A preliminary study on french language use in english dominant canadian cities : a case study of the halifax region, nova scotia

Recently, the idea of the city as a place to promote assimilation has been challenged in Canada which is a typical multilingual country in the world. As the bilingual population increases in Canadian metropolitan areas, it is assumed to be an important factor that francophones who migrated there keep their language in English dominant cities. This paper, therefore, examined French language use in the Halifax region, Nova Scotia, as an example of an English dominant city in Canada, through analysis of a questionnaire survey held in June 2003. In general, most respondents send their children to the schools with French instruction, and the reasons why they choose the French schools are emotional rather than strategic. Concerning media, two-third of the respondents read at least a weekly or monthly publication written in French, and television is more popular than radio. With regard to the use of services in French, whereas one-third of the respondents do not use any services in French, many kinds of services in French are offered. While most francophones send their children to French schools for emotional reasons, use of French-language media depends mainly on the combination of the mother tongue between husband and wife rather than on place of birth, and people who use French-language media tend to use services in French