Language and cultural differences

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Wendy

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Betty, I know you speak French but would you feel comfortable traveling in Quebec if you didn't have any French? I've got that area on my "places to go" list but don't want to run into problems .... I doubt my German and Russian would do me any good there and I'm hoping my English will satisfy but now I'm not so sure.

Wendy
no parlez vous French
 
Hi Wendy,

My name is not Betty, but I'll take a crack at it.  Being French, I have had a problem.  But since I live in SouthWest New Brunswick which is primarly English, I have lots of Friends that visited the province of Qu?bec.  Some had very good experiences, and others not so much.  If you stick to tourist destination, they will make an effort to accommodate you.  While they will still be very nice and full of good intention, in rural areas you will come across some people that cannot speak English. 

I am sure it would help if you would learn the few basic greetings and common questions like bathrooms, etc.  I find anytime someone makes an effort to try to speak the language, the other person is always more receptive.  A good example was last night.  I live in a city that is 90% English.  I met a Friend at a conv. store while I was paying, so I started talking to her in French.  When the clerk handed me my change, he said "Merci et Bonne Soir?e".  His accent was not all that good and I am not sure we could have had a conversation in French, but I very much appreciated the effort.  So trying a little to show you'd like to be able to speak it goes a long way.  Pretty much in the same way you will appreciate when he/she returns the favor and speaks back English to you.

Marc...

 
Thank you Marc, I very much appreciate your comments.

A number of folks here in the forum, including my wife and I, have had bad experiences visiting Quebec province. I used to hate doing business in France while I lived in the UK, but Quebec just seemed much more difficult to deal with. I had to dig deep into my school French (that was many years ago) in an attempt to communicate. I found some experiences to be as you described, where the other person responded well to my attempts to communicate, although je ne parlez Francais. Other people were quite hostile towards us.

The open hostility was so bad that we left Quebec prematurely and, when we arrived in New Brunswick, the contrast was quite remarkable; People came up to us in parking lots, because they saw the California license plates on our car, and were extremely cordial.

I truly hope that people in the US treat people from Quebec with respect and friendship when they visit here.

Meanwhile, I would really like to re-visit Quebec and tour areas that we didn't visit last trip. Next time I'll be more prepared with some French vocabulary and grammar.
 
Tom said:
Meanwhile, I would really like to re-visit Quebec and tour areas that we didn't visit last trip. Next time I'll be more prepared with some French vocabulary and grammar.

Tom and Wendy,
A good litte English /French dictionary would have helped me. Make a note to bring one when you come to Quebec.  Being a tourist, I did not have any trouble with any of the basics like fuel, food or  RV Campsites.  My problem came in wanting to go into a deeper discussion with someone,  like to learn more about the parks and  naturalist  talks.  Or maybe blinking  road signs .

As Marc mentioned, when I gave my feeble attempts to speak French most could respond in better English than my French.  My trouble came from the one or two sentences I know  well (and with a very good accent)  that they assumed I knew more than I did and I could not understand their happy response as they  said more than I knew.  We were not too far off beaten path so we had no real trouble. I had always "heard" the  French Canadians were not friendly , but I did not find this to be true at all.  It is interesting how language binds us together.  I knew NO Spanish and we managed in Mexico  too.  Smiles help.  I am going to be more tolerant of other language visitors when I come upon them in my future.  Quebec was a good  time and  left good memories. 
 
Betty,

Your comment about French Canadians not being friendly reminds me on how we hear Americans are arrogant.  Since I work with Americans on a daily basis, I know this is not true.

So on both sides of the border, we have some pre-made opinions about the other.  I strongly believe that people are generally nice everywhere.  However, bad experiences are often more memorable than the good ones, which is why those are the ones we hear the most.

Like they say about customer service.  You have good service, you tell one of your friends, but if you have bad service, you tell all of your friends.

Marc...
 
That's so true Marc. However, I find it inexcusable and downright ignorant when, if the first syllable out of my mouth was not French, storekeepers and checkout clerks would just turn their backs on me. It was especially hard to deal with a couple who shouted insults at me across a store simply because they had seen our California license plates in the parking lot. When I got outside, I found that the same couple had blocked my exit with their vehicle and had made derogatory remarks to my wife.

Had I not been visiting another country, I would have been inclined to re-enter the store and have words with the ignorant people. But I thought better of it. When we arrived in NB, another couple camped next to us, who were NB residents living close to the provincial line/border, explained that they have to put up with this nonsense on a daily basis.
 
Totally agree with you, there is no excuse for that type of behaviour regardless who you are and who they are.  You're story is not the first one I hear like that.  It is not the norm, but it is still more frequent then it should be. 

[Edit to add] Oh, and you can't generalize the province, it is so big that you will get some regional differences too, even from one village to the next.
 
Tom said:
That's so true Marc. However, I find it inexcusable and downright ignorant when, if the first syllable out of my mouth was not French, storekeepers and checkout clerks would just turn their backs on me. It was especially hard to deal with a couple who shouted insults at me across a store simply because they had seen our California license plates in the parking lot. When I got outside, I found that the same couple had blocked my exit with their vehicle and had made derogatory remarks to my wife.

Had I not been visiting another country, I would have been inclined to re-enter the store and have words with the ignorant people. But I thought better of it. When we arrived in NB, the couple camped next to us, who were NB residents living close to the provincial line/border, explained that they have to put up with this nonsense on a daily basis.

These type actions didn't get any better after living there for three years.  I always welcomed business trips to Ottawa where folks were friendly.
 
Thanks Marc.

... you will get some regional differences too, even from one village to the next.

I believe we saw such differences and you're right, I shouldn't generalize across a province. Apologies.

My wife and I have fond memories of a "discussion" we had with the post mistress in a small village. She spoke no English and I was struggling with French. She was a very sweet lady and we managed to communicate quite well under the circumstances.
 
Tom said:
Thanks Marc.

I believe we saw such differences and you're right, I shouldn't generalize across a province. Apologies.

No apologies necessary.  I did not mean you personally, I just wanted to note the regional differences even if within the same province.
 
I will throw my 2 cents in now as well.  I am a Newfoundlander by birth, now living in Hollywood, FL for the past 12 years. As many of you may or may not know, the Hollywood/Ft. Lauderdale area is packed with French Canadians during the winter months. The GENERAL concensus of us Hollywood residents is that many of them are indeed perceived as rude. I speak fluent French and have on many occasions listened in on their conversations, with them not knowing that I understand every word being said. Suffice to say, they don't always share a high opinion of us either! The other common perception of French Canadians is that they are very poor tippers. I have heard horror stories from wait staff who were rewarded with a 50cent tip for serving a table of 6. There are many waiters/waitresses who will absolutely refuse to wait on French Canadians.

That being said, it is not fair to generalize a whole provice like this, and I have indeed met many, many French Canadians who are warm and friendly. It just seems that a very large percentage of those of travel here for the winter are not.

Scott
 
I have very mixed feelings about the language subject because we've had both positive and negative feedback from the French-speaking people in Quebec and we've been there numerous times.  On the last trip in 2006 we were told that it was actually illegal - at least for a time and I don't know about now - for people whose background was French to even teach their children English.  We were told this by a couple who were of French background but who had lived in the U.S. for a number of years before having children.  After returning to Quebec and having children, their children wanted to learn English and they wanted them to learn it but were forbidden to do so.  They taught them surreptitiously at home.  Even as the person was telling us all this in a lowered voice, she was looking around to see who might overhear the conversation because there still was so much social stigma attached to learning English.  The result of this was that a whole generation of young people in Quebec have never learned English.  I'm not sure if this was during the time of the Separatist movement or not, but it might have been.  At Gaspe we were very surprised that the National Park people could not communicate with us in English and did not even have brochures in English.  Canada is, after all, officially a bilingual country and every other province covers both languages by law.  But the people of Quebec apparently don't feel they have to abide by this law.  We didn't even bother to go into the museum at Perce/Gaspe because we knew it would be too frustrating to not know what we were looking at.  That's one reason we appreciated the owner of the Indian Head Campground there telling us who would communicate with us in English and who refused to do so.  Actually, and Betty you will appreciate this as a teacher, I feel sorry for the young people who are so limited by a commerical world that speaks English.  It's like our young people here who are Spanish-speaking and don't want to learn English.  With this attitude they have no hope of ever progressing economically.

Wendy, to get back to your original question, the biggest problem in Quebec is road signs.  As mentioned above, Canada is bilingual and in every other province the signs are in both languages, but not Quebec.  Familiarize yourself with signage and that will help a lot.  Having the GPS also helps because it will steer you on routes in English.  I had forgotten about that low clearance bridge Betty mentioned, but if you set the GPS for truck routing that helps a lot in getting you around the language problem with road signs.

You know, these language problems come up in many places.  In both Madrid and Paris we were told that the residents of those cities look down on anyone (visitors) who doesn't have what they consider the proper accents.  But we also found people in those cities to very accomodating in putting up with our attempts at their language.  I always carry one of those little Berlitz language books when I go to other countries so people at least see that I'm trying - and more often than not they respond accordingly.  I would say go to Quebec but know ahead of time that there will be some people who aren't very cooperative, just as there are some here who are not.

ArdraF
 
Ardra having had the unfortunate opportunity to live in Montreal I can tell you that the law forbidding teaching English is true.  My colleague had two kids and this was a real issue for them.  They even have language police.  I understand that when the first graduates that were under the teach nothing but French rule hit the job market they found they had a real problem getting jobs because they couldn't speak English.  I read while we were there that Quebec was cited by the UN for human rights violations in the area of language.
 
Quebec was cited by the UN for human rights violations in the area of language.

Oh wow!  It was even worse than I thought....

ArdraF
 
BTW,  During my consulting years when I belonged to the "working class" I have talked with French folks that were born, educated, and live in the country of France and they said that the French Canadians don't speak French anyhow.  They said it's a foreign dialect of French but not French.

JerryF
 
I feel sorry for anyone who speaks only one language whether it's French or English or Swahili.

Wendy
 
JerArdra said:
BTW,  During my consulting years when I belonged to the "working class" I have talked with French folks that were born, educated, and live in the country of France and they said that the French Canadians don't speak French anyhow.  They said it's a foreign dialect of French but not French.

JerryF

Well, if you ask somebody from UK, they will say the same thing about US and Canadian English too.  Whether it is French or English, the language sounds completely different depending on which side of the Atlantic you are.
 
JerArdra said:
BTW,  During my consulting years when I belonged to the "working class" I have talked with French folks that were born, educated, and live in the country of France and they said that the French Canadians don't speak French anyhow.  They said it's a foreign dialect of French but not French.

Liliane Nathan, who speaks impeccable French, finds the Quebec French completely unimpeccable ;)
 
JerArdra said:
BTW,  During my consulting years when I belonged to the "working class" I have talked with French folks that were born, educated, and live in the country of France and they said that the French Canadians don't speak French anyhow.  They said it's a foreign dialect of French but not French.

JerryF

A couple of the Engineers at the airline that was from FRANCE refered to Quebec French as pig french because it was so butchered up.
 
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