My frustrating experience with bilingualism in NB

Ok, I'm an anglophone from SJ too. No French immersion for me at all, just the regular grade 1 to 12 French as a second language classes.

I graduated nearly 30 years ago. I continued learning French after that, though. I moved to a city with a lot of bilingual people, and use it. If I'd stopped using it right after high school, then of course, you're right, it would've been forgotten, just as you've forgotten it. But I chose to continue learning it and moved to where I'd use it.

Francophones would forget English too, if they didn't find any use for it, and continue to practice it. Bilingualism (or multilingualism) isn't a magical superpower, it takes work and a deliberate decision to use it. I chose to use it, because of the opportunities it would open up.

If you have zero motivation to continue learning it and using it, that's your choice not to use it (basically through "self-segregation"). Sorry if I sound unsympathetic, but it is tiresome to hear the same odd complaining, generation after generation... as if: it's all so futile... as if: the chips are hopelessly stacked up against you...as if: you needed to have some magic innate ability to learn languages... baloney. Use it or lose it, just like your high school chemistry, or math, or physics, etc. You can continue learning and using your education, or you can forget it the day after you graduate.

So you're unilingual in SJ. Oh well. You can survive that way, obviously. Your choice. Shrug. What about it?

/r/canada Thread