If I were still living and teaching in Montreal, I would DEFINITELY bring this blog post to class to prompt a discussion on languages in contact.

There is much hand-wringing around the use of anglicisms in Quebecois French, especially in Montreal. But it’s completely natural that when languages are in contact, there is some exchange between the two. There has also been a lot of French influence on English (ever since the Norman invasion!) and there still continues to be a lot of Quebecois (and other) influence on spoken Montreal English.

But this post, What might English sound like if it had borrowed from Quebecois French, takes it to an extreme. With Quebecois students of English, it’d be a great way to start talking about words and their roots, and how in the process of borrowing them into a language they often undergo syntactic, sound and spelling changes. We would then bring it back to English and look at some English words with roots in other languages and connect it to vocabulary acquisition and vocabulary strategies.

Fun!