Language tendencies in Quebec 1960 until 2000 (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, LMU Munich (Amerikanistik Institut), course: Canada Today, language: English, abstract: This research paper wants to discuss the question, whether French is able to
remain the predominant language in Canadäs province Quebec, or if there is a shift
towards replacement by the English language.
Obviously, the number of the French speaking population in Quebec is a lot
higher than the one that speaks English. Currently, about 9% of world¿s
Francophones are Canadians and of those, around 30% are Quebecers. French is
the mother tongue of over 80% of the Quebecois population, and of only 13%, it is
English (Gentsch 142). It seems as if the roles in Quebec are assigned.
But English is the world language and is spoken in the rest of Canada as well
as by 280 million inhabitants of its huge southern neighbor, the United States of
America. Quebec is surrounded by English speaking countries. Will a small province
like Quebec be able to preserve its culture and its language or is it going to be
overswept by the wave of "anglicization" after all?
Canadians are very proud of their culture and language. It is very important for
foreigners, who visit Quebec, to speak French. In an newspaper article about a winter
festival in Quebec, a German boy said about himself and his friends: "Wir alle können
kein Französisch" (Tourisme du Quebec) and therefore implicated that it is not
possible to manage a visit in the Canadian province without knowing any French. But
Quebec is not an only-French speaking province, is it? In almost all parts of the
world, tourists, who visit other countries, are able to correspond in English there. In
Quebec, although about 11% of all inhabitants are Anglophones, people prefer
leading a conversation in French. They are proud of their culture and their language
and therefore, they are looking down on everything that could endanger it. Quebecois
are very much afraid of English replacing their beloved French language.
The key component of Quebec¿s national culture is their French language.
René Lévesque, leader of the Parti Québécois from 1976 until 1981, explained this in
1968: "Being ourselves is essentially a matter of developing and keeping a
personality that has survived for three and a half centuries.