Shed-youl, leftenant, and I know where to find signs that read STOP in Quebec.
I am not offended to be mistaken for an American, but I am REALLY proud to be a Canadian, so I would correct them. 
That sums it up, really.
A-ha! A Canadian!
? Huh ?
The language in the US is “I went to college”, or <university-by-name>.
I have no problem with a francophone society within Canada. In fact I think it adds to our cultural richness. I do have a problem with an anglophone-hating society within Canada, the kind that bans English signs, or legislates the maximum size of English print on them, forces businesses to change names that have English connotations, tries to legislate French as the mandatory language of private businesses, forces restaurants to remove English-sounding items from menus, etc. etc. ad nauseum, and takes huge amounts of federal transfer payments and federal contract money all while shitting on the rest of Canada. Many years ago, long before things became as extreme as they are today, the CBS show 60 Minutes did a segment on the absurdity of the Quebec “language police”, first doing a mini-documentary of the whole pathetically absurd situation, and then letting Quebec officials pontificate their justifications while the American reporters could barely conceal their snickering at the stupidity of it all. And that was years ago. It’s worse today.
So you never drive on the 401? Or any provincial highway in Ontario?
The irony of it all is that it wasn’t all that many years ago when most Quebec highway signs were, quite appropriately, bilingual. Signs do need to be replaced after some number of years, but I’m willing to bet that millions were spent unnecessarily just to expedite the removal of the bilingual ones. Regardless, they are pretty much all unilingually French now. What exactly is this stupidity accomplishing other than inconveniencing tourists?
My brother, who now lives in the US, recently needed a new birth certificate for official government purposes because of some fuck-up with the old one, so he ordered one from Quebec. And guess what single language it’s in? No English whatsoever, and this caused him no end of grief in the US. He had to get an official translation at his own expense in order for the document to be legal. I’m pretty sure that some poor schmuck with a Quebec driver’s license would have the same sort of issue in the US. I can just imagine a state trooper looking at it – especially in a state far removed from the border – and going “WTF is this thing?”. All from Quebec – a province in an officially bilingual country.
Michael Moore advised us about the Canadian Language Police.
Okay, fine, I tried to acknowledge that I was in a French-speaking province within an officially-bilingual-but-majority-Anglophone-with-pockets-of-Ukrainian-out-west-oh-and-let’s-not-forget-the-First-Nations-country. Does that satisfy your amour propre? I’m an American; I have no position on the question of Québécois sovereignty or Canadian bilingualism. The point is, I was trying not to be a dick. And for the record, the postal clerk didn’t make me “jump through hoops to prove that * was worthy of even being spoken to”; he greeted me in English, I responded in French, and he assured me that he could help me in my language. I was the one who said that I liked to acknowledge that I was in a francophone community, and he agreed that the locals appreciated that. But he was in no way arrogant or dismissive; nor was any Québécois I encountered in Montreal or Quebec City, even the monoglot francophones. Sheesh.
Should have gone to the Outer Banks; there’s a cove on Hatteras Island called “Canadian Cove”, for its popularity with snowbird windsurfers.
This seems to a as good of a thread as any to ask this question.
I teach English to a family who will be moving to Montreal in the summer. They will be taking French lessons there, but currently they speak more English. How much of the population there is bilingual?
They are Taiwanese so will they be given more slack for not knowing French really got away?
It really depends on what area of Montreal. Traditionally, the west end is much more anglophone while east of St. Laurent Blvd is mostly francophone. In most areas, they could manage quite well only speaking English.
That said, Montreal is an amazing multicultural city. Most people are bilingual french/english but there is also a mix of many cultures and languages.
The Outer Banks were just too far for this particular trip, maybe next time.
… BUT, why would I want to go hang out with more Canadians? Interestingly, people (Americans?) do this all the time. At my place in Florida, neighbours have asked why I don’t live in the community up the road with all the Canadians. Or in Mexico, people will recommend hotels, bars, restaurants, etc… that ALL the Canadians frequent.
I’m more interested in visiting different places, eating different food, meeting new people, etc… I don’t really give a shit about what other people, Canadian or not, are doing.
Well, we like all y’all to stay together; easier to keep an eye on you, that way. Don’t want you sneaking in your filthy foreign habits, like cheese curds and gravy on french fries, or universal healthcare. 
Seriously, though; you should get to the OBX, if you have a chance. Best beaches in the U.S., as long as you stay south of Nag’s Head.
Yes. In US English, you don’t hear “I went to university” or "I’m in university."It sounds a bit odd to our ears, in the way “He’s in hospital” does. But, for whatever reason, it sounds fine with “college.” Such is language. And (US) Americans don’t make the same distinction between college and university it seems the rest of the world does. For us, it’s perfectly fine (and standard) to say “she’s off to college,” when she is, in fact, attending university.
I had this issue on this board, actually, when i had been living abroad and Britishisms crept unknowingly into my speech and I claimed that “I went to university” was a perfectly acceptable (US) American phrasing and was quickly corrected that it was unidiomatic/non-standard in US English.
Also, in Canada there is a definite distinction between a university and a college, while in the US the terms seem to be interchangeable.
Ha ha, we are a very sneaky people!
Yes, I really want to get out there, we are looking at something for Easter next year! Probably OBX then a stop in Virginia Beach then through the tunnel to Delaware on the way back North.
The words are used interchangeably but technically, they are not the same in the USA. A college is a school that grants (usually undergraduate) degrees; a university is an institution with more than one school. Harvard University includes Harvard College, a school that grants undergraduate degrees. Harvard University also includes, in addition to Harvard College, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and many other schools. Taken together, all those are Harvard University.
This distinction exists in Canada, too. My alma mater is Queen’s University, which still has a number of “Schools” - the School of Medicine, for instance. Some schools call themselves “Faculties” but it’s just a styling. However, that distinction is largely ignored in common English because the distinction between a “university” as a largely independent institution that grants four-year and graduate degrees, and a “college” that grants associate diplomas and is much more beholden to the province, is more important to make.
Yes, this is what I was getting at, but couldn’t be arsed enough to explain it.
Aside from the occasional asshat, Quebecois are like people everywhere, including most of the USA: namely, they are individually great, friendly, generous people, but for some reason when they get together politically, they sometimes lose their collective minds and elect ridiculously inept and stupid governments.
Montreal is a truly beautiful city – architecturally and naturally beautiful, culturally rich, and wonderfully diverse. It deserves better than the political crap the hardline francophones are dumping on it. During the separation referendum in Quebec many years ago, there was semi-serious talk that if Quebec seceded from Canada, Montreal would secede from Quebec and re-attach itself to Canada. That’s the kind of city it is. 
That last link reminded me of another strong Canadian tell: the word “so”. Hearing it pronounced a little farther forward in the mouth than I would, and with more lip-rounding, tells me the speaker is from the Great White North.
Speaking of which, what’s the deal with “hoser”? I read that Thomas and Moranis made it up as an innocuous profanity, but is there something intrinsically Canadian about it? Maybe because it’s got that same rounded “o” vowel that’s characteristic of Canadian English?
I’ve never heard the word ‘hoser’ in any context other than Bob & Doug bits, or references to them.