Why Is French Spoken In Canada? 

As I mention in the video. I'd love to hear from some Canadians/people living in Canada in regards to how commonplace French actually is in the nation.

I am Canadian and perfectly French-English bilingual. I think it depends where you are in Canada for how much French is around you. The closer you are to Quebec, the more French you will see around you. The more west you go, the less French there is. But there are French speakers in every province and territory, I'm pretty sure! Fun fact, each French person has a name for being a speaker of French in the province/territory. Example, I am franco-ontarien, but there are franco-albertan, franco-any province!

Short answer: *colonialism* Long answer:

Canadian here. French influence is very common here in Canada. While it is true that most French speakers in Canada live in the Québec province, Not all of them do! The Acadians (Not Arcadians. Arcadian is Greek) of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia exist too! They have their own Dialect of French, and there is this weird English/French mix Language called Chiac around the city of Moncton. There are many French stuff in the province of Ontario too. Ontario has the Franco-Ontarians. They mostly life along the Ontario-Québec Border region in cities like Ottawa, and Belleville, but some live up in Sudbury, Timmins and North Bay too. Manitoba used to be Billingual, like New Brunswick, but sadly that changed with the influx of American Settlers during Canada’s expansion westward. Every province, really, has French in it, but it’s just the most common in Québec. Also, some corrections to this video. It’s pronounced Québec (Kuh-beck), not Québec (Quh-beck). And the Acadians on New Brunswick did not willingly leave their region. They were deported by the British. Anyway, French is common in Canada. If you go to any popular tourist spot, you’ll hear French. It’s influence is very prominent in Canadian Culture as a whole. This has lead for some great Canadian cuisine, phrases, and slang. I live in an English portion of Ontario, and still, French has a prominent influence of my everyday life. I have a basic understanding of French. I know how the language works and I know how to formulate sentences. I can read it better than I can speak it, however. French is an important part of Canada’s history. Québec is an important province as it was basically the “gateway” for French into Canada. Canada is a great country of united French, English and Indigenous peoples. You should definitely come and visit! If you do, I recommend Montréal (it has its own English/French blend to it), Toronto, the Rockies, St. John’s Newfoundland, Halifax Nova Scotia, and Charlottetown PEI. While the provinces may not agree on some things sometimes, we’re still very much united. Great video!

Ah yes, my favorite central american langauge, Navajo.

Land: exists Sea: exists Air: exists The Sun: exists Great Britain: "It's free real estate."

Quebec is an amazing province. Great people, and beautiful cities

Name Explain: North America speaks English Mexico: What am I then?

French-Canadian living in Québec here. 1- Not so many people in Canada speak both English and French. 2- The Acadian/Cajun people were deported by the British. Their houses and farms were burned and families were torn apart because different members were put on different boats to go to different nations like Nova-Scotia or the United States. 3- French is very present in the province of Québec (I won't be talking about the other provinces because I have never really been there) The Québécois people make a big part of Canada (whether we/you like it or not) and our culture is different as well (NOT saying it's better or worse, just different!). I can say that because part of my extended family live in Ontario and we sometimes notice cultural differences when we see each other. Thank you to Pixlplague for your suggestion and thank you Name Explain for this video! :D

Oh man Patrick, you don't know the can of worms you just opened...

There's also a small archipelago next to Canada called Saint Pierre and Miquelon, it's the last part of New France under French control. The people there are descendants of French settlers, mostly Basque (it's quite a Basque cultural center) which is why the Basque flag is on the unofficial Saint Pierre flag. But they no longer speak Basque, it disappeared from the islands in the fifties

There is some French influence in the formerly french parts of the United States. I grew up in South Dakota where the largest city is named Sioux Falls (Sioux is the way the french wrote it). Des Moines and Sioux City in Iowa and in Minnesota our state's motto is L'Etoile du Nord meaning The Star of the North. In Minneapolis, we have numerous streets named after French explorers and settlers including, Nicollet, Hennepin, La Salle, and Marquette avenues. So while it's not as big an influence on our daily lives as Louisiana, there are quite a few French names in formerly French America.

There is a very small piece of France left near Canada: Saint Pierre et Miquelon.

I'm a Montrealer, it's an incredibly bilingual place. Often you'll see one person speaking in French to another person speaking English. The city has flipped from being majority French speaking, to majority English, to majority French today. I think you'd enjoy it here because language is easily the most popular topic of conversation! Names and buildings are often French and British (The Scotts and Irish forming the bulk of original English speakers). A little name explain tiddbit for you, the Lachine borough of Montreal is named that because the early explorers who ended up setting there had failed to find China. The locals jokingly refered to them as La Chine (the Chinese) when they returned from failing to get to China. Kind of a funnier variant of the "Indian" thing. Maybe a video on overly optimistic names from the age of exploration?

a few note: Most French speaker are in Quebec or secluded in small settlement in the other provinces. Outside Québec, the other province are repressing the French Canadian, removing services offer in French Even in Quebec you still have sign of that English repression. For a long time, in order to receive a promotion and become a manager, the person had to swear allegiance to the England Queen and renounce the Catholic Pope (most English being protestant they do not recognize the Pope as authority figure) so only English people would become manager, and French canadian would be unwilling to take that oath would stay low paid worker. So in big city like Montreal, the rich agglomeration have english name (West-Island for example, while the poor region have native name (Hochelaga) or French name (St-Henri), This is slowly changing, some gentrification project start changing abandon industry in St-Henri and transform them in Condos for example, but those are new project) French Canadian are bilingual, most English Canadian do not even try to learn French (yes some English canadian can speak French very well, but the majority of English canadian do not even try), even bilingual province like New-Brunswick barely try to offer French services.

Me, French-Canadian seeing the title of the clip: “Well THAT’S gonna be a short video/explanation!” Me, clicks on the thumbnail and sees the length at 13 minutes: “WTF?” 😜😂👍 French is DEEPLY entrenched in the Province of Quebec, which is heavily French dominated. It is somewhat common in the Maritime provinces of New-Brunswick (the only bilingual province) and a bit in Nova-Scotia. After that, the French presence drops like a rocks. Manitoba would be next with a little bit of French history but it is not as though French is thriving. All the other provinces have French communities that survived through the centuries but really small groups that are well mixed into the English population since these were often not supported and even disparaged during history. One Saskatchewan living in Calgary Alberta (both very Anglo provinces) once even told me he felt somewhat “betrayed” by his country as when he move to extremely diverse Calgary, he found himself in a a city where a large immigrant population from all over the world had people who easily spoke two, sometimes three or more languages, while he lived in a country where there are two official languages and he only knew one (English). However, the situation is slowly, too slowly changing: A lot of young Quebecers have moved to the western provinces and while it has not significantly changed the demographic enough, French is more common than it was and, more importantly, it is more accepted because 50 years ago, French speakers rarely moved out of Quebec and other French centres in other provinces and so BOTH SIDES were staying pretty closed minded about the other. But with the internet inter-connectivity people are a lot more open to different culture than in the 20th century and new doors have been opened; identity “language purity” is less of a thing now and multi-lingualism is seen as the strength it always was.

When I saw the title of this video I thought, "This must be mainly for your British viewers." Most people from the East Coast of the US generally know how North America acquired what little of the French language we have. Or at least I'd like to think so.

I moved from Toronto to Ottawa a couple years ago and I had culture shock at how much more french is spoken and just in your general life more in Ottawa.

I feel like it would’ve been nice if you talked about the Métis people of the prairies in the video

There are also over a million native language French speakers in Canada that live outside of Québec like myself. I didn’t learn English until I was 8.

Bilingual Canadian here! Although French is an official language, it's still nowhere near as universal as English is. Simply because of the geography and linguistic-cultural politics, a rule of thumb is that the further west you go, the less prominent French becomes (except for Toronto, which has so many linguistic and cultural neighbourhoods, with the notable exceptions of many francophonie countries). As an extreme example, a friend in Vancouver has told me that there's a mentality amongst many teachers and parents that French should be lower down on the linguistic hierarchy in exchange for Cantonese or Mandarin, since there's a huge Chinese influence along the west coast (but especially in Vancouver). I took a language law course earlier this year, and the legal juggling act behind maintaining and fostering a bilingual society is never easy. I know I glossed over details and such, but this should help paint a more nuanced picture of the Canadian linguistic landscape

Okay, so some things are wrong in this video. Upper and Lower Canada wear made by the Constitutional act of 1791. Became the Province of Canada with the Act of Union in 1841. And in 1867 with the British North America Act the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia became the Dominion of Canada, where the Province of Canada was split into the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. For a total of 4 provinces at confederation.

There is also a significant minority of French speakers in New Brunswick (the only officially bilingual province), as well as significant populations of French speakers in Nova Scotia and Ontario. In Nova Scotia, there are towns called Louisbourg, Petit du Gras, and Cheticamp.

Here in Upstate New York, a lot of signs are subtitled in French and there are a lot of Canadian things like Canadian flags, stubbies and the occasional loonie floating around the market.

Acadians didn't go in exile, they were forcibly deported...

A-CA-DI-A, *not* AR-CA-DI-A, there's NO R!!! At least not in Canada, there is a region in Greece known as Arcadia.... Also some of the historical timeline you present is a little bit off and you completely missed two of the four colonies that were joined in confederation in 1867 to form Canada. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were there too!

I live in southern ontario, went to french primary and secondary school, never really spoke it outside of school, I only heard people speak french outside of school when I worked for a community center, but a good chunk of people have at least a basic french understanding

The vast majority of French speakers in Canada live in the province of Québec. Outside of Québec, French is a lot less present. Most Canadians outside of Québec are not bilingual either. The bilingual people in Canada are generally Francophones. Most Anglophones can't carry a conversation in French.

In Ontario, we start learning french in grade 4 and it stops being mandatory in grade 10, although many people take it all through high school.

Generally in Canada the only places with a significant bilingual population are the English areas in and around Quebec and the few other French communities. If you talk to an age 40+ in a majority English area they probably only know very basic French if any. Younger people generally know a little more French because much of the French learned in school still lingers.

The title sounds like a question an American would ask

This is a big coincidence to me. My daughter actually asked me this exact question yesterday. Now you can show her your video to"name explain" it to her. Lol

I liked your "Lang Explain" video!

Hi Patrick ! I'm from Quebec, and yes French is spoken by the vast majority of people here (85+%). However, French is also spoken by a lot of people outside the province, especially in New-Brunswick, but really all over the country. It is very much a minority though in the other 8 provinces.

Love your content!

Bruh u should totally make more language content- it def fits with your etymological roots cuz I mean where else are names derived from or used in but language ;). Heck, u could find content in a niche side series akin to something like the etymology version of what Nativlang does ;*

I live and Rhode Island and a lot of New Englanders are of French ethnicity and some up in Maine and Vermont still speak a lot of French. Love your videos from a second-language speaker of French!

Fun Fact: French Canadians say Bon Matin while Non-Canadian French speakers do not say good morning but instead just day good day- bonjour.

It's not that there's a British Monarch on Canadian money. It's that there's a Canadian Monarch on Canadian money.

Quebec had one chance at becoming independent and they blew it

Fun fact: French Canadians are super strict about keeping everything French and avoiding English words. For example, in France you would say “le parking” and in Québec you’d say “le stationnement”. Even stop signs in France are in English, but not Québec.

Cool video, pretty interesting to watch a video about Canadian history made by a non-Canadian. I live in Ontario and learned French all through elementary school and part of high school. These days I'm not fluent but I can get by fine doing things like traveling to Quebec or talking to my grandmother. In general Ontario is very English, but there are different towns that are very French.

Quebec is the best province in Canada. Quebec is the real Canada. English Canada is basically Nothern Montana since they have same culture than Americans.

good video!!!

It is incorrect to use the French tri-colour to represent the French speakers of Canada. Britain conquered Quebec in 1759 (the treaty formally ceding Quebec to Britain was signed in 1763) well before the French revolution.

1:05 FYI: Neither Nahuatl or Navajo are spoken in Central America. Nahuatl is spoken in Mexico (it’s region are actually on screen), and Navajo is spoken mostly in northeast Arizona. 7:49 “Acadia” Read it as “Arcadia”

salutations à tous mes amis francophones qui lisent ceci

I’m a Canadian and I only have English Fluency and can only kinda speak French.

Not canada, but I know in the midwest, (around where new france used to be) there's tons of small towns and lakes with french names. My home town actually has a french name that originally meant "root" after the river. It's obviously not pronounced french anymore, but it's still there. there's also a "flambe" lake somewhere I think.

You missed out on an opportunity to mention one of the most interesting municipality names in the province of Québec: "Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!" which has not one but two exclamation marks! "Ha ha" is an archaic term for a sort of recessed wall often used to keep grazing animals confined to an area without having a fence to obstruct the view. Maybe for a future episode on weird place names? :)

Being a professional historian, I can affirm that most of the « information » (using the term very loosely here) in this video is wrong, I would strongly suggest anyone to look up their fact and to consider this video as fiction.

You should do a video on how the word creole came into being (also gives you a chance to talk more about languages lol) I think creole languages are fascinating, and IIRC that phrase originated from the creole spoken in the US. Could also talk about the Polish based Belter one in the Expanse haha

I'm born and raised in the smallest province in the country (PEI) and French is pretty common here too. We have Acadian communities and plenty of people who speak French as their first language

Canada = French-Speaking UK's child USA = Spanish-Speaking UK's child

Any other Québecois watching this?!

The degree of French speaking varies widely in the country. The main place it's spoken is the province of Quebec. New Brunswick is about 1/3 French speaking, and is the only province that is officially bilingual at the provincial level. There are still many places in the rest of the country with important French-speaking populations, like we're I grew up in northern Ontario and where I live now in Winnipeg.

I just realized that’s the useful charts music. I recognized the music but couldn’t tell where it was from

the French left a bigger influence on the US than just Louisiana, all long the Mississippi river and Great Lakes many cities, rivers, lakes, and other places still retain their French names with a varying degrees of pronunciation errors. The French and Indian war, (part of the Seven Years War) is a huge part of "American" history and was part of the reason the American Revolution took place, as many of the taxes levied on the colonies were to help pay for that war.

French is only spoken heavily in Quebec and New Brunswick but many things (mostly product packages) have French written in smaller text next to the English text.

I live in Canada on the west coast, the furthest from Quebec. With being this far it is not as common to be bilingual. But all packaging has both languages, looks so strange when visiting the USA and everything being only English.

Someone: "Latin America is a region where speaks Romance language as majority language" Quebec: "I'm located wrong. Help me move Canada" France: "I'm ready to help you, Quebec" :-0

Irish and Scottish are still spoken in Canada even tho its very smell areas that speak the language's and would love for you to make a video of the Canadian Gaeltacht

Outside of Quebec and the Metis communities on the Prairies, not very. There are enclaves in other areas. In Edmonton, AB where I used to live, the University of Alberta has a French language faculty called la Faculté St-Jean. The neighbourhood around it has many Francophones. A pub I used to frequent in the neighbourhood essentially had two areas. The one on the right of the bar was Francophone, the one on the left was Anglophone. If you spoke both, the bar itself was your spot. Also worth mentioning is that, whilst Canada, as a country, is officially bi-lingual in French and English, there is only one Province that is, and it's NOT Quebec. Quebec is uni-lingual in French, eight of the other nine are uni-lingual in English, and New Brunswick is bi-lingual in both.

French is mainly spoken by the government and Quebec/Atlantic Acadia and/or spoken as a second language or several different greetings

Also, Quebec was a very catholic place without much of a separation between Church and State until the 1960s. You can find so many small villages named after Saints it's bacsically a punchline.

There's so many languages spoken in Canada it's mental. Here in Ireland the 2 languages mainly spoken are Gaeilge (40%) and English (99). Gaeilge is more spoken at home in the West and North. The only other language spoken widely is Polish and that's only 2 or 3%.

French is spoken in Maine too, after all it's located right next to Quebec.

Quebec (K-beck)

There's no Canada like French Canada, it's the best Canada in the land!

Jacques Cartier never claimed land for France? What?! And never went further than Newfoundland?! He's the one who claimed the land on July 24, 1534 in the Baie-des-Chaleurs by erecting a giant cross. He named the Saint-Lawrence and traveled down all the way to Hochelaga (where Montreal would be founded as Ville-Marie a century later) and even tried to get a settlement going during his second voyage.

Someday i wish i could visit there!

why because Québec exist and Quebecer live here and we have a culture that is different from our english neighbours

i live in southern ontario where there is a quite noticable french community. there are french schools and i hear french more often then never. though most french people here are bilingual and withut accents so you wouldnt really know. there are french radio and tv stations and everything bought has a french and english label. (which for me has helped me learn to read french quite well) Ive been to Ottawa where pretty much everyone has a functioning knowledge of both languages and you will hear them spoken pretty equally in the city. french is alot more influential in the east than west however.

Stop signs in France: Stop Stop signs in Quebec: Arrêt

There is actuall a small group of islands, off the coast of Newfoundland, that still belongs to France: St Pierre and Miquelon. (Language is French. Currency is the Euro. The Looney is accepted there, however.)

8:06 You are wrong on that one. Acadians didn't exile, they were forcefully deported by the British army. Might look for ''1755: la déportation des acadiens''.

This video reminded me of my 7th grade history where I learned all of this but in french

French culture and to some extend the language also has strong roots in Louisiana and Maine.

I’m so glad to see someone outside of Canada take a ganter at our history. Glad that my university home and “home” home were mentionned. As for how french is in Canada, it’s mostly centered in Quebec and a bit in New Brunswick. French is still taught in schools outside of Quebec but doesn’t really make everyone bilingual. Also, the fact that most of the french population in Canada is in Quebec is because of the tragedy that was the deportation. Once the colony was taken over by the british crown, efforts were made to literally try to desolve the french portion of Canada. After a good while though, they just abandoned that project because it’s harder to kill a culture.

Minor pronounciation squabbles: Cartier (kar-tee-ay), Champlain (sham-plane or sham-plen), Newfoundland (new-fin-land), Acadia (ah-kay-dee-ah) _sans_ the r, Quebec (ka-beck) and finally Montreal (mon-tree-all or francofied as mon-rey-al). Also, I know that there are also Acadian diaspora in Maine and Vermont.

Any Sliders fans remember the episode where they landed in New France?

I'm quite enjoying the way you butcher the French names, you make me sound better 🤣

I'm from Ontario and the roads signs are in English. But all consumer products and government paperwork and most paperwork has both languages written on them

It would be interesting also to list all the place names in USA of french origin, or the names whose spelling was french style, that later changed pronunciation because of the french spelling.

Quebec is the only province in which French is the only official language. New Brunswick on the east coast is the only officially bilingual province. I am someone born and raised in Alberta but my dad's side of the family is French (though most don't speak French at all). There are still pockets of French communities scattered around the country even out in the prairies they are very much a tiny minority and English speakers in Canada have little interest in learning French unless they want to work for the federal government in which case being bilingual would make your resume more attractive. There are dedicated Francophone schools all over Canada but again they are a minority. Francophones in Canada rightfully resent us Anglophones as they have born the brunt of having to learn both languages being the minority and we Anglophones never bothered to learn their language because to be frank we never really needed to, the little French we were taught in school is super basic and in my case only taught from grades 4-6th, I barely remember any of it.

I don’t know man, Maine is probably more French than Louisiana. My city in Maine has the highest population of French speakers in the entire United States

Correction, the second time France owned Louisiana was only for a few minutes on what is known as Three Flags Day. They took it back from Spain after having agreed to take it back a year earlier and then immediately handed it over to the US.

I only really see French on products, like labels or ingredients lists, titles ("2-in1 Dry Erase/2-1 Sec-effacez"), or on public infrastructure. My understanding of French, living in BC is essentially that I can guess what it means 80% of the time, or I can recognize what many word smean but there's no way I could construct a sentence.

NO! The people in Quebec speak French, in fact, its the law there that NO other languages be displayed or spoken.. So signs are ALL in French and NOT English. The only places where English and French are spoken and written on road signs together are in Ottawa (our Nation’s Beautiful capital) and many places in New Brunswick, AKA, Acadia. Everywhere else we speak English. Signs are in English only. However, all products MUST have both English and French on them. Also, Canada IS farther north that Greenland as Canada extends north up to (and including) the North Pole. Yes, this makes Santa Claus Canadian. In fact, Canada post has assigned an official Canadian Postal code to Santa and the North Pole. As our postal codes use letters and numbers - similar to yours - the North Pole is H0H 0H0.

Do the Caribbean islands fall under North or South America? because if they are part of the Northern then there are more French speaking places. Like the French part of Saint Martin, Haiti (Haiti is closer to the north then the south)

Imagine creating a nation with your rival.

My native language is English, but I live in Montreal and have spoken French for almost all my life. I would say French is incredibly important for my day to day life (perhaps less so in quarantine). It does depend on exactly which borough you're talking about, but without French, there are a lot of places in Montreal where you wouldn't be able to get a job or be able to get services - like ordering food. Also, things like stop signs here in Montreal are not bilingual - they are only in French. Most other signage, like the menu board in a café, is bilingual but the English must be written in a smaller font than the French, sometimes to the point of illegibility. The custom of both languages is so strong that businesses will choose to discard products and signage that display only English, like the menu boards, rather than lose business. Anecdotally, I remember asking in English at a pharmacy if they had any allergy medicine or antihistamines and the person I asked look quite co nfused and answered no - when I later asked in French they found them for me. Sidenote: No offense intended, but why does no one not from Montreal seem to know the English pronunciation??? It's said like muhn-TREE-awl

I live in western Canada, and there isn’t that much French communities here in Alberta and B.C. And I honestly wish there were much more.

Here in southern Ontario, we are taught French in school from grade 4 to grade 9 (which spans from roughly ages 9-14/15). But after that hardly anyone picks up the language and moves on with life without knowing French at all. So it would be safe to say that it would be pretty rare to find someone who can speak the language in southern Ontario, or at least the region I'm from.

If you ever go to quebec, just note everything is written in quebec french.

the Acadians had to Dispersed?? No no buddy, it was straight up deportation

Proud Canadian here! French is mostly spoken in Quebec and officially also in New Brunswick. Ottawa, the capital of Canada is on the border between Ontario and Quebec and a lot of the city’s population is bi-lingual. A lot of us learn French as a secondary language in elementary school, or even in full French immersion schools. Something like 60 percent of our population can at least speak some (broken) Québécois French, which is different than and looked down upon by ‘true’ Parisian French speakers. It’s too bad so much of the video got sidetracked to French in the USA, there are a lot of interesting details about French in Canada that you could have gone into!

As an American, my only contact with french Quebecers is the program at my coolsmiles dentistry where their is this "comedy" program in french with people wearing silly disguises and riotous laughter.

French is also spoken in New England. Mainly in the north but also in the southern half. In the 19th century Quebec had a large diaspora to New England I believe due to an economic downturn (I'm not 100% sure about that). There's even a dialect here called New England French. It's not particularly useful to learn, though, because it's very similar to Quebec French and it's kinda dying. A lot of schools here used to actually punish kids for speaking it instead of English.

name explain were are you from in england? im from Liverpool