Growing into Billinguality.
Up until I was 13, I only spoke French. Canada’s languages are English and French, mainly because my province uses it as it’s main. I kind of grew up with a little hate or despise for English. Both of my parents had worked for the “Parti Québécois” the nationalist party of my province, hence why I grew up with a certain pride for my language and culture which was very different from the rest of the country. I was constantly reminded of why my province wanted to separate, the language is different, our history is different, our traditions highly vary and more could be added to the list. I have vague memories of going to conferences and handing little chocolates and flags wearing my blue blouses. What strikes me most today though, is how everyone else always treated us. Any native English speaker would laugh if your French accent was showing but they couldn’t speak a word of French. We learn that second language in elementary school initially, while most English school don’t teach French up until high school level (when they even do.) Nowadays I’m as bilingual as they come and am glad to be able to speak both, but it still strikes me when my anglophone friends can’t mutter a basic sentence in French, I find it funny to an extent. We have our flaws, we’re the first to admit it as well. But we still love our province very dearly and keep the traditions going. It’s weird speaking about a French province in English as it is so different. I won’t give an history class about it, but here is a fun fact that I can’t help but think of : Our flag in Québec is ironically almost an opposite of Canada’s two red and a white stripe with a maple leaf at the centre. Québec’s flag is Royal blue and bears a white cross. A fleur-de-Lys decorates all four corners. I think it’s a gorgeous flag and it would be a lie to say that deep down I don’t have that little flag tattooed on my heart. In the end, I am proud of my Nationality and to be able to have this country with so many sides to it.
|