People ask in forums online where to live in Montréal to learn French.
It matters little where you live in Montréal.
Furthermore, this is the wrong question.
The better question to ask is:
How will I spend my days?
Will you attend university in French? Will you accept work in French? Will you join a group where there are francophones? Will you share an apartment with a francophone?
There’s nothing preventing you from learning French in a typically non-francophone neighbourhood.
I have a Turkish friend who speaks fluent French. He never left Istanbul to learn French. He works in a hotel. He spends his days speaking with people.
It doesn’t matter that his neighbours speak Turkish. It doesn’t matter if your neighbours don’t speak French.
It may not even matter if your neighbours do in fact speak French. Just because there are francophones in your street doesn’t guarantee anything.
If you want francophone “atmosphere,” by all means, pick a typically francophone neighbourhood.
But don’t stop there, because what really matters is who you’ll spend your days with.
Focus on that instead if you’re serious about learning French in Montréal (or anywhere).
Well said!!
This is exactly the kind of post I was looking for. I will be in Montreal in October and I am still very nervous about the methods I should employ to be in the presence of people with whom I can interact with in french.
So far what I have been suggested is to try and go to every french-english language exchange meetup. That still leaves me with most of my days over a period of two weeks. I am not too keen on joining a class but I might be forced to, just in order to have something to do and to have a venue to interact with others in french.
Any suggestions on finding such groups of people?
Can anybody make some suggestions for Ash, who’ll be spending a few weeks in Montréal?
Using a holiday of a few weeks as a form of language immersion can be challenging because it takes time to get to know people.
Trying speaking to people you come across, in shops, at your hotel, at a tourist office. Ask them questions about Montréal, for example. Use the opportunity to build some confidence about approaching people in French.
Spending a few weeks in Montréal can really help to motivate you to keep learning French after you leave. It’s important to find ways to keep speaking in French when you go back home.
I agree with the part about just because there are Francophones on your street doesn’t mean you will end up speaking with them. My current work environment has the greatest agglomeration of French speakers I have ever come across in my region, partly due to another head office being in Montreal. Unfortunately, the likelihood of conversing with them in French is seemingly inexistent for me at the moment due to very short encounters. Still nice to hear how different the Franco-Ontarian accent sounds.
This is sort of related, sort of unrelated, but I am an American at McGill as a freshman and I speak very good French like a Quebecker, but they all respond back in English. I have figured out in my first week here, however, when they respond in English, to give them a look like O.o and act very confused and they instantly respond in French. Just a way I figured out to squeeze French out of people here, even those that are obviously English speakers.