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Comment by mig39 | Hacker News Reader

I was in Fermont a long time ago. I was driving from Goose Bay all the way south. in the 90s, the Labrador highway wasn't paved, it was just rough gravel.

I got a flat tire somewhere near the border, then pulled into Fermont and tried my best high school-level French to find somewhere to fix my flat tire.

I asked the guy at the gas station: "Excusez-moi, savez-vous où je peux trouver un garage pour réparer mon pneu crevé ?"

He looked at me and said "Fixer le flat, huh?"

No amount of formal French prepares you for Northern Quebecois "French" :-)

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If you want a happy rabbit-hole to visit for a few minutes, take a look at these examples of "Chiac", an Acadian French variety spoken in parts of New Brunswick:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiac#Example_sentences

A slightly legendary music video in Chiac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cRPH4lb8UI

Right drôle!

A guy I worked with from New Brunswick was bilingual. He dated a woman from northern New Brunswick she only spoke French. When he met her parents he said her dad scowled at his poor French. To the father he was not French. So this person my co-worker bilingual French/English since birth had to take French lessons. I guess the words he used were bizarre to French-only ears.

>"A slightly legendary music video in Chiac"

OMG. They're awesome. Thanks for good find

I recommend P'tit Belliveau, in particular Income Tax, which has a nice "Glossaire acadjonne" and lines like "J'vais blower friggin' 300$ au liquor store": https://youtu.be/Ri0r0_urwo8

That's hilarious -- thanks for sharing.

English in Newfoundland is also another level.

Typical greeting isn't "What's up" but "Where ya at?" The response I was told is "This is it."

Not to be confused with "Where ya to?"

FWIW your French is impeccable, and indeed there's no shortage of culture shock between France and Quebec for this sort of stuff.

source: French from FR living in QC :)

I think that is the point they was making. Also I read this in a Brunswick french accent until the word shortage, and it kinda worked(as franco-english like they were describing).

I went with a canadian friend to Quebec and thought "boy is his french bad" when he ordered a room. Much to my surprise the answer wad in exactly the same dialect. Loved it and ruined in the local radio stations for the whole drive after.

Still have a certain song in my ear that we heard live in a bar in Quebec "Quand je change ma vie, je rue la Gaspesie...". Which is what we did after Quebec... If you asked in French, the local people immediately switched to English and were extremely nice and helpful.

Do not let them fool you. If they recognize you as a tourist they will happily switch to English, however broken theirs may be, however much trouble they might have speaking it.

If they recognize you as a 'local' (i.e. immigrant) and you don't speak French you will get into trouble in most places in Quebec. Even in Montreal though not everywhere in Montreal. If you aren't aware, Google about the referendum and the "OQLF" and their practices for example. It's very telling that even the Bank of Montreal moved their headquarters to Toronto back then.

When I lived in a dorm in Montreal, a pizza delivery guy passed by and asked my neighbor for directions to a room, in English. He replied that he doesn't know. Obviously he does, so after helping the guy I asked my neighbor why he'd say that. He said essentially if the guy lives here and can't speak basic French he doesn't deserve an answer.

Most people aren't like that, but there are assholes out there...

I had to let someone go at a company we had just acquired in Montreal a while ago. The guy was underperforming and had a huge attitude problem. One of the frequent arguments he had with everyone was that he insisted he didn’t need to learn French to live in Montreal and was somehow hostile to the language.

Despite being born and raised in America and having lived the last 20+ years in the Bay I somehow spoke more French than him. But I honestly questioned why he immigrated there in the first place when there’s 50 states and 9 other provinces he could go to and live exclusively in English? I get he probably couldn’t pass the higher bar for US immigration but that still leaves 2/3rd of Canada to go to.

This is a guess but Quebec and even Montreal are quite unique in North America. There's influence from both North America but also Europe. It may sound cliche but it is true. E.g. try to ignore or cut through the language politics of various parties and it will be hard to find equivalents in many other places in NA. Maybe some of that is something that spoke to him and made him go there. If he went to Montreal specifically it is even true what he said: He didn't have to learn French to be able to live and survive in Montreal, depending on the area he lived in and frequented.

Side note: apparently there are "agencies" in some countries that let you pick an equivalent city in their own country as a "benchmark" for the kind of lifestyle you'd like to have and they tell you which North American city to immigrate to and how to do that (i.e. how to meet the legal requirements, paperwork etc.). Maybe he used one of those services.

> Maybe some of that is something that spoke to him and made him go there. If he went to Montreal specifically it is even true what he said: He didn't have to learn French to be able to live and survive in Montreal, depending on the area he lived in and frequented.

Maybe. He seemed to really want to come to the US but the performance and behavioral issues made it a big no. I don’t think he would have passed the stricter requirements anyways.

One of the things he ranted about was how his kids attended public school in French. I mean, here in California public schools operate in English because it’s what the people speak. In Quebec it’s logical they would operate in French in a French province.

There are English schools in Quebec, it's just that there are conditions for eligibility:

http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/en/parents-and-guardians/ins...

So by law you may not be able to send your kids to English school even though there's one down the road, which I guess can be a bit surprising. Not sure if that was the case for that person though, or if they were just complaining about lack of English schools in general...

> they were just complaining about lack of English schools in general...

I'm still not sure what he was complaining about. French in general it seemed.

From the previous answers it seems like he was an immigrant to Canada. As such he would not be eligible to send his kids to public English school in Quebec. All immigrants have to send their kids to French public school. That changes only if you pay for private school in which case you are free to choose the language even as an immigrant. Quebec has been trying to limit access to English schools even for Quebecers as many Francophones are sending their kids to English schools.

La Bolduc ! :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2x-9c95Yxc

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