Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeej
In response to "first official language spoken" for the 2016 census (most recent), 765,000 people in Greater Montreal speak English as a first language (compared to 3 million for French), while 245,000 people in Greater Montreal claim both English and French.
This English language minority population has actually been very slightly increasing in absolute numbers for the past 10 years, though not enough to increase its share of the linguistic pie. Only the allophone (neither English nor French as a first language) population has increased its share.
In terms of knowledge of official languages, 2.2 million people in Greater Montreal claim knowledge of both French and English, while English only sits at 250,000 people, suggesting a that the vast majority of Montreal anglophones self-describe as bilingual (to some degree).
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-r...B1=All&TABID=1 |
Yeah, it's definitely large enough to provide something of an anglo bubble that you can dwell in most of the time. Though the French language does poke its head into the bubble from time to time, with a "Bonjour les amis! BTW this is a mainly French-speaking city. And don't you forget it!"
Some people can ride with that reality, but for others it's more difficult which explains why anglos (even if you're right that their demographics are improving slightly) leave Quebec in way higher proportions than most any other group.