Do all Canadians speak French? If not, is the French language only limited to French Canadians? Do they speak with an accent that is different from that spoken in France?
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supersizeme
ANSWERS: 5
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Not all Canadians speak French. French is learned in school across the country but many do not grasp the language. Your average Canadian will have a basic knowledge of French. There are all sorts of levels of bilingualism in Canada, some speaking both languages very well and some speaking one better than the other. It is mostly French Canadians who speak both languages, but there is a million or so French speakers in Ontario alone. Not only is the accent between Canada and France very different, but the two languages differ quite a bit. From vocabularly to expressions, Canadian French is quite different to the French you will find in Europe. But it is French nonetheless.
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Canadians speak "pure French" which is French derives from the olden days. French nowadays has gotten mixed with the English language. So there is a difference between Canadian French and French. Not all Canadians speak French. Some people speaks it, but not all do. The language is not limited to French Canadians. There are schools all around Canada that teach French.
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Approx. 25% of Canadians have French as their mother tongue and many more speak it as well as a second (or third or fourth) language. The accents are quite a bit different from European accents; the accent where I grew up has much more of a twang to it then the accent from Trois-Rivieres, for example.
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British everywhere have prided themselves on not (intentionally) not learning French, and English-speaking Canadians who were British subjects up until 1967 were no exceptions. Many stubbornly refused any efforts to get them to learn even basic expressions. McGill University, an English-Canadian University teaches all courses in English even though it's located in Montreal. And for the other question: Most France-French say they can't understand visitors who speak Quebec French.
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The accent is very different to France - in the same way as american english is different from uk english (or australian english, south african english, new zealan english) You will also find that french, as spoken in the Doms and Toms has different accents from French spoken in France - but even within France, there is a significant difference between, say parisiens, and those from Alsace, or le midi... vive la différence!
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