How is life in Montreal without speaking French?

Ok, this one I’m gonna shoot straight to you from my own walk of life. If you’re planning to live, work and have fun in this glorious town of mine, make sure you starting thinking of means to learn the language and I’ll explain why.

I grew up between the islands of Montreal and Laval, moving in Canada at age 6. As an immigrant settling with my family right before the 90’s when the U.S.S.R. was collapsing.

So now that I gave you my background, I can’t hide the fact that luck literally stuck me like a lightning. I went to French school and began learning the language from elementary all the way to private college.

Throughout this journey, I’ve made many friends, both Canadians from descendants of colonials, but Native Canadians (First Nations) as well and of course, almost any other nationality you can think of.

The point I’m trying to make is that Montreal’s multiethnic identity is here to stay forever and you’re going to miss on a lot of fun conversations, life experiences, cultural exchange practices and many other things if you decide to strictly stick with English.

The short answer would be YES, you can live in MTL by only speaking English. But you better be prepared (unfortunately) to face situations that may leave you feeling salty. This never-ending language brawl between French and English has been going on since the Renaissance days.

I can almost guarantee you that you’re going to come in contact with cases where a teller working in a small boutique, for instance, will insist to serve you only in French and except you to respond only in that language also. Let me go further than that lol, there are numerous separatists (Quebecers mainly) who will give you a hard time. For nothing.

Bottom line is, French will become inevitable in your daily life. I wish I could allow you to feel this great superpower I have within of speaking Franglais or Frenglish, a salad chop style of mixing these 2 languages together within your speech. One can literally start a sentence in English, after finish what’s left after the comma in French.

Not to mention the inside jokes, cultural references, sayings, proverbs and whatnot involved within.

To sum it all up, I suggest you learn the language at your pace without wanting to become a writer someday. Just enough so you can understand what’s being spoken around you. And avoid awkward moments from time to time.

I’ll write an article about this someday, just got inspired.