<p>I speak very minimal French and I heard that people in Montreal will not treat me well because of that. I am also Chinese and according to some there is racism in Montreal. Do I need to worry about these things or are they complete BS?</p>
<p>You will be doing fine with minimum french. Racism in general is not a huge problem though Quebecois is a bit on the conservative side. You will find tons of ppl from out-of-province to hang out with.</p>
<p>btw…are you from Richmond as in Virginia or Vancouver?</p>
<p>Vancouver, British Columbia</p>
<p>Wait…By “You will find tons of ppl from out-of-province to hang out with” do you mean that Quebecois don’t associate themselves with outsiders unless they know French?</p>
<p>Sheesh, I hate when people generalize like this. Students from Quebec, no matter what their native language is, are there to make friends too (and are not in general the conservative type). Only a very small minority from Montreal (usually private schools in my experience) will stick with their little clique of buddies from cegep. A really tiny minority. But Quebec students start in U1 (in practically all cases), so you may not see many of them in U0 classes.</p>
<p>But what about Montreal in general? I heard that people are friendly toward French-speaking people and not so much toward English-speakers.</p>
<p>Except for the occasional metro employee (who, when they aren’t nice, aren’t nice to everybody; actually the same holds for government bureaucrats of any level, municipal, provincial, federal), Montrealers are usually friendly people toward pretty much anyone, regardless of language. </p>
<p>Exceptions occur usually when dealing with obnoxious students who can’t hold their liquor, which, around the McGill area, are overwhelmingly anglophone students (from the rest of Canada and the US) who just discovered alcohol at 18-19, when the locals did the same things back when they were 14-16 and thus find such behaviour childish and immature. Therefore any resulting unfriendliness is due to “mitigating circumstances”, by association sometimes (that is, you may be a nice kid, but if there are froshies around and you look like one, don’t be surprised if you get carded in a bar, something that never happens otherwise). </p>
<p>What I’m saying is that any unfriendly behaviour is not a result of language as much as other issues, but many of those who claim the locals are unfriendly are those who stick to the McGill ghetto and rarely venture outside the university life bubble, and thus their perception is skewed.</p>
<p>as a montreal native, hopefully i can clarify a few things.</p>
<p>1)as long as you are a consumer in the downtown area, either shopping, eating out, ordering drinks etc, speaking in english is fine and is accepted by staff (mind you, getting a job with limited french can be hard)</p>
<p>since you are asian, even the most franco-centric people wont resent you for not speaking french, basically you will be fine anywhere west of st.laurent if you only speak english. if you hit up some of the trendy stores in the east end areas (plateau, st denis) most of the employees are young anyways and probably speak english or at the very least are patient with anglophones with terrible french. </p>
<p>3)what blobof said was true - metro employees hate everyone dont worry about it - keep your conversation short and to the point (just say une billet s`il te plait, and give him the cash). also, whenever I am downtown at night, my friends and I can always easily point out the american/ontario 18 year old tourists who are excessively loud and terribly dressed in their american eagle polos with the popped collar. if you want to hit the clubs, learn your limits re:booze and try not to dress like a kid</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. When you said that it’s hard to get jobs did you mean just minimum wage jobs or professional jobs as well?</p>
<p>It would be hard to get all kinds of jobs. First let’s think about student, low-paying jobs. Anything where you interact with a customer (clothing stores, entertainment, restaurant) requires that you have some level of french. You can get other types of jobs where only limited french is needed (clerical work, cook, busboy, behind the scenes work in general). That being said, as long as you know a little french, you will be surprised to realize how you pick up the language on the job. </p>
<p>In terms of professional jobs, french is pretty important, it all depends on how much power you have. I work at a very english law firm with offices all over Canada and the world, and was suprised by the amount of french at the montreal office (about 80% of my conversations are in french). The only anglophones are a few older lawyers, because in reality most of Quebec’s english elite left the province… Basically, if you can become a partner in a law firm you can get along only in english, but if you need to start at a low level and work your way up, unfortunately you will need some level of french. That being said, if you work for an american company that has offices in QC, you can get away with speaking english. For example, my mother works at a certain US drug company, and works 99% in english.</p>
<p>I want to second the last message. My daughter has had a difficult time
getting a summer job because her French is only so-so. She did get work in a telephone sales job- but quit because it was a scam to trick elderly customers.
She has finally found work in a coffee shop as a “barista”. but it has been a
struggle.</p>
<p>Ooh ouch…Off to Toronto for summer jobs I guess.
What percentage of students on campus are anglophones? And how much French is spoken there? Just wondering if it’d be easy to learn the language without leaving school.</p>
<p>id say that the vast majority of people (80%) are anglophone, or perfectly bilingual</p>
<p>Actually, I think the statistic is 20% francophones (all technically bilingual…), the rest are mostly anglophone but you need to consider that there’s still a significant number of allophones (who are all also at least bilingual).</p>
<p>In terms of jobs, if you only speak English, the only easy ones you can get are telemarketing jobs (no fun and, and as mcgilldad pointed out, not all ethical or completely legal…). “Good” jobs in Montreal not requiring French do exist but the chances of getting them are slim to none. </p>
<p>You can take French classes at McGill (it used to be that tuition for those were the same as Quebec resident tuition, not anymore unfortunately), but it’s hard (relatively) to learn French only within McGill or Montreal, as the school is essentially English (and the francophones who go there are there in part to learn or perfect their English) and the locals who are bilingual will switch to English the second they detect your accent or any struggle in speaking French. So it’s not a good place for immersion, and immersion is the best way to learn a language. There are immersion programs throughout the province though, so if you want to spend a few weeks in the summer to actually learn French, you can consider doing one of those (they are not free of course, but you can apply for scholarship/bursaries/grants/whatever for them, but you’ll have to find out how to do that yourself when checking out those programs)</p>
<p>I’d take the French courses at McGill but I doubt my BScience timetable would allow it…=/</p>
<p>Rawroo: Non Arts students can and often do take French classes. If you’re worried about the workload (and the first year BSc is fairly intense) you can always take French as a Pass/Fail class. This means that all you have to do is get a C or higher, and it will show up on your transcript as a passed class. This saves you from having to really work hard to get the A and instead lets you focus on your other classes a bit more while still getting the experience of French. SSMU also offers mini-courses for something like $15 that run for a semester in the evenings.</p>