>>> PLEASE DON'T APOLOGIZE. Your efforts to learn and  speak French while living in a French environment is PROOF that you are a worthy addition to that City and Province. You are the best version of an Anglophone. NEVER APOLOGIZE. You, Sir, are WORTHY of praise. Enjoy your life.

I live in Montreal i learn english alone by listening movie in english with french subtitles

Thanks for sharing your perspective! I’m not Quebecois, but I live in Montreal, and French is my native language—I also speak English. Like others have mentioned, if you’re looking to practice your French with someone, we could hang out and grab a beer. I’m sure we’d get along with others in your Montreal community too!

Je me sens étranger une fois avoir traversé la rivière Outaouais et quelle désillusion de ne même pas être capable de commander un café en français dans la capitale d'un pays soi-disant bilingue.

Il y a plusieurs années, la dernière fois que je suis allé à Toronto, je me suis bien amusé à parler 100% en français comme les Torontois et bien des anglophones de Montréal, souvent bilingues le font à Montréal en anglais.  

Bref,  la loi 22 a fait du français, la langue officielle du Québec (seule province au Canada, en Amérique), et  le but de la loi 101 1977 était de faire du français, la langue commune de tous les Québécois car c'est la seule façon de maintenir le français dans le contexte continental et encore davantage de nos jours avec l'omniprésence de la culture américaine. Ce qui n'est pas accepté par plusieurs.

Et, ce, sans rien enlever aux, droits des anglophones du Québec de s'éduquer, de se faire soigner, etc. en anglais. L''objectif n'étant pas l'assimilation contrairement aux autres provinces dans lesquelles on a empêché l'éducation en français aux francophones, de parler en français en classe. Il y a encore de nombreuses disparités entre la façon dont les francophones hors Québec et les anglophones du Québec sont traités.

Et, la pendaison de Louis Rie;. Vous voulez qu'on en parle?

Je sens votre tristesse de minoritaire, dans une population minoritaire. Sachez que plusieurs Québécois et francophones comme minoritaires au Canada ont cette même tristesse.

J'entendais encore récemment dans une vidéo, un Albertain dire que ça coûtait trop cher de traduire les emballages sur les produits. Ouf. Vous ne trouvez pas ça triste?

Quand on voit des gens qui ne disent même pas excusez-moi, mais sorry en accrochant quelqu'un sur la rue. Thank you comme s'ils ne connaissaient pas merci, débit, crédit à un caissier de supermarché. On est loin du français langue commune. Et, pour plusieurs, ça peut être triste aussi.

On ne veut pas devenir un autre Toronto, non plus. Et, la langue est encore le principal vecteur culturel.

Anglo montrealer. Am bilingual. Can't imagine living in a place without learning the language.
I worked in a very small northern town and really appreciated that locals spoke to me only in French.
I suck at formal language classes, so radio, tv, newspapers, audited some courses at U of M, and did my welding programme in French (1 1/2 yr intensive), going to live theatre, hangin out with folk at the laundromat...
Whatever you do, give up the anglo pride of making mistakes. Learn to laugh at them. Keep at it. It's so worth it. Bonne chance!!

A salute your willingness to understand the context in wich you are evolving right now, I feel you have reach a plateau, since you came, you were exploring, discovering and absorbing your new environment. I suggest you do not beat yourself too much upon the language and what the others are saying or thinking, you are a legitimate Quebecer as well as a Canadian. You have as much rights as all the people that surounds you. You are not butchering our language, you are integrating your second language. Keep up you good work as well as your mental  energy. Take care!

Yo Dan, I doubt you remember, but I was a candy maker you interviewed in Vancouver years ago.  I'm in Montreal also now and perhaps my experience comes through a different lens being an American, but I feel like living in Montreal is a bit like living in many world cities.  It's a cultural crossroads and therefore a place of cultural tension.  But much of the world lives in the midst of some sort of cultural tension and folks find their place according to their individuality.  I hope that you are able to make peace with the tension that both anglophones and francophones (and people whose mother tongue is neither) experience and find a sense of belonging in the midst of it all.

That was very interesting. I'm native french speaker from outside Montreal. I've been wondering about what is the Canadian identity. I strongly believe that what binds us together (all provinces) is our empathy for others. I think whatever you speak French or English, we all love peace and wish the best for our other fellow citizens. As Québecois we are WAAAYY more similar to the rest of Canada than Europe. On the other side, I feel the rest of Canada is much more empathic and poised than the USA. So, being good people is what is being Canadian. That is our defining identity. And I think it is awesome! Love you man, cheers!

Merci beaucoup pour ton ouverture d'esprit pour de ta vulnérabilité, j'apprécie tes vidéos et ton approche.

Dan, thank you so much for explaining things to someone from the USA that really had no idea why people who spoke a different language also wanted to have their own country.

I have to say, as a french canadian, the number of time i go in a store in montreal and ppls talk to me in english first is almost half of the time ..maybe its just the place i decide to go to and its not like that everywhere in montreal, but they speak to me in english first.... an dthats true Canada is a bilingual country with french and english as official languages.. i went to toronto for 1 months, i went to winipeg a few times, i went to Vancouver a few times too... i can say that 0.1 percent of the time i was spoken in french.. the only time it happened its when i went to a french restaurant in winnipeg with my ex girlfreind.. thats the only time the person was able to speak french in the rest of canada.

I come from France, lived in NB for 4 years with all that it implies (job, house, scholarship for the kids, incorporate a business...).
I live now in Québec because having lived in English helped me reconsider my attachment to French.
But now I am a French man in Québec, with French speaking and English speaking friends. I am Canadian now, but at the same times everybody knows I am from France as soon as I start a sentence 😅

I traveled to NS, PEI, ON, AB and BC. Canada is huge and different. The language is only one of many and I love my new country!

Hi Dan!
I'm born in Barcelona, Spain. I came to Montreal 27 years ago because my wife was from here. I didn't speak  French at that time, but with time and patience I learned it. I think that I speak gut enough French because I worked 15 years for Quebec government. My home is Montreal. I don't want to go back to Barcelona, my wife pass away 8 years ago and all my family is in Spain.
I love French way of live, but I understand that we renounce a part of our identity as person when we leave our land (Spain, Ontario, Quebec, name it). We manage, and it's important to try to merge with our environment and try to be happy. I think that Canada is a wonderful country to live.
We make the choice to live in other culture, and we have the responsibility to try to merge without renounce our basic principles

I really do think that an anglophone can reach his full potential while living in Montreal.  In fact, mastering two languages or more, gives more perspective and job opportunities in big multinational corporations.

I am Québécois myself and I have a friend who's the son of an immigrant mom, born and raised here, and he always struggled with finding a job because of his level of french. I remember I sometimes liked to help him a bit, though he's moving out of the province for reasons. And some other of his friends also had similar issues, which I often attribute to school french courses in english schools that are inadequate. Now I know that anglophone communities, primarily those of british descent (especially english and scottish), have very different culture (ex: religion and opinion of british monarchy), which is fine, but sometimes I feel like having in pocket a good level of French alongside a English as mother language, could help these communities thrive in our homeland. But being the highly industrial and corporate continent that North America is, making time and space for other people to learn new languages is very difficult when you have bills to pay.

When I lived in Boston for a few years, I loved to escape to Québec. My first time in Montréal in about 2015, on a tourist bus trip of the city, I had to insist that the guide also explained in French. It was not an English language tour.

you can also hear people speaking  'franglais'  where people are speaking french nd english in the same sentence.  we don't even think about it , it jus comes out. 😎

It great that you fully understand the dynamics of Montreal,  you want to be sure over time that you truly want to be here and are not here just because you got stuck here. Your a proactive kind of guy so dont have to worry about that.

I have spent 60 years of my life in Toronto. I lost the convenience of using my native language as the primary form of communication, but I absolutely did NOT lose my identity as a Québécois, or my maternal/paternal language which, after 60 years of speaking english, has never lost its importance or relevance to me. I will always be a french canadian, and my mother tongue will always be Québécois. It is how I am genetically programmed. Losing one's identity to a new environement is a conscious decision that I have never made and a failure of the self.

Chuis fièrement Québécois. Aujourd'hui et pour toujours, n'importe où je me trouve.

To Anglophone residents of Québec, be english & be proud of it. But speak french or go somewhere else!

Superbe vidéo. I think that when us, Francophones, move in the ROC, we have it easier because we learn English very early on in school and for many years (I lived in Vancouver for over 3 years). Being bilingual is very important for most of us from the get go.