Learning English as a second language in a french canadian town (aka how it took me 7yrs to understand it..)

Good morning everyone!

Today I wanna address my path onto how I became fully bilingual; as my path was quite hectic 😅 and out-of-norm of the people around me. I did had in interview with another blog as a “English as a second language”, but as that blog is no longer around, I felt the need to share my story on here too!

I’m gonna start by addressing that i’m of Acadian heritage; which basically means my ancestors were French colonisers that decided they were too far from the monarchy and became their own people. However, because of the war between France & England, our people kept being “given away” from being under the King of France & the English Queen — In the end, England became our mother patrie.

The english were however not too pleased with us, and came to destroy their properties & deported everyone in 1755 (mainly to louisiana, but also in other parts of the world). Some of us came back to New-Brunswick & Nova-Scotia mainly, two canadian provinces, while some stayed where they got deported.

Why does this matter? 
This is important in the story because still to this day, although our town is legally bilingual, some english-speaking people deny us our rights. The reality is that English is pushed upon us all through our education life as a French person, but the English students can drop out of French in middle school without any repercutions (If we fail english, we fail school altogether).

Some english seniors also doesn’t believe in our bilinguality problem, say that it’s a waste of money and whine that they are denied things for only speaking english.. when it had always been a reality for us born french, furthermore being obligated to learn their languages when they won’t even learn ours. 

Now to the actual story…
For the first 12years of my life, we were living in the north of the NB; in a town that is 95% french (actually going “we don’t speak english” if somebody asked in retail settings) and we were surrounded by french speaking towns, aswell as sharing a border with Quebec. Needless to say, our english classes were not too too great 😅

It was first introduced to us in 3rd grade, so around 7/8yo, I vaguely remember those cassettes they would make us watch in order to learn… they were some kind of kid-friendly monsters that was speaking in english, aswell as some exercices books and etc.

Then we moved town to the south of the NB at 12yo… where the town was legally bilingual, and everyone around spoke english too. Suddently, even if you were good in our english class back home, you were probably failing.. because their level of english were just SO much deeper than ours had ever been. Heck, the students even mostly spoke english at school, or “chiac” (equally mixing French & English dialect in the same sentence).

I had a big advantage in French classes, but a massive disadvantage in English as mine was lacking; though because of the language difference, I was placed in a “easier” english program. We refused and had them place me in normal english classes instead.. but they treated me differently because of that, Letting me get away with not reading ANY of the required reading and guessing my way through the tests. Which clearly didn’t helped me here..

Up to my senior year of High school, at 18, I just couldn’t understand how someone could read something in english and just.. understand. It did not make any sense to me. Until it did- however, I was just starting to understand when I graduated, still being WAY far behind than my peers who were already fluent in both.

In college, I had a lovely lady teaching us more english, in a way that I actually understood. One of the things that I’ll always remember from her was to always capitalise my Is, “Because you’re worth it”, she had said. I became much more fluent; writing had always been my forte, although verbs is a bit more trickier, but I was TERRIFIED of speaking aloud in english. I don’t fully remember if there was a reason behind it, but it really pulled on my anxiety — I believe it was mainly scared of being wrong.

That fear of speaking it stayed until I got my job at the Sex Shop in 2017 (23yo); it was in the more english side of town and we got barely any french customer.. so I had no other choice. Really helped my fear of answering the phone too! I only started reading books in english about 3years ago; the blog had been a huge help on my writing.

Now at 27, a decade after, I’m so much more comfortable in english – in a way that you probably can’t even tell that it took me that long to learn it! ahah; I however pronounce my words in a very “French way” or accent that sometimes take people more time to understand what i’m actually saying. And I have a bad habit to want to add an “s” to things that is already plural like Men or Women as I don’t feel it being plural enough 🤣

For those wondering, I mainly do all things in french: Watch mainly all my TV & movies in french, the language setting on my phone & consoles is french, etc. We speak French at home and that’s the language that I think in. I mainly use my english on my blog, my youtube/animes watchs, and at work – as most of my coworkers aren’t french. Books and music I can do in both languages.

What is your experience with English?