No one's keeping you from learning french anyway. Which isn't a great feat to ask from english speakers since it's not like you need to memorise a whole new alphabet before you can even build on your vocabulary.

I've worked with many people who've lived here for years yet don't know a single word in french despite having internet access and free classes offered by many employers no matter what their income is. 20k a year, 40k, 200k, doesn't matter the income, many people are allowed to live happily here without ever bothering to even be aware of or to respect our culture. Maybe they go overboard on signs in public places but Quebec is very tolerant. So please don't call us nazis

"how the attitude of shopkeepers and a community center--or centre--supervisor changed immediately and they began treating me badly when I spoke English. And for this I had to take twelve years of mandatory French classes in school?"

If you had 12 years of french classes, why would you need to adress the shopkeeper in English?

Quebec is a wonderful and rather unique place to live. I grew up in an English environment, yet managed to learn decent French from my Mom and courses forced upon me in High School.

I have no problem with laws supporting French Canadian culture, since it feels threatened and insecure, surrounded by 'evil' Anglophone culture (including American media, which is imported and badly translated or voiced-over). I find certain unreasonable laws silly, but simply shrug my shoulders and move on.

Hey, all politics is basically silly, c'est la vie.

Now that's a thread drift...

Well of course signs have to be readable in the one official language, otherwise you end up with a babel tower of communities within your state who can't communicate with one another.

Learning a foreign language is no great feat either. All I have in english is 3 years worth of grade school classes and I get by just fine. People with higher educations than me speak worse english or french than I do and yet they can still do their jobs even if they can't write plurals properly. You don't need 12 years studying a language to be functional with it.

"Because English is her first and preferred language, probably. "

I understand that much. But if you're in a french-speaking country or province and speak french yourself, when adressing locals it is polite to speak french. Speaking english (if they do speak english) should be a choice only if french is not an exercisable option. That is if your french is poor or non existent or their english is much better than your french.

To walk into a french-speaking store or office and assume that english should be the language of choice when both parties speak french is rude, arrogant and condescending.

Which is why I asked why Felicity expected to speak english despite having 12 years of french classes and therefore presumably is well versed in the language (myself, I was fluent in english after 3).

I understand, Trevor. Norway is a two language country as well. Or rather, we have two different language FORMS. That is, close enough that most spoken dialects are somewhere in between.

(excepting the Sami minority plus we learn english as a "second" language from first grade -used to be third- and a third language from 8th grade. As well as swedish and danish which don't get counted as separate languages from norwegian in this context).

The animosity from the dominant language group towards the minority is at times extreme. Their attitude is that even though we (the minority) have to learn both forms in order to function in society, since most major newspapers and magazines, most books etc are printed in that language form, it is a violation of their civil rights to make them learn OUR language form.

But in there somewhere there has to be a sense of being polite. I agree that if a french canadian comes to english-speaking canada, he should speak english, if able. But likewise an english canadian should speak french in french-speaking canada, if able.

The key here is "if able".

Language is certainly soemthing that gets tempers up, so I should probably stay out of the canadian debate, having enough with the equally messed up norwegian situation.

What I don't understand about Canada... if it is a 2 language country why don't everybody speak both languages? The scandinavian countries have very small populations and therefore very small language groups. If we didn't speak or read foreign languages (primarily english) our countries would quickly become cutlurally atrophied.

We can't even commit to university studies without speaking a foreign language (or several.) I studied norwegian language and literature at university, and our curriculum was in norwegian (both forms), swedish, danish, old norse, icelandic, english  and german.

And since both english and french are "world languages" that can be used to access vast reservoirs of excellent literature, films, music, plays etc I would think that the incentive for learning both is already there.