Socio-linguistic status of Croatian immigrants in Quebec

Abstract

The author presents the results of a poll conducted in three cities of the Canadian province of Quebec (Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrook). The aim was to ascertain the linguistic behaviour of Croatian immigrants in an environment which until recently (1977) was de iure monolingual but the facto it has been bilingual for two centuries (particularly Montreal). The poll (27 questions) covered 59 informants of various ages and professions, all of them belonging to the first generation, except for 5 children, aged 10-19, belonging to the second generation. All the informants speak Croatian, 10 of them do not speak French at all, and 6 poorly. At work, 35 of them use French, mostly in combination with English, which is the only language used at work in 12 cases. In the family, 22 informants use Croatian only, 4 English only, 1 French only; others are multilingual. Children speak Croatian in 13 families out of 17 (3 families are mixed), and in 4 mixed families the children do not speak Croatian at all. Very frenquent trilingualism (Montreal) is not conductive to the preservation of the mother tongue, which will become critical in the second generation. This phenomenon will have to be followed with care and investigated systematically.