Canada French: an island in a sea of English.

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Canada

French: an island in a sea of English

The fact of French is the first point to be made about French Canadians.

It is a French-Canadian society. It lives, works, thinks, loves French.

French Canadians care passionately about their language in ways that English Canadians fail to understand. Some English Canadians say that Quebec French is not real French. It’s not the French of Paris, nor the French of Marseilles, nor of Bordeaux. It came, basically, from Normandy in the 17th century. It’s Norman French the one used by de Maupassant in his short histories.

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There are anglicisms that have crept into France which have been rejected in Quebec but however there are lots of English words  in French-Canadian and they usually come from North American society. Of course the North American world of English is not just Canada, but the United States.

The whole North American continent north of Rio Grande with its power, greed, generosity, all its energy and contradictions, is English-speaking.

North American English societies have had such success at assimilating other languages and they have developed almost contempt for others.

In the US the principle is of a national melting pot, ...

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