“J’aimerais un café allongé, s’il vous plaît,” I ask without a second thought.

A couple of minutes later, a barista responds to me in English.

“Your flat white is at the end there.”

As I walked to pick up my drink, I wince at the blow to my ego. Is my American accent still that obvious? I wondered. I hadn’t even ordered a flat white. 

Six years earlier, armed with intermediate French and a pandemic-era extended-family exemption to cross Canada’s mostly closed border, I had touched down in Montreal. 

On paper, I was competent in Québec’s official language. But my confidence ebbed and flowed depending on the day and the task. After timid attempts with everyone from baristas to landlords, I’d often ask my then-Montrealer partner to do things for me.

Since then, I’ve lived in Luxembourg and France, handling everything from opening bank accounts to applying for residency in my second language. So I was stumped that, back in Québec, I couldn’t even manage a coffee order. 

“Café long,” corrected the barista, reminding me of how bilingualism in Montreal manifests. It’s normal to switch between languages at any establishment, often within the same conversation. The soundtrack to any meal is a series of multilingual discussions.

A colonial present

Canada is a country with two official languages, French and English. But in Québec, Canada’s largest province, French reigns as the sole official language. 

The French language’s dominance has its roots in Canada’s colonial history and the struggle between the French and British invaders. 

The French first colonised Québec in the early 1600s, when the explorer and cartographer Samuel de Champlain established a fur-trading post in a region he nicknamed La Belle Province.

Over the next few centuries, Britain and France aggressively conquered North America, wresting control from the indigenous peoples who had previously inhabited the continent. The French colonialists came primarily from Poitou in central France and Normandy, in the northeast, creating a unique linguistic makeup within the infant colony. 

Eventually, however, a standardised Québécois French emerged and maintained its independence from the British English that was taking root throughout Canada. 

After France lost the French and Indian War to Britain in 1763, it ceded control of the area to the United Kingdom. But many of the region’s French inhabitants remained. 

For centuries, the French- and English-speaking inhabitants largely avoided one another, living in separate parts of the province, with clear boundaries between them. According to Alissa Bonneville, a Québécoise language teacher in Montréal, French speakers mostly lived in rural areas and small towns. Cities, meanwhile, tended to have a higher percentage of English speakers.

The separation between the two groups in Montreal was the Boulevard St. Laurent, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The boulevard runs from Montreal’s old port through the plateau, eventually terminating at the Prairies River. It is colloquially known as “The Main,” and has long been considered the confluence of Montreal society. Today, it is a bustling avenue lined with popular eateries that blend the city’s diverse cultures. 

Québec’s quiet revolution

Until the 1960s, residents of Québec spoke both English and French throughout the province. But an unofficial social divide had emerged. Anglophones held the majority of white-collar jobs and management positions, while Francophones held mostly blue-collar or clerical jobs.

The centuries-old tensions between French and English speakers in Québec eventually led to the development of the province’s strict language laws and policies. 

The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, a period of socio-political transformation, created a French-speaking middle class. That allowed the province’s French speakers to exert themselves in a landscape previously dominated by English. During that same period, a large separatist movement began to emerge in Québec. Today, the Bloq Québécois, a nationalist political party, still campaigns on a “Québec first” motto. 

With pro-French sentiment building, French was made the province’s only official language in 1974. Three years later, the Charter of the French Language, widely known as Bill 101, was passed to protect the language. 

The law requires all businesses to display signage in French. Québec today is the only place in the world where stop signs read “arrêt.” Even in France, “stop” is the norm.  

In the mid-1980s, Québec’s government established a surveillance commission, or language police, which sent undercover agents to ensure businesses complied with language laws. One of the most famous instances of language policing took place about 12 years ago, when the government fined an Italian restaurant for failing to translate the Italian names of its dishes into French. 

An unofficial bilingualism

Despite the strict enforcement of the laws, people in Québec often find creative ways around them. 

And in Montréal, the province’s largest city, people working in shops often greet you with the bilingual phrase Bonjour/Hi. That gives you, the customer, a choice of which language to pursue. 

Meanwhile, Québec’s French is influenced by years of separation from France and proximity to English. For example, “un chum,” the word for a boyfriend in Québécois French, comes from the English word “chum,” which means friend. 

When the British took over Québec in 1760, they severed Québec’s connection to France, stopping linguistic time in its tracks. Today, Québécois French is still a version of French that existed in the 17th and 18th centuries. While some words have adapted, they did so separately from the French language in Europe and elsewhere.

Joual, a variety of Québécois French that includes unique grammatical patterns and English-derived words, originally emerged as the language of the French-speaking working class in Montreal in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

That can make it complicated for native French speakers from France or elsewhere to understand native French speakers from Canada. 

As a native English speaker who learned the language from French teachers, I frequently struggled to understand French speakers in Québec. These days, I still need an hour for my ear to adjust to l’accent Québécois after crossing the border. 

Québec’s linguistic future

Like its history,  Québec’s linguistic future remains full of juxtaposition. Montréal’s current mayor has called for changing the city’s standard greeting from “Bonjour/Hi” to “Bonjour” only. 

In 2022, the provincial legislature passed  Bill 96, which gives new immigrants only 6 months to learn French and limits access to English-language services in places such as courts and medical facilities. 

Some exceptions are occasionally made for indigenous peoples, immigrants in their first six months, and those who exclusively communicated with the civil service in English before May 13, 2021.

Since French is the default language of instruction, students must apply to attend school in English and receive special permission. Even if children obtain a certificate to study in English, they cannot graduate without a high level of written and spoken French.

Despite the strict pro-French rules and atmosphere in Québec, there are reasons to believe that US President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada have brought the province closer to the rest of the country. Québec’s voters recently threw their political weight behind Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has taken a strong stance against Trump, rather than voting for the Quebecois nationalists whom many in the region typically support. 

I noticed more Canadian flags on my numerous trips north of the border this year, particularly in Montreal. I also saw numerous “fièrement Canadien” (proudly Canadian) labels on products and in stores, which were rare until recently. 

Sydney Baker is a travel writer from the Pacific Northwest who has lived in Australia, Québec, Luxembourg, and France.

The post Bonjour/Hi: Inside Québec’s Language Debate and Canada’s Most Bilingual City first appeared on Lazo Magazine.

In some ways, the tiny country of Luxembourg looks like a land from a fairytale. Many of its government policies, especially regarding multiculturalism, also sound idyllic. Officially, the country is trilingual. But after living in the country for a year, I realized that the lived reality is a bit more nuanced.

I’m originally from the United States, and in 2021, I moved to Luxembourg to complete a master’s degree in multilingualism. Friends and family back home often asked me, “So, what language do they speak there?” 

Luxembourg’s official languages are French, German, and Luxembourgish. The latter became a separate language in 1984 after being considered a dialect for many years. Luxembourgish is most similar to German and Dutch and uses many French words. According to the language law that the government passed in 1984, residents can contact public authorities and businesses in any of the three official languages.

That level of official multilingualism may appear challenging to people from countries with only one official language. However, Luxembourg promotes fluency through its multilingual school system. That allows kids to begin learning many languages as soon as they are old enough to enter school. 

Primary school is mainly in German. In secondary school, instruction switches to French. That’s usually not a problem because primary school students learn French as a second language. Students also learn other languages, such as English, in school.

Luxembourg’s linguistic reality

Lena Lorché, a Luxembourgish citizen educated in the multilingual school system, says the teaching method works well if you already speak Luxembourgish at home.

Luxembourgish is mutually intelligible with German, and two people can easily have a conversation while speaking the two different languages. Thus, Luxembourgish-speaking children can easily pick up German at school. However, some of Lorché’s peers grew up speaking a different language at home, for example, Portuguese or Italian. They initially struggled more in school than she did because German was so different from their mother tongue. 

According to the most recent statistics from the Ministry of Education, around 98 percent of Luxembourg’s population speaks French. English is the second most common language, spoken by around 80 percent of the population. German follows close behind, with around 78 percent of the population speaking that language. Additionally, English is the most common language among Luxembourg’s ever-growing international population. 

Sabrina Mikes, an American who studied and worked in Luxembourg, said the country’s official trilingualism can be “somewhat misleading.” That’s because Luxembourg is highly multilingual. 

“Many people speak Portuguese and English in addition to the country’s government languages,” Mikes said. 

Monyck De Sa Santos, a Brazilian master’s student who works as a research assistant at a university’s cultural affairs office, said her experiences have further illustrated this point. She speaks English and French at work. Outside the office, she uses French for most interactions unless she’s with another member of the country’s sizeable Portuguese-speaking population.  

Karo Fernandez, a human resources professional at a law firm who is originally from Colombia, speaks French, English, Spanish, and German, often in that order. 

So, while the country is officially trilingual, the lived reality of residents, particularly immigrants, often includes more languages. 

A spike in immigration to Luxembourg

According to recent census data, the number of foreigners living in Luxembourg has increased by around 38 percent over the last decade. Around 47.2 percent of the population is now foreign-born, and around 18 percent of native Luxembourgians hold a second nationality. That percentage will likely increase as the government streamlines the path to citizenship. 

Historically, immigrants to the Grand Duchy have come from nearby countries such as France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. However, in recent years, more have arrived from countries outside of the European Union.

The government wants to increase the international workforce for economic reasons (the country relies on cross-border workers and immigrants for many industries) and to be a global hub.

Pro-immigration policies include charging non-EU nationals very affordable tuition, from 200 to 400 Euros a semester for university. In comparison, most public universities in neighboring France charge non-EU students around 1,500 Euros a semester. Additionally, attractive tax benefits have led many multinational companies, such as Amazon, Paypal, and Rakuten, to set up their EU headquarters in Luxembourg. 

The growing prevalence of English

Luxembourg has also benefited from Brexit, when the United Kingdom left the European Union, by welcoming more English-speaking workers who would have previously gone to the United Kingdom. 

Bianca Pirrelli, a multilingual Italian immigrant, sees Luxembourg as the new London in Europe because there is so much migration.

She said it often differs from other European countries, where you need to know the country’s language before living there to interact with daily life, and English is an “extra asset.” In Luxembourg, immigrants from different countries usually use English as their common language.

Lorché, the Luxembourgian, told me that while multilingualism has always been the norm, the biggest shift in her lifetime is “the increasing importance of English in Luxembourg.”

Speaking Luxembourgish

Luxembourgish is the native language of most Luxembourgers, and a little over 70 percent of the population uses it in everyday life. However, according to the UNESCO Atlas of World Languages, Luxembourgish is still a vulnerable language. 

According to the 2021 census, French and English are the most used languages at work, while Luxembourgish is most common at home. Still, the study only surveyed residents. Cross-border workers, primarily French speakers from Belgium and France, did not participate.

Nevertheless, the prevalence of Luxembourgish is growing, if slowly, for a few reasons. First, people must take a language test when applying for Luxembourgish citizenship. The streamlining of Luxembourg nationality applications for non-EU nationals has increased with the number of foreigners moving to the country. The flexibility of an EU passport is desirable to many, even if it necessitates learning a new language.

Many non-European expats, including De Sa Santos, explained that the language requirement was a big motivation for eventually learning Luxembourgish. She also wants to understand her partner, who is from Luxembourg, and his friends in social situations.

Mikes echoed the need for the language to enter Luxembourgish social circles, and Fernandez noted that knowing the language can open doors in some professional sectors.

Lorché, who works with immigrant children to help welcome them to the country, says that she interacts with children from all over the world, each with a unique linguistic background.

“This has opened my eyes to the sheer diversity of languages spoken in Luxembourg today,” Lorché said. “Far beyond the three official languages and English.”

Sydney Baker is a travel writer from the Pacific Northwest who has lived in Australia, Québec, Luxembourg, and France.

The post Immigration Is Making This Tiny Country Even More Multilingual first appeared on Lazo Magazine.