[Magdalen] Quebec City.

[Joseph Cirou]

There are English speaking villages between the St Lawrence and Us border.
You go close to the border in Vermont (as I remember) and Maine and the
signs are bilingual English and French--probably elsewhere. There are a
number French Canadian settlements in Mass and NH. Our lead at the IRS
didn't speak English until she went to first grade. Now this is  a 100
years ago; but my father did not speak English as his first language altho
he later forgot a great deal of his French.

Joe

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Charles Wohlers <
charles.wohlers at verizon.net> wrote:

> We last visited Quebec City about 7 years ago, and didn't encounter anyone
> who couldn't speak English. And the English was always quite
> understandable. In a previous trip, ten years ago, we only encountered one
> person who couldn't speak English - a 10-year old (or so) pumping gas at a
> fairly remote gas station near Gaspésie Nat'l. Park.
>
> All signs, even the menus at Tim Horton's, however, are in French only -
> no English, even at Anglophone-owned establishments.
>
> Chad Wohlers
> Woodbury, VT USA
> just 40 miles from the Quebec border
> chadwohl at satucket.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Cantor03--- via Magdalen
> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2015 11:59 PM
> To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
> Subject: [Magdalen] Quebec City.
>
>
>
>
> I saw a travelogue this evening featuring Quebec City.  The City  was
> its usual charming and picturesque self.  This was expected.
>
> What was not expected was the heavily accented, even broken English
> of the dozen or so locals who were interviewed during the course of
> the program.
>
> I know of the tensions between Anglophones and Francophones in  Quebec,
> but it was obvious that English doesn't come easily to Quebec natives, if
> these
> interviewees are typical.
>
> I have always envisioned Quebec (and really all Canadians) as an
> ideal setting for the very early familiarity with both languages  producing
> a fluent, relatively unaccented French and English bilingual  population.
>
> I appear to have been wrong in this assumption.
>
>
> David S.
>