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Originally Posted by Capsicum
I wonder how ethnic pride (or the trend in both the US and Canada of being "proud of your roots" or "rediscovering your culture" vs. the old school promotion of assimilation) will affect this?
Are modern day American youth of French Canadian descent in the NE proud of their connection to French Canada or do they see themselves as "regular Americans" now?
Then again, it seems like no matter how strong ethnic pride seems to be, getting one's heritage language "back" in the sense of re-learning a language lost in one's family is rare (no matter how proud many Italian Americans are, it seems like re-learning Italian is rare) -- it seems like keeping the language (or even just passing it on to kids) is a challenge. Unlike "fun", symbolic things like once a year festivals or things like re-learning how to cook one's ethnic cuisine, language retention seems more like a chore for many diasporas.
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I am not aware of any renaissance of francophone/French Canadian/Québécois identity among Franco-Americans who are assimilated. (Those who still speak French retain some affinities though.)
Perhaps it's due to the fact that the homeland isn't a real country (even though it has some of the trappings of a country) and so you don't have the usual markers that people getting back in touch with their ethnic heritage often focus on, which are generally features of independent states - a World Cup soccer team is a really good example, though it's far from the only one.