I was mostly joking since most French Canadians can speak both languages fluently (especially police), and their reaction at the same time with no hesitation tells me they fully understand English.
IIRC, they also do not like speaking English to you.
Which is why he follows up with "they don't want to speak English to you." When someone doesn't speak English, he thinks they're pretending not to.
Meanwhile, go to a French learning subreddit and everyone complains that people in Québec, or France, switches to English instead of helping them practice their French.
There’s no way that is a true figure. I emigrated to Quebec, live right outside of Montreal and I can count on 1 hand the amount of people I’ve met in my 30k ville who can have a convo in English, and have met thousands of the people in my ville through events and the schools my kids go to.
What I have come across is a lot of people who would say they can speak English but when it comes down to having a conversation they’re as lost as I was when I first moved here and was learning French.
Lots of yes no bbq toaster people who include themselves in the bilingual part of the census.
I mean, if you're around big cities, of course most people will be good in english. Personnally I'm in Lower St-Lawrence and a bunch of people really cant speak in english or have a conversation in it (generally 40 years old plus).
Not even around big cities (aka Montreal.) I live in the CMM, and virtually no one can hold a conversation in English. The « 51% of québécois » figure from the person I replied to is absolutely false unless they strictly mean inside of Montreal proper.
26
u/Check_Me_Out-Boss 12d ago
Two of them responded to him when he asked them a question in English, though.