If you must make fun of the translated surname, I kind of prefer either HairSquared or Ha’rHar’.
I’m ever so sorry to tell you, but the type of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked are ‘poivrons’ in French… 
I’m curious - how many of us Canadopers speak French, and at what level? ‘Level’ may be defined however you choose, whether that’s some sort of official certification, or your self-description…
I speak it quite well - I get by easily in conversations with francophones, and I love the Québécois culture. I do have a certificate from a French immersion school (that didn’t survive the lockdown, unfortunately) that gave me a rating of 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5. I’m not sure if it’s of any official use anymore, but it does line the sock drawer nicely…
How about the rest of you?
Yeah, the right-wing people who insist on calling the Prime Minister ‘Turdeau’ instead of ‘Trudeau’ get tiresome very quickly. I personally think there’s more than enough material to make fun of in Mr. Poilièvre’s policies…
I have a civil law degree, earned in French, and I’ve argued cases in French. Have also appeared in cases where most of the written materials were in French; filed my stuff in English, but didn’t need a translation.
Now THAT’S impressive - formal legal and literary French is, uhh, not my strong suit!!
I have been told that I do not speak idiomatic French. 
I can hold a medical conversation or read academic textbooks or literature. I can generally say what I want, but do not always phrase things the way a native speaker would. I am sure my French was far better when I was studying it in Québec. I doubt my knowledge of slang is current or that I could easily “think in French” at the moment, which I could d’autrefois and would take more practice than I get. It is easy to understand the news. I do not always understand every joke told by some Québécois comedians - some accents are harder than others. International French is often easier to understand.
I took French up to grade 10. Other than 7 or 8 trips to France and a handful of jaunts to Montreal, I haven’t had much of a chance to use it (not that it was good to start with).
My wife and daughters were in French immersion all through school, my wife uses it for work, and my oldest daughter is at McGill and speaks French occasionally.
I’m from Eastern Ontario where there is a large francophone population, not surprisingly, my mother tongue is French, I started learning English in grade 3, that would have been around 1960.
I don’t know at what level, but I studied French from Grades 5 to 13 (Ontario), and then in university. I managed to do well enough with it to get me through France when I was in my early 20s, anyway.
But I returned to Toronto, where there is little need for it; and then moved to Alberta, where there is even less need for it (like, none at all), and I’m afraid that my knowledge of the language has withered through disuse.
My mother tongue is franglais.
I speak both fluently, use both nearly every day, though my work is almost completely in English and I consume English language media more in general (I don’t watch much TV/movies, I read news in both languages most days, mostly listen to English music). I speak French with about half of my family and all of my in-laws.
Raising my son the same way; I speak English to him, my husband speaks French (I’m the one that switches to join their conversations)and he’s enrolled in a school that’s 50/50.
My written French is a weak point but that’s mostly from lack of effort and practice. That said, I regularly correct my husband’s writing, so mine isn’t actually that bad, I think!
When I told my grade 9 French teacher that I was not going to take French in High School, she said “très bien!” (I was not a great student) Things have not gotten any better.
Maybe Supermarket French Level.
I also took French up to university level and I have barely any oral/aural proficiency nowadays. My reading is adequate enough that I can usually understand most of a newspaper article (for example).
In junior high/high school, my French teachers were Mme. Barnes, Mme. Harper, Mme. Dunfield, and M. Hagberg. M. Hagberg at least had the decency to have ‘Pierre’ for a first name…
Mme. Barnes set the pace for the lot of them - to her, the French language was like some kind of 3D matrix of intersecting lines. She knew the gender of every noun, she knew the conjugation of every verb, the correct tense to use in every situation. She also had an English accent that you could cut with a knife. Our first day of class, she told us in no uncertain terms “And whatever you do, DON’T talk to the franco-manitobains, because they speak French WRONG!”. She looked like the unholy love child of John Diefenbaker and Bea Arthur (“Maude”); man, she was a piece of work!
I was delighted to hear that when she came along as a chaperone for a Grade 9 field trip to Paris, the Parisians would listen to about two sentences from her and then switch to English because they couldn’t take that accent, no matter how accurate her grammar was…
I had to drop French after Grade 11 because of a spectacular 4-way conflict between music, drama, biology, and French - four courses, only three slots available.
It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that I discovered how much I loved the language!
In junior high/high school, my French teachers were Mme. Barnes, Mme. Harper, Mme. Dunfield, and M. Hagberg. M. Hagberg at least had the decency to have ‘Pierre’ for a first name…
I’m amazed that you remember your teacher’s names. If pressed I might be able to list 6 teachers for my entire educational history including university. The rest mirrored teachers in Peanuts, “wah, wha,…wha,wha, wha”.
Which is probably why I failed French in High School. One ‘wah, wah’ was pretty much like another and reading a book wasn’t enough to pass. That and having a contrarian nature where having to learn French in BC when it was probably the 5th most spoken language in the province at the time (7th mother tongue currently) didn’t win me a friend with the teacher when I objected to having my time wasted.
I’m fine in French, although I prefer a legal, financial, or medical report/discussion to be in English so that I lose absolutely nothing in the translation.
High school French classes in “English” schools in Montreal in the 60s were pathetic. You had to learn it in the streets, cafes, or even on French TV. How else would you find out what a “trente sous” was? The long story…
fredak.com : le dico
There’s a reporter for Global News that looks exactly like a Ferengi.
This was just a little alarming to read today - B.C. lawyer reprimanded for citing fake cases invented by ChatGPT | CBC News .
The lawyer in question is being reprimanded, but the judge accepts that it was not her intention to use fictitious cases in her presentation. The cases were discovered to be false when opposing counsel couldn’t find them, and asked for copies.
I’m terrified of what AI can do in the wrong hands!!
I had limited French in school, but worked in a Federal government office that was largely Francophone. My ability in financial French used to be quite good (not so much since retirement), and I could often correct the French versions of documents we were putting out, but my ability to speak or understand joual was seriously lacking. I was OK in meetings talking about rollout of a new accounting policy, but when the topic switched to what they did last weekend I was lost.