And yet the claim has been made in this thread that even there 70% of the population can't speak English well enough to carry on a simple phone call. (I'm not sure I believe that statistic either, though.
[Alain] I wrote that and it is the bare reality, unfortunately, the figures are roughly those (plus or minus 5 percent).
[ERH]
It's certainly not my experience of Quebec where so far I've met exactly one person whose English was worse than my French, and he was a recent immigrant from Africa.)
[Alain] Then I can only say that you have never been East of the St-Laurent boulevard in Montréal or have traveled in a bubble outside of Montréal if you did so. You have an extremely superficial knowledge of Québec, I'm sorry to say.
40% of the Montréal area speaks English fluently. True. That fluency drops to virtually 0 outside the area, except in some pockets West of Montréal (some unilingual English) and in the Gaspé area (near New Brunswick).
That said, everybody learns elementary English from grade 4 to grade 6 included in Québec, and perhaps most also beyond, until grade 12. But that does not make all these people even able to sustain a telephone conversation. That is a truth that can not be more actual.
Alain LaBonté
Québec
