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How did the French language spread to Canada?
French settlement and private companies were established in Eastern Canada at the beginning of the 17th century. Quebec City was founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain who had founded Port Royal earlier. In 1635, a secondary school was established in Quebec by the Jesuits with the dominant language being French.
Is the French language growing in Canada?
Since its adoption of the Official Languages Act in 1969, Canada has been an officially bilingual country—that is, the nation has recognized both English and French as its official languages on a federal level. But French has been in decline, as its proportion of native speakers within the country shrinks.
What is the official status of the French language in Canada today?
French is one of Canada’s two official languages. Although every province in Canada has people whose mother tongue is French, Québec is the only province where speakers of French are in the majority. In 2011, 7,054,975 people in Canada (21 per cent of the country’s population) had French as their mother tongue.
When did Canada make French an official language?
1969
The Official Languages Act (1969) is the federal statute that made English and French the official languages of Canada.
Why did the French immigrate to Canada?
The rare French people who chose to immigrate to Canada were craftspeople, clerks, teachers, artists and members of liberal professions. They came in hopes of gaining some social mobility or sheltering themselves from religious persecution by a republican and secular France.
Is the French language declining in Canada?
A Canadian history expert is pushing back against reports the French language is in steep decline in Quebec in favour of English. According to Statistics Canada projections, the proportion of Quebecers whose mother tongue is French could drop to 70 per cent by 2036.
Why is Canada official language French?
Canada has two official languages: French and English. The French colonized Canada first. However, the British took over all French colonies in the Maritimes and Québec through different wars, including the Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).
What percentage of the Canadian population speaks French?
French language in Canada. French is the mother tongue of about 7.2 million Canadians (20.6\% of the Canadian population, second to English at 56\%) according to Census Canada 2016. Most native speakers of the French language in Canada live in Quebec, where French is the majority official language.
What is the difference between French and English in Canada?
While French, with no specification as to dialect or variety, has the status of one of Canada’s two official languages at the federal government level, English is the native language of the majority of Canadians.
Which provinces have made French the official language of Canada?
New Brunswick was the province that took recognition of francophones’ language rights the furthest: the province passed one law in 1969 making French one of its two official languages and another in 1981 recognizing the equality of the province’s francophone and anglophone communities.
Are all francophone Canadians of French-Canadian descent?
Not all francophone Canadians are of French-Canadian descent or heritage. The body of French language speakers in Canada includes significant immigrant communities from other francophone countries such as Haiti, Cameroon, Algeria, Tunisia or Vietnam.