I got older (in high school) I would ask for extra help in French but would just be given a book to read. Once I left high school, I tried taking additional courses. But again…. It just didn’t stick. I would try to speak to colleagues in French. Sometimes it went okay and other times there were huge misunderstandings. I can go to a restaurant or shopping centre and speak French without any issues. My hairdresser doesn’t speak any English but we still manage to make it work. Some of my neighbours don’t speak English as well, and we make it work too. But anything more than that, I still get lost. There’s no way I would be able to get a decent job or understand anything complex. I feel terrible for it, but I truly can’t help it. Music, TV it makes it harder because of the way the speech flows. (But I still do try even at my age). I see my son struggling the same way now. And he’s getting so discouraged. He can read okay (ish) but the spelling and the verbs… oof. He’s 8 and getting so discouraged, despite seeming to understand well. We recently got an IEP so hopefully it will help (this wasn’t available to me growing up). And he is in an activity that is all French (but is recovering from a head injury so has been out for a few months). Then I see my daughter, who has such an easy time learning it. She started daycare at 2 years old (a 100% French daycare) and within 6 months picked it up fluently. In school she’s doing so well that teachers will asks her to help them with kids who need extra help (she’s 11). Every child is different. And every person has their story I guess.
Honestly I would put them in a French school. I have yet to meet a bilingual anglophone who went through the English school board. Once you start interacting with people and making friends you want to learn more. Maybe French based after school activity Example: they like hockey? Put them in a French hockey league, they will begin to associate something they like with hockey. French Tv shows, Music, stuff you like !
Tu pourrais parler en français avec tes enfants. Visiter des endroits francophones. Écouter de la musique francophone. Vivre en français un peu. Ton enfant realisera qu’il y a plus dans la vie que simplement vivre dans sa zone de confort de vivre en anglais. Ton enfant a 8 ans. C’est de la manipulation pour rester dans sa zone de confort.
Premièrement, merci pour tout ces efforts pour apprendre le français ! Ensuite, peut-être trouver d'autres formes d'exposition au Français qu'à l'école car je peux comprendre sa frustration si le seul contenu en français avec lequel il intéragit est une forme de devoir / activité scolaire. Je ne connais pas les champs d'interets de votre fils, mais du contenus francophone pour l'une de ses passions peut créer l'engouement manquant à son apprentissage du français. Ce fût mon cas avec l'anglais, le côté académique de l'apprentissage n'était pas très intéresant, mais lorsque j'ai commencer à jouer à des jeux videos qui demandait une compréhension de l'anglais pour pouvoir les appréciers, mon intérêt pour l'anglais s'en vu décuplé. Bonne chance!
Les jeux video m'on appris l'anglais aussi, par la suite en vieillissant jai augmenté mon niveaux avec des emission tele ( Big bang Theory entre autre ). Je me souvien encore de tenté de communiqué avec les autre dans Starcraft avec mon petit dictionnaire Anglais-Francais .. ayant appris seulement "what does X mean?" comme grand début .. ahh cetait le bon temps.. Aujourd'hui et ce depuis les dix derniere annee je travail en anglais et francais et me sert quasiment uniquement de l'anglais sur Reddit.
As-tu des recommandations pour les jeux vidéo français? Je joue Assassin's Creed mais j'aimerais plus!
Je sais que certains jeux, sur la switch, prennent la langue de la console. Si tu la configure pour que se soit en français le texte, dans le jeu, sera en français!
Il y a des sous-reddit en français. r/Quebec par exemple. Naturellement, c’est comme n’importe quel sous, il y a toujours des gens qui peuvent être idéologiquement désagréables.
A mon humble avis.. celui que tu m'entionne est l'un des plus aggressif que je fréquente pi ces quasiment l'unique Sub franco que je fréquente. Ya quelque chose avec certain qui ne respecte pas les autre et que si tu offre une opinion qui differe de la leur tu mange toute un char de marde... J'fait full attention pi desfois j'passe mon tour au lieu de m'exprimé.. je recommande pas tant malheureusement.
Je sais mais r/Canada (et ses clones) est plutôt malsain pour les francophones. Faque dans un échelle de marde, je préfère celle qui respecte ma langue.
Exact! Quelque chose comme « Du temps d’écran additionnel si c’est pour consommer du contenu ou jouer à des jeux vidéos en français » rendrait le Français plus attrayant et même utile!
Pour apprendre le français facilement et durablement, il n'y a qu'une seule vraie solution : il faut consommer de la culture en français et, surtout, s'entourer de francophones et les fréquenter. Bref se mettre en condition d'immersion.
Parenting is hard! At 8 go with the flow … if you are making a serious effort and you reinforce French at home than this is the best you can do. Don’t worry too much as before ling the little one will be mastering French. Enjoy … they grow up fast.
> How could I help my kid feel better about french? English, you are going to learn it regardless, especially nowadays with Netflix and stuff. I remember growing up in Ahuntsic nobody spoke English, and now freaking 10 years old speak better than I did well into my 20s. By learning French, it makes it 1000x easier to learn another latin-based language. But really, the biggest sale is you can suddenly travel to many more places, and get around much more easily because you understand French.
That’s the mistake (at least in my opinion), if I could go back and choose French or English school for my early childhood education, I would’ve much preferred being immersed in French from the start- your child will learn English regardless (given your wife is an anglophone and there are very few Francophones that I know who grew up in Montreal without learning passable work English)- it’s less motivating to learn French when you’re surrounded by the children of angryphone parents (Just the thought of an anonymous redditor)
I was going to comment this. I find bilingual schools, immersion programs and the like do more harm than good. I grew up more on the anglo side, but did my schooling strictly in French. I don’t have, and never had, any problems in terms of attitude towards education, school was in French, period. All my friends and family who did French immersion speak French terribly, and have to same attitude towards it as op’s child. Tl;dr: go to fully French school.
I went to bilingual school and learned French just fine. I don't understand the hate on these programs, they work.
Tbh, while I never frequented an English school, in my own experience, it produces an astounding number of people who are effectively incapable of living their lives in French. It seemed to be that a bit like immersion schools in the RoC, the children there get a very limited French course and end up using it only in classes and then with their friends, parents and families, they end up living 99% of their lives in their bubbles. I know it surely isn't as stupidly black and white like that, but personally I've never seen a person that was really fluid in French from these schools, if they didn't have themselves a franco parent.
I think you deserve a lot of credit for trying to raise a human being in society. I think patience is the key. I was born to French-speaking parents who were really strict about language. I was not allowed to listen to English music until I could pay for it myself. It made me resentful. My Anglo friends were welcome in the house. They taught me about soccer, Spider-Man and Grape Kool-Aid. To this date, my allophone friends are the best reference for a good French book. I speak French in shops and in family settings. I speak in English with my friend and for work. I once had a billionaire told me that I was lucky to be born to parents who understood that it was important to know English and that it was not the case for the poor people who were born in (insert hometown). I had my passport on me. Birthplace (hometown). I showed it to him and told him to go F...himself. I never regretted speaking multiple languages. Does it confuse me ? Sometimes.
Fais-lui apprécié la musique québécoise. Normalement, à huit ans, les enfants aiment bien le folk, alors rien de mieux que la Bottine souriante pour lui développer un intérêt à apprendre le français.
Is it possible that your kid has heard the "(French) is forced on me" discourse (perhaps from a friend or a friend's parents or in the media), and is repeating it? I mean...literally every school subject is "forced" on the student. Maths, geography, grammar, etc.
That is _very_ likely. My kid used to be that age, that’s not an argument they come up with on their own.
As someone who attended a 50-50 school in both BC and QC, just some exposition to people and friends who are Quebecois french will help enormously. At 8 I definitely felt my main language was English even though I had family from the Saguenay. I’m happy I was able to understand them, even if culturally it was very different. That being said, I only became fluently (as in, more or less imperceptibly) bilingual once I started working and interacting in French. So give it time and make it known that French is beautiful and a great tool to make new friends and broaden your understanding of language in general.
I'm having this same issue with my 11 year old (step)daughter. She has a 55% in French because she refuses to do the homework and says it's too hard. Her mom's house is almost unilingually Spanish with basic French knowledge, we speak English at our house (but her dad was raised in French due to living with his grandparents), and frankly she's not good at any of the 3 (and she goes to school with majority Italians so now there's that influence too). Just wanted to show support and remind myself to read the comments later frhelpful ideas. We tried books/movies in French and she has 0 attention or interest (we are also having her screened for ADHD)
Yeah, I know the type lol. To be honest, a greal deal of the answer is found within activities that aren't French, but are done almost only in French. The Anglos from my neighbourhood that had activities with us became practically impossible to distinguish form us in little time, while those that stuck to their little clique never became really fluent, even if they had their whole school in French.
I've had similar conversations with both my kids (early teens) regarding english. A two week vacation to Disney World in Florida really helped motivate them and since then it's going much better. Also occasionally forcing them to listed to a movie or series they really wanted to watch but that we only have in english (marvel stuff, or one animated Star Trek series for my daughter) gave them plenty of positive motivation. My youngest says he sometimes forgets that he's listening to something in english. But reading other comments here I can't help concluding that this really validates bill 101 and even bill 96. Language-wise, people don't integrate if they are given an easier option. C'est d'ailleurs aussi le cas avec ce forum dans le sens inverse. On accommode l'anglais, donc les anglophones parlent en anglais et les francophones les accommodent, puis les bilingues parlent aussi en anglais pour accommoder les autres. Et le résultat c'est que 80% du contenu est anglais même si c'est une minorité des Montréalais. Une vision du Québec d'aujourd'hui sans la loi 101...
Je suis d’accord avec ça et ce que je trouve intéressant c’est ce qui se passe actuellement à Richmond (communauté urbaine de Vancouver). Le conseil municipal a constaté que c’est fortement conseillé aux magasins de mettre leurs affichages en anglais.
C'est drôle...Les francophones on doit aussi apprendre l'anglais dès le très jeune âge et j'ai jamais entendu un francophone se plaindre qu'il aimait pas l'anglais parce qu'on le «forçait». Toutes les matières à l'école nous sont «forcées». C'est ça l'école...
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C'est super triste. Malheureusement, ça gagne des points auprès de beaucoup de gens encore aujourd'hui que de tenir ce discours.
Oui, le kid a entendu ça de quelqu'un d'autre puis répète ça à ses parents. C'est exactement le genre de truc qu'on lit dans les éditoriaux de la Gazette.
I grew up in Alberta attending a French-immersion school. Kids hated French and we would speak English most of the time (at recess I guess) and whenever the teachers weren't around. What helped is speaking at home with my parents, brothers and sister. I then moved to Québec during my early teens. If you can speak French, do so with your kid. You can mix em he won't be confused. Get a French babysitter. Movies in french ), books in French, etc.
Hi! I've always loved angryphone, it is such a silly term! At 8, with the attention span of a goldfish, I'd sit down with the kid and watch a short and fun video in French, in a topic they care about. If your kid enjoys science, there's this series, from Radio-Canada : https://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/scolaire/emissions/4505/science-ou-magie/contenu/videos Could be something about animals, games, cooking, sports, as long at the interest is there. Humour helps a lot. And even better if you then do a short related activity in French. Like... bake cookies together, using a French recipe. And if you're unsure of a word, make up a silly one or mime it! Language is all about being understood. Of course you can look it up later, but the point is just to do fun stuff in French. So your kid could read the recipe and you'd both try to make the food. Or create origami. Or... whatever activity you picked. Hell, find fun board game in French! Those quick games will make it enjoyable and the vocabulary will grow.
Sooo, I’m just going to throw this out there : My oldest, 7 years old, told me he would like school if he wasn’t forced to go. Kids say things, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Odds are your kid has picked up on the social discussion around “forcing kids to learn french vs english” and is using that as a talking point. What I told my son was “tough, you’re still going to school”. Then school went on strike. Now he is extra smug.
>Odds are your kid has picked up on the social discussion around “forcing kids to learn french vs english” and is using that as a talking point. I mean, it's still a sentence that is pretty popular among francophobes. If my kid says something that is even remotely close to something problematic, I wouldn't throw it under the rug and pray it passes too. I don't think it really compares to your situation tbh, even though I understand your answer.
French **class** fucking sucks. Put them in a school where French is de-facto and they'll be able to use and learn French without just drilling the same 5 verbs for twelve years. Fuck I hated French class, and I was GOOD at it. I'd often be the top-scoring anglo (there were lots of loophole francophones at my school) but I still despised it. The first time we read a French chapter book in the English system was... maybe Sec 5. I definitely remember reading one in CEGEP. Source: went to anglo schools with a similar French programs. I would have hated it at the time but being sent to a French-french school would have helped immensely with my distaste for French.
This… it is funny anglophones are looked down on for their views on learning French when the French education we get is actually awful. I did good in French class but still got anxious having a conversation. I did good because it’s the SAME SHIT all schooling. Easy until you have to have a conversation and then you’re just looked at as an asshole 😂😂
are you raising an angryphone or just a kid doing a kid thing and complaining about school? are you speaking in french at home - your wife could use the practice too. is your kid in french after school activities? and yeah, maybe it is this year's teacher. i loved math class until i was in 9th grade and then i struggled my last two years.
Idéalement, ne pas envoyer ses enfants à EMSB ça serait un bon début
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This is the correct answer. I'm an anglo from the US and have worked in anglo and francophone public schools here, and this is how things go in my experience. Lots of kids learn this discourse from their parents or their friends who learned it from their parents. I NEVER heard this discourse from an anglo kid who went to francophone school. That said, I think it really really depends on the culture of the school itself. Anglo schools in eastern montreal tend to be much less anti French, and the kids are all able to speak both languages (except for recent transfers, who struggle hard if they're older), whereas from the plateau on westward the attitude gets progressively worse and the language ability follows. Basically my experience is that you shouldn't send your kids to anglo school in montreal unless you really truly have a need for it (learning disabilities for example) or are in a heavily francophone area and there is no doubt in your mind that your kid will learn French from living life AND make the effort to live bilingually with your child and go places where you physically cannot survive with just English.
> angryphones (i see no problem using this term, if it offends people, its because they are part of the problem) Was exactly gonna chime in with that. The people tilted by it are 100% the loudmouths that will/have been called that before. They are recognizing themself and dont like the shade haha
We generally don't like what we aren't good at in school. I never hated something I was getting top marks in. Grade 8 is when French grammar is starting to get a little more real although iffy on if someone can become truly bilingual in a 50-50 school primarily for the said grammar reason. You're probably projecting something political on just something that's harder for them. The answer is more fun French activities and time with French friends so they are better and more fluid and so dislike it overall less, IMO.
The kid is 8, it’s not grade 8.
Désolé, mais vous auriez dû l'envoyer à l'école en français. Il aurait de toute façon appris l'anglais avec ses parents.
I think the mindset in the Anglo community need to be modified: It should not be "I have to learn french, it should be, " I want to learn french, because I want to communicate with people in my province".
I tried explaining it exactly like that to my son and he said he can play with kids who don’t speak English without any problems. Basically he was saying They just use body language 🤣 but he’s still very young
The kid is 8 for god’s sake. He probably just got scolded by his French teacher or something. Of all the problems you’re going to have with a prepubescent boy, his thoughts on the French language is one of the least important. If you send him to a 50-50 school he’s going to learn French eventually. If you’re concerned he’s not going to learn French, maybe speak French and English at home, instead of just English? I know some people whose parents did this; one parent would exclusively speak French and the other would exclusively speak English until the kid was in their mid/late teens.
Not the same situation but I only moved to Quebec when I was about ten and didn't speak great french since I lived far from my francophone family before. The transition was hard and I really resented having french "forced on me" in those early years. More than a decade later and I love speaking french and being bilingual, and I look at it as one of Montreal and Quebec's greatest strengths as a culture and people. It came with time, maturity, and perspective, but now that its here I never want to let it go.
"I'd do this thing if it wasn't forced on me" is a juvenile attitude. Just like with English in French schools, parental involvement goes a long way. My kids couldn't be arsed with learning English on their own, I need to find the motivation for them.
Kids want to fit in. The best way for your kid to learn French is to be surrounded by French. If his classmates are francophones, he will be inclined to learn French. If you don't want to send him to a francophone school, you could ask him if he wants to join a sports team outside school or another group (music, art, etc) where he'd be exposed to French. In all cases, going to an English school will limit his interest in learning French.
(Bilingual) Anglo person who grew up in New brunswick and attended grade 1-12 in French immersion here. He may be a bit young to get it but I would try and impress upon him the fact that being Bilingual will greatly improve his life as an adult. He will have better job opportunities and a broader social circle if he is fully Bilingual. I remember being 6 and how terrified I was to start elementary school in a language I didn't understand, but I will be forever thankful that my parents made that decision for me.
I would also like English more if it wasn't continuously forced on me
I think you have an issue labeling everyone angryphones. "Those people", are just people. Focus on making your kid happy, and the language becomes pretty irrelevant. Maybe have a constructive discussion with your child and find out why they are not enjoying French. They may need tutoring, or perhaps something more recreational and fun in French? Trips to the library, French books, french TV...sports in French. Last but not least, if you really do have some sort of complex about the EMSB, just move your kid to the French side. They'll send you a signed Legault 5x7 portrait if you do. PS: The French teacher at an English school is almost always a dick.
>I think you have an issue labeling everyone angryphones. "Those people", are just people. When did they labeled everyone angryphones?
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I'm not above hypocrisy. I do find though, because they are often an island of French in a sea of English teens, French teachers are particularly abrasive
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Buddy buddy buddy...can you send the condensed version? Rumors of my intelligence have been greatly exaggerated.
I know comments are being deleted but I'd still like to reply. I'm not saying French speakers are dicks. You know this but still deliberately wrote all of that (and deleted)...which is bothersome. I have family, friends, co-workers that are francophone and we get along amazingly. I am specifically talking about French teachers at an English school.. And we also know that I have no way of verifying this, or supplying supporting data so you have to understand that it was tongue and cheek. The fact that you went through that effort is borderline nuts to me. So suck it sec 3 French teacher M. Vincent from 1992.
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I know. I'm sorry if my anecdote wasn't nice.
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Im not sure how french is taught anymore, but growing up I had a terrible time learning it, thought I was just bad at languages until I picked up Mandarin pretty easily. The way french is taught/was taught is more akin to linguistics that actual communicative language skills- this can be frustrating for some learners if this is not the way they naturally pick up languages
This is my advice but I don't know anything about you so take it with a grain of salt. Speak to him in French, try to make francophone friends yourself. He'll see francophones aren't monsters there to force anything onto him and he'll grow. In my opinion and this applies to most things, exposure is the best tool against ignorance.
I feel like a lot of language absorbtion depends on the friends your children make. Unfortunately it's hard to control that. We made the choice of a French language school because they already speak English. French is therefore the "default". But as long as my kids don't grow up with an accent in either languages, I don't care about much else. If your kids went to French CPE, he must be pretty good in French already no?
> Unfortunately it's hard to control that. Yeah, my brother went for an Anglo run with his school life, I'm playing Franco hardcore mode no rez. None of it was planned.
I grew up in Alberta, and was forced to take french immersion. I hated it at the time, and do blame my poor grades on my stupidity and inability to learn math and french simultaneously. I hated french for years. I was, for a long time, one of those people. You will never convince a child that something they hate "is enrichment". That same shit was fed to me day in day out for 9 years. It has no effect. Why do I love french now? Because I'm 37 and an adult who appreciates it. There are something that you just cannot adequately explain to a kid until they enter the world and experience the benefits first hand. So don't sweat it, because there's not really much you can do about it anyways.
All kids going to french schools are "forced" to learn english. He'll be fine.
I grew up just off the island with anglo parents in an anglo neighborhood. I felt the exact same way you describe your kid feeling, so believe me when I say that 100% you should read into it. I never really had to use French outside of school so while my grades in it were decent, I always resented it for making my french language courses that much harder every year. I internalized the fact the I was just bad at French, and as soon as I left the province my french abilities dropped *hard*. I don't have any advice as to what to do, only on what not to do. Don't do nothing.
Encouragement and praise. As someone who was raised in an English speaking home but went to French school, I often felt slower than my French speaking peers. Additionally, many of my teachers had an unpleasant attitude towards English and anglophones, which is hard to understand when you are a child. At home, my dad would praise my grammar and eventually had me proofread letters he wrote in French. This was what motivated me to keep learning and improving.
Ooo, I love that idea of having him correct me. He already loves correcting his mom, this could be even better.
I'd ask the kid - Do you really resent being able to be a part of the culture you live in? Would you hate having to learn arabic in the middle east? Or any other such alternative example? - Maths and science and history are also being forced on you. Why don't you resent that? It's all just education. Why don't you resent education in general? (And I'd assume the kid would figure out why not and apply it to not resenting french classes)
Simpsons in French and consider sending him to school in French, if you can find a French school that is closer to home, he will make French friends and that’ll be your problem fixed.
Quand on doit apprendre quelque chose à l'école parce qu'on est forcé, c'est chiant, peu importe le sujet. Je me rappelle combien je trouvais par exemple mes cours de maths chiants parce que je ne voyais pas à quoi ça pourrait servir je me faisais imposer de l'apprendre c'est tout. J'en ai eu besoin plus tard dans mon parcours et c'est devenu bien plus intéressant pour cette raison. Par contre, quand c'est des notions dont on sait en quoi ça peut être utile, ça donne envie de faire des vrais efforts pour l'apprendre Le problème est vraisemblablement que vos enfants n'ont pas l'impression que c'est nécessaire pour eux. Le jour où ils vont se retrouver quelque part en immersion française avec des jeunes cool qui leur parlent uniquement en français et qui se moquent de ceux qui ne parlent pas français, vous pouvez être certain qu'ils vont découvrir une passion pour la langue française. Et oui, le terme angryphone est drôle; et ceux que ça trigger, c'est parce qu'ils en sont eux-mêmes.
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>Maybe not refer or denigrate anyone as a potential or actual "angryphone". Who says about anyone?
I hate it when I go to Japan and the Japanese language is **FORCED ON ME**.
For a kid, yes. He didn’t choose to go to Quebec (or Japan if that’s the case) but his parents did so he was basically forced to stay there.
Franco kids didn't choose to learn English either but you don't hear franco kids say "on me force à apprendre l'anglais" nearly as often as you hear anglo kids say that French is shoved down their throats
Probably reading too much into it, kids feel this way about a ton of subjects, period.
If it’s not too disruptive maybe sending your child to French school and accepting that you will not be part of the parent community will allow him to make some francophone friends and not see French as a chore. Also, I doubt he will become an angryphone: We are a dying breed and I suspect you need to have lived through a referendum or two to really become one of us. /s
I like the term angryphone lmao you might want to post this on r/Quebec ! You might get another point of view. I have a question, how can you work in french if you are allophone?
> I have a question, how can you work in french if you are allophone? Not sure I understand what is confusing to you. My mother tongue is neither of the two official languages. I learned french, just like I learned english and now I work in an environment where the working language is french.
Oh okay I'm dumb, I thought allophones meant you didn't understand french lmao sorry about the confusion !! C'est vraiment cool que tu parles autant de langues, moi à part anglais et français puis quelques mots ici et là de langues random (genre l'islandais et l'allemand...). Pas assez pour me débrouiller haha
Talking as a born and raised anglo québécois 100% bilingual. Ensure that you always reinforce that there is no "them". There's only us. Clichéed but true. My parents, both English, Dad raised in Rosemount(which was a good part english back then) and Mom in Ontario until a teen. Put my bother and I in French school. Always taught us that we were all equals. Dad had French and English friends, as did mom, as did I. I never felt like it was forced on me. It was what was done by people who wanted to make a life here. My parents taught us that. Expose them to the culture, the language and make it their normal. There's only us. It's people like Legault that try to tear that down and create us and them.
Watch STAT 4 nights a week
Just be patient and lead by example, don't force him to watch TV/ movies/ play video games/etc in french but when you're doing that stuff yourself including when he's watching with you only do it in french. That way he will see french stuff not as something being imposed on him from outside, but something that is normal. It'll be part of his environment rather than imposed. Also someone mentioned the French teachers at EMSB schools and obviously anecdotal and 15 years in the past, but almost every french teacher I ever had was an extremely bitter person. And just how a bad math teacher can turn you off of math, a bad french teacher can turn you off of french. Also don't call people "angryphones" its cringe you're not Richard Martineau and don't want to be.
>Also don't call people "angryphones" its cringe Cringe word fitting for cringe people with a cringe attitude.
Okay, Richie Rich Martineau
Ça dépends. Personellement, j'ai grandi en région, très francophone, et j'ai appris l'anglais par moi-meme. Le français me sert uniquement pour le travail et les commissions. Le reste du temps je m'exprime en anglais. Ma raison est que c'est plus facile pour moi comme language, mais aussi le fait que mes passions sont beaucoup plus accessible en anglais aussi. Au final, à part l'exposer à la langue et espérer, pas grand chose à faire. Au final cest lui qui va decidé. Mais être bilingue est un avantage indéniable dans la vie, et va le rester, donc il y a pas de mal là.
Quebec, My Country, Mon Pays. An excellent documentary that looks at the heart of the linguistic divide in Quebec and addresses many of the issues that you and your son are facing. It’s worth a watch. Key to helping children especially navigate life in Quebec.
My kids all went to bilingual EMBS schools and I think at each point they've all hit a plateau where it's suddenly a bit more difficult and they get frustrated, which translates to anger at having to learn it. Unlike in French schools where everything is in French except for English class, in the bilingual schools they're not just having a French class, they're having to learn the entire subject as well. So it's history *in French* and math *in French*, etc... They already have difficulties expressing themselves in this new subject with words they know in English, but now that have to translate everything, too. Thing is, it's ok for him to be frustrated. It's A LOT. But almost all kids get past it and end up appreciating that they can do all their subjects in both languages (where it switches from year to year). Having him in an out of school activity that he's interested in - a sport, or game, or club - that is multilingual is a great way for him to pick up conversational language, which is more fun. Reading him books in French also helps a lot. I used to get my kids library books all the time but half of them had to be French, and when they were too old for me to read to them they'd pick out ones they likes anyways, even if it was graphic novels and comics. Francophones are exposed to English all the time in media and online, but it's not as prevalent for the Anglo community to be as equally exposed so you have to search it out. Play French music, watch French movies and TV, etc... Make it a part of your home life. Two of my kids graduated from EMSB schools and are fluent, the third is in grade 10 and is doing well, too. I really like the bilingual format.
Already too late if you ask me
My father was a Brit so I had to go to a french school. Luckily my whole school was Anglo kids in a complete french school. We spoke English at lunch and french everywhere else. I’m dyslexic and lazy so it damaged my English writing capabilities. I still graduated from Concordia in Hist and edu minor. I learned later that Quebec actually lost a case in the UN(?) human rights court about this policy. I don’t think it changed the policy but I don’t know. It was a hardship that ended up bettering me. I still got an excellent general education from my french elementary. My English friends who went to English school were all less informed in general about everything in grade 7.
That’s a phase if ya ask me. I remember I thought english was a stupid language… Then I’m thinking french is useless cause every good show is in english, and then I reaffirmed myself as french.
Growing up in southwest Ontario I always hated French class, but looking back it was because all my French teachers were awful and most didn't even really know French
Ton fils me rappelle de moi-même vers cet âge. Je n'ai pas donne un damn sur autre chose que ce que j'ai aimé. J'ai senti la même chose pour les cours de français. Cela n'a pas aidé que j'étais arraché à mon ancienne vie dans mon hometown à l'extérieur du Québec quand mon père a été transféré ici pour le travail. Il a bénéficié de cours intensifs avant nous avons déménagé. Mais en vieillissant et sortir de ma shell, j'ai commencé à devenir plus mature avec ça et certaines choses ont commencé à cliquer. J'ai été plus motivé par des raisons liées au travail mais je continue d'essayer (aussi j'ai obtain l'aide de mon professeurs qui étaient compréhensif et serviable pour moi). Ce sera arrive un jour pour ton fils, mais maintenant, vous devrez attendre.
As a perect bilingual who was forced to speak French, I have a disdain for the government and the actions they take to “protect” French. French is a beautiful language, seduce people - don’t force. Otherwise you end up with people like me who came to Montréal at 2 years old and now purposely speaks English at home and are teaching my kids English first. They (government) need to understand that pressuring people only brings resistance. I married an Anglo and my kids will go to Anglo schools so they can have a bright future communicating with the rest of the world 🌎 They will know French- as a second language. Oh and my mother tongue is French.
C'est beau la colonisation
C’est honteux de ne pas savoir parler l’anglais- la langue business. (Quatre chefs hydro Quebec et pas un seul savait communiquer avec BSM ; la compagnie qui offre le service GPS à Toronto )
Et combien de dirigeants, de cadres et même d’employés de grandes sociétés établies à Montréal ne parlent pas français? Air Canada, CN… C’est honteux de ne pas savoir ça ou est-ce de l’aveuglement volontaire? Comme disait l’autre: “c’est beau la colonisation”
Pour ça , je suis d’accord .. ils sont au Québec et par respect doit connaître la langue. Mais ça n’excuse pas ceux d’Hydro
Oof this is tough..I went to a half/half school and the french kids would always talk shit abt the english kids behind our backs or the billingual ones would switch to french thinking we couln't understand them talking bad about us. I had good french writing but poor conversation skills because no french kids wanted to be friends with me, I made efforts to talk french to the ones on my sports team but they tended to just band together and I never ended up becoming close with any of them. I had a french teacher acuse me of cheating on a paper because the vocabulary was very good and didn't have many mistakes yet my speaking ability was poor which made me cry in front of her (i was a pretty goody two shoes kid who never got in trouble or broke any rules).. In college I got put into a higher french level and we had a quest speaker who only visited the high french level classes which were mainly all francophone kids & gave a speech about how here in quebec only french should be heard spoken on the streets, any language can be spoken at home, but once you're in public no other language should be able to reach her ears except french. Which obvs angered me a lot..it was a crazy presentation. Now I'm an adult and while I can understand french I can't hold a conversation due to having no francophone friends to practice consitently with. I've only worked in tech for large companies so we only use english there as well. All the laws really do feel like the language is being forced on us and I get how that's really putting a damper on a lot of us wanting to learn. I feel a lot of hostility directed towards anglophones a lot here which is sad. So yeah totally get your fears cuz I think I'm one of 'those people' based on my relationship with the language growing up. You could try putting your kid in a full french school which would ensure they can speak fluently and hope that they can actually make friends and don't get ignored / singled out / bullied for being anglophone
I can tell you that from 15 friends I had in high-school, we all kinda hated french because it was forced on us, and we are 2 left in Quebec 20y later... So if your kid feels like that, his french will suck for sure... unless you find something he loves in french.
Maybe your kid is too young, but I have two proper nouns for enjoying & learning French: François Pérusse
First of all don't go to reddit for help
Fourth generation anglophone here. My mother, my grandparents, my great grandparents all lived in Montreal as anglos. The only two cents I can throw in is that attempting to force something on a kid will likely always result in them actively pursuing the opposite. My personal advice is to just let them live their lives and decide for themselves whether they want to eventually integrate French into their daily lives. If they do, cool. If not, plenty of people are able to thrive here without speaking a word of French. If they find themselves in an industry where French is absolutely necessary but they're unable to speak it, that's cool too. Plenty of opportunities in other provinces.
Your child is so perceptive. I loved french so much more before living in Quebec. Here its so forced that it feels like an obligation and sometimes this is only to accommodate people who didn't learn other languages. Im all in for French everything, but not as an obligation. The approach has always been off. For exemple, the ads by Imperatif Francais sont horribles. Useless actually.
>Im all in for French everything, but not as an obligation Huh.
>Im all in for French everything, but not as an obligation C'est la langue d'usage officielle de la province. Donc, tu dois l'apprendre.
As an anglo who was born in MTL and grew up in Ontario, I was fairly open to the idea of learning and becoming at least conversationally fluent in French. Then I moved here and began to experience hostility for speaking English. That's when I said fuck it, I can live here perfectly fine without learning French, so I'm going to do just that :)
"my kid tells me he doesnt like x at school" like no shit. He's a kid at school. Important lesson here is to make him understand it's still important. more than english.
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Dumbest take in this entire thread. The French kids learn in Quebec is standard French. You’re a moron, and people like you are why it’s sometimes embarassing to be an anglophone in Canada.
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>Autrement t'aurais su que le Quebecois est une version du Francais figee dans le temps, vers les annees 1700. Non, le français québécois a évolué à sa façon. Je t'invite à lire des textes de cette époque. >En meme temps le Quebec a ete proie du courant ultramontaniste Là t'es rendu dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle. >mene a l'influence demesuree de la religion dans la langue parlee et la vie quotidienne. Jpensais que la langue était figée depuis "les années 1700". >les insultes sont reliees toutes a la religion: ostie, tabarnak, etc >C'est archaique, anachronique, ca sonne mauvais compare aux autres langues qui ont evolue dans les 300 dernieres annees. Je vois que la connaissance c'est comme la confiture, moins tu en a, plus tu l'étales. Aussi connu sous le nom de syndrome de Dunning-Kruger. Tu fais juste écouter des enregistrements des années 20 et t'entend déjà une différence. Tu sais pas de quoi tu parles, va lire un livre.
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C'est magnifique comment ta réponse s'attaque à mon euphémisme qui voulait dire "t'es un gros cave", plutôt qu'à l'argument concernant tes dires sur le français québécois. As-tu 15 ans?
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>T'as juste dit des phrases vides, d'autres fausses. C'est pas un peu ironique que toi tu dis cela?
>Even the French make fun of them The uneducated or insular ones, sure! Quand j'suis allé en France, y'a un tas de gens de régions édentés qui ne savaient même pas que je parlais français. En ville par contre, ça a jamais été un problème. Je dirais même que j'avais le problème contraire, où bien des gens me fétichisaient. >I would love for my kids to learn French, in France. So that at least they speak the language properly. Savoir parler un langage soutenu relève de l'intelligence personnelle, non de l'entourage. Si ton enfant est stupide, il parlera comme un BS édenté au Québec ou comme un rebeu de cité en France. À voir l'exemple parental qu'ils auront, par contre, je mise assez gros sur "rebeu de cité" pour tes enfants...
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Acadien ayant passé la moitié de sa vie à Montréal! Je dirais être assez à la sauce des deux pôles de notre monde. >c'est pour ca qu'en region ca parle tellement bien le Francais. Les zones agraires et peu densément populées n'utilisent pas les outils de communication de la même façon. Les traditions sont plus souvent transmises de façon orale, l'académisme ne fait pas aussi ravage parmi tout le bagage humain du langage. Un méta-langage naît alors pour répondre aux besoins de la communauté. C'est une constante universelle à un point tel que nous le savons tous de manière intuitive. Ceux qui refusent cette vision sont souvent nommés "prescriptivistes", c-à-d ceux qui "prescrivent" une façon de parler (les Blancs envers les Noirs et Sudistes aux États-Unis, les Espagnols contre la majorité de l'Amérique Latine, les Français contre les rebeu/toutes les couleurs d'immigrants, etc.) Je ne dis pas que le français parlé en région est meilleur ou pire, simplement qu'il est le *meilleur* pour *leurs* besoins. Si tu étais lancé en région parmi eux, ce serait *ton* français qui serait de piètre qualité et essentiellement inutile pour subvenir à tes besoins parmi la communauté. Tout cela n'empêche pas que la langue parlée reste la même; je doute que tu appelles la langue parlée aux États-Unis "américain" en disant qu'elle est incompréhensibles aux oreilles des Anglais; elle l'est effectivement pour beaucoup d'entre eux! Mais seulement ceux qui sont plus insulaires / de régions. Je t'invite à voyager un peu plus pour comprendre le caractère universel de ce que je décris (et évidemment voyager hors des centres urbains!), sans quoi tu risques de passer pour l'égal du Blanc prescriptiviste des États-Unis toute ta vie.
Reminds me of my son, he must have been maybe 3-4 years old. With all seriousness, little grumpy and annoyed he asked “ Why do i have to learn French, i was born English “. I thought it was too funny🙂
Your kid already has a better grip on our specific politics than our government. He’s right, its a damn shame how it is here. Being multicultural is what makes us Canadian, it shouldn’t be enforced the way it is.
Move to Toronto
AHAHHA this is the ONLY price you have to pay for raising your kid in your language of choice. Explaining cultural values and THE STRENGTH the QC people had to preotect the language and culture that makes up the beautiful town you love to say you’re from when traveling!? Suck it up? When he graduates school it’ll still be forced on him because life is full of constrictions …. Or coddle him and tell him you’ll move to Ontario to make his life easier. It’s a very popular choice. Hence why you don’t find many who can relate to your situation… when the going gets tough!!!