French community?

[Jérémyfr]

It's for fun, I assure you, we like other people...

That's what they said, but don't trust them!


Usually, Parisian have a bad reputation in France, because they have the reputation to be often patronizing. I'm not telling it's true, just the reputation they have.

[Flickerdart]

Usually, Parisian have a bad reputation in France, because they have the reputation to be often patronizing. I'm not telling it's true, just the reputation they have.

This seems to be the stereotype perpetuated by everyone who's not in a particular major urban center. For example, New Yorkers in America and Torontonians in Canada are both considered to be arrogant by their respective nations. Those durn big city folk, gosh dangit.

[2D8HP]

I think you're mistaking malice for what we call "driving in Quebec (especially Montreal)".

When I visited Canada in the late 1980's and as a monolingual American (I only speak american english) I actually felt more comfortable in French speaking Montreal then in English speaking Ottawa. The Quebecois pretty much drove and otherwise behaved like Americans. The Ottawans? Just too eerily nice (the city also felt like a film set. Just too clean).

[Blazmo]

I've heard that American English accents are closer to historical English than modern British ones, so there seems to be something to the argument that the colonies are a language time capsule.

Where exactly did you hear this? Modern Britain has many different accents, a number of which have remained essentially unchanged for centuries, such as the Yorkshire and Northern accents.

[aurilee]

When I visited Canada in the late 1980's and as a monolingual American (I only speak american english) I actually felt more comfortable in French speaking Montreal then in English speaking Ottawa. The Quebecois pretty much drove and otherwise behaved like Americans. The Ottawans? Just too eerily nice (the city also felt like a film set. Just too clean).

Don't worry, other Canadians are disturbed by Ottawans too.

My first forays into non-Ottawa cities generally consisted of me smiling at strangers and saying "hello" as I passed people on the street, followed by said strangers looking at me like I'm insane. I was also confused by cars not seeming to understand how to let a pedestrian cross a street at a crosswalk.

Plus Toronto and Montreal are scary dirty to an 8-year-old only used to the squeaky-clean of Ottawa.

Of course I eventually craved a "real" city like Toronto and Montreal and promptly left Ottawa.

But yeah, having lived in Québec for a while with my American husband, I've found that when we're out together he's treated better when speaking English than I am (as an anglo Canadian). The Québecois seem to be more amicable towards Americans than other Canadians (at least in my experience). I guess they just don't have the same "you should speak French" expectations?