Seriously some people are living in cuckoo land.
Have you looked at job offers in Québec? I have and being at C1 & C2 level I am worried I will not find work. Most job offers demand fluent written and spoken English and French, I would say about 95% of the jobs I have viewed.
If you don't want to finish working in McD's, Strabucks or another dead end job, how are you going to do this without French or lots of good luck.
Written and spoken French and English are must haves, not add on options for living in Québec. I am C1 and C2 same level as my other half who is French and trust me I am working hard as f*ck to advance my spoken and written skills in French and he is doing the same in English.
I have not even started to think about writing my CV in both languages, I am even thinking of hiring a professional to do this for me!!!
I have friends who have done intensive language courses and have achieved B2 and even C1 in 6 months, it is possible, but you have to put the effort in.
Before someone flies of the handle, this is my point of view and does not apply to all cases.
I am of course speaking from experience too. So I will give my experience of moving from anglophone to francophone copuntry with basic French.
Basically I arrive in France the 26th March 2006 for a sabatical of 6 months, very little French, in fact the last time I had spoken French was my high school exam which I failed miserably.
After 6 months I decided to stay in France, I have about 80,000€ in the bank and had purchased a house (no mortgage). So I was in a pretty good position financially.
So I bought a car did the weekly shop, paid out for insurance and paid my taxes, unfortunately my other half at the time was not the frugle kind and thought that we could keep spending at the same speed we had done before. This was the start of our problems.
Firstly getting the little one into the local school, try doing that with basic French, trust me complete nightmare, not to mention some other problems that occured at the school. One good point is kids do adapt quickly and do pick up the language at a scary speed, unlike us adults.
So after two years of this that and the other, not working living of the savings, having kept the level of French at the strictly what I needed to know level, my other half comes upto me and says that there is not a lot of money in the bank. I said I know this but that my other half had not reduced the speeding speed.
The comment was well your just going to have to get a job, I am sure you can get a job speaking in English. So off I went to ANPE (french job centre) and was basically just laughed at when they saw my level of labguage and said that I would not find a job in the Charente Region with only English as the fluent language. Mr vous êtes en France ici, nous ne parlerons pas anglais au travaille.
Ok
so after 6 months of trying in the charente I had an interview with a comapny in Marseille, looking for an English person for their English clients. Cool I thought perfect, no problems with that. Had the interview at teh end of the interview was thanked and told in no uncertain terms that I had not got the jobs as I would not be able to communicate with my collegues at the required level. When I left the pffice I was almost in tears. The thought of having to return to the UK becomeing a reality was just not a very nioce feeling.
I then had another few months of agonising, my other half had decided to up sticks and return to the UK, I had given the house I had bought to my other half so that they could sell it and hhave the money to buy something in the UK so that the little one (i am not the dad) had a roof over his head. Cut a long story short we split up...
Just as things were looking bad I got a call from a company in Toulouse looking for an IT helpline person for their sites in the UK but based in Toulouse. Only Englsih required as they have englsih speaking staff. I got the job but still the first year was hell trying to communicate, so I got of my ass and started to learn French, and boy did I learn.
I had had 2 years not working,
Then it took me two years to finds a job that I could do with just English.
I now speak English and French to very high levels C1 & C2 for French and I al trying to change jobs. I have been applying for over a year and have had several interviews, but still they say the French level is not quite high enough.
So when I give comments about French I am speaking from experience, it is important and it is no surprise that they have changed the rules. To me it represents a reality and a level required to integrate correctly into the Québec working environment, I think even B2 is insufficient level.
France is French speaking country and Québec is a French speaking province, they want to keep speaking French and want to protect their language and identity. I understand, it's normal. So it is upto us to adapt. Yeah most people can speak English but do they want to speak English???
Unless you get lucky you are not going to get by with just English in québec and basic French will be good for going to the Epicerie.
Oh by the way Québec French is not exactly the same as French French either, and even for a French person can be difficult to understand as my other half found out in the Restaurant in Québhec and a long history with a Poutine and two old lady servers, who coincidently said they speak Englsih but didn't want to, but we could always go to the other restauarant over the road where they have an Englsih speaking server. The restaurant over the road was of course Mcd's lol
