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Originally Posted by New Brisavoine
Your observation is not confirmed by the census. The percentage of people living in the Halifax census metro area for whom French is the language most spoken at home went from 1.23% of the total population at the 2001 census to 1.12% at the 2021 census.
Also, the percentage of people in the Halifax census metro area who had French as their mother tongue was 3.12% at the 2021 census, but only 1.12% had French as their most spoken language at home as I've said, which shows a clear Anglicization of the native French speakers.
Halifax is not Francophone Shangri-La I'm afraid.
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Primary language spoken at home isn't really what I was getting at, although this is not necessarily incompatible with my observations - a greater overall number of people speak French (either as a first or second+ language) and nearly all of these people also speak at least some English.
(I originally just meant in terms of raw numbers, but I think this would also be true percentage-wise.)
So there are likely more living situations with one Francophone and one Anglophone partner (for example), or one or more Francophone roommates among a group of 4-8 sharing a house (a common living arrangement here), and in these cases English does become the common language "spoken at home" more often than not. But any of these people (including the non-Francophone ones) could be studying in French or work at a job that requires French.
On the other hand I
would have been surprised if much of the growth was in households with Francophone parents who don't speak any English raising their children as unilingual Francophones (etc) - I absolutely agree with that. Although that's a lot more possible/practical now than it would have been 20-30 years ago or more, and certainly
some households here fall into that category, but not many. I only think this is noteworthy
in contrast with most of Canada.
As a side note though you do have a better understanding of Canadian census data than most Canadians do
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What has always puzzled me if why the Acadiens have never asked for their own province.
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I think part of it is that the geography would be too complicated for it to work well - the present-day Francophone-Acadian parts of NS are at opposite ends of the province, and are both quite far from the Acadian parts of NB, which are mostly along its eastern coastline. There's no obvious choice for a capital, they would have a hard time getting their voice heard federally (in the HoC and in federal elections, for example), and their prospects and quality of life aren't really limited by the current system the way they might have been in pre-60s Quebec.
Overall the process of carving a new Francophone province out of existing ones, so that new province can get to be the #2 Francophone province (of 2) by a wide margin in every metric seems daunting and like more pain than gain.
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That would prevent the erosion of the language (and eventual extinction of the Acadian identity).
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For most of the Acadians I know in my generation, the "eroded" language
is the identity (or at least a big part of it).