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 Canada´s 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.