french language

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I grew up in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual Province so I took French from grade one all the way to 12. And I took the French Immersion program which meant that before Junior High all my classes where French. And no I am not French and was going to an English school, but the government felt that by immersing you totally in a different language you would learn it better, but by grade 12 although those who took the Immersion program did know French so did those who didn't but took all, what was for them optional, French classes through school.

And in Canada, especially in this part of the country not knowing French can be a huge hurdle in finding a job, more so where I live now as we are just across the border from Québec and the area is 50% French. So if the interviewer is French your going to have to be able to conduct the interview in French or go home, and even if your French is bad you won't get the job. They use the excuse you need to be bilingual but most people hiring are French themselves and some have little to no English and hire people with the same, the need to be bilingual story is usually just that a story. The English did the same though before the province became officially bilingual and if you were French you had it harder that someone who only speaks English does now. Why it is best to be fluent in both languages around here, although the French used in most of New Brunswick is its own subdialect and is not what you are taught in school, but you can usually still communicate (It is like if English was your second language and you had to talk to someone with a really strong accent for the first time, at first it would be very confusing). Thankfully I am in the North where the French spoken is similar to that used in Québec and what is taught in schools.

And as for French grammar, it makes more sense to me because of the immersion program, by the time I had my first English class in grade5 the teacher was like if you don't know what pronouns and adverbs are by now it's not my job to teach it. But if you never actually took an English grammar course how would you know by grade 5 what they where, you would be using them correctly but wouldn't know how to define those terms properly on a grammar test as by that time it was never taught to you. I think other teacher's weren't so lazy and understood that the Immersion students get dumped into English classes without any preparation, Math was the most annoying for me because I was always excellent at it and numbers are the same in both languages but the terminology isn't. So I would be sitting there knowing the answer in French but not in English so had to wait until someone in the class got it right or the teacher said what it was. And using commas instead of decimal points was another issue when doing Math in English for the first time.

And on the topic of subtitles, sometimes putting on French subtitles to English movies is good because you can see the French words and find them in the dictionary. I at times put on the French subtitles to French movies as well so that if a word I don't know is used I know how to spell it to find it in the dictionary.

Edit: Wow I rambled on a lot, didn't seem that long when I was typing it in the the quick reply box, lol