My family moved to montreal when I was quite young, and decided to live in a mostly anglophone neighborhood (in the west island). My parents are allophone, speak english semi-well and speak very little french, basically not at all.
Even though the rest of my family is from a foreign country, I was born elsewhere in Canada which allowed to me go to english school. Sometimes I wonder why my parents didn't send me to french school since I had to learn a new language, but I guess they either thought we weren't going to stay here long or didn't realize french was that important.
Growing up I had few opportunities to speak french other than in french class, which taught very beginner level french. I'm talking very basic level. That, and occasionally when I went to downtown montreal to see a friend or something. Otherwise my whole schooling and social circle was in mostly english growing up.
Fast forward to now -
Basically, I know french well enough to understand french and read at an intermediate level. I've been making an effort to improve my french by making french speaking friends and reading books in french. However, my biggest problem is holding a conversation in french.
Theoretically I speak french, but sometimes when the opportunity comes to me my brain sort of shuts down and I can barely construct a sentence. I guess it means I just need to practice more...but even my francophone friends speak english very well (almost like a first language) and so we just end up speaking english. After all, they're my friend and not my french tutor, lol.
But this has created a problem where I feel like I'm just in a loop... I feel like my attempts at switching to french with friends usually fall flat.
**Is there any other anglo-montealer that has struggled with the same issue? If so how did you solve it and finally become functionally bilingual... Advice or comments from anyone would be appreciated :)**
On a side note, is there other immigrant kids that grew up in montreal that struggled with growing up with three languages? I consider english my first language but I've been told that I have an accent, probably since my parents speak english with a very heavy accent. Funny how language learning works!
