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| | French as a Minority Language in Bilingual Canada |
 | | Canada is officially a bilingual country but, with nearly 60% of the population speaking English as their mother-tongue, and only 24% speaking French as their first language, some people are questioning whether Canada is truly a bilingual nation or rather, a bilingual nation on paper only. |
 | | This is because of a long history of French in Canada, with the original settlers coming from parts of France other than Paris, who continued to use the French from the Ancien Régime, while the Standard French in France used today evolved instead from 18th century bourgeois Parisian French. |
 | | But outside Québec, it is indeed a minority language, with 33.9% of the population speaking an Acadian variety of French, 4.4% in Manitoba, 4.1% in Ontario, and less than 2% in other provinces (Chevrier, 1997). |
| www3.telus.net /linguisticsissues/french.html (1419 words) |
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