Multilingual Montréal (Quebec, Canada)

Montréalers have impressed me with the ease that they switch between French and English. The 2006 census

indicated 59.9% of the population speaks French at home while 19.4% speaks English; however, many Montréalers are bilingual French-English.

In Quebec, if information is provided in a public place, then the English text should be 40% of the size of the French text.

While in Montréal I visited Isabelle Simard’s multilingual speech-language pathology clinic where she provides assessments and interventions in many languages.

I have also visited and talked with people from the two universities in Montréal that educates speech-language pathologists. McGill is an English university and the University of Montréal is a French university.

Isabelle Simard and Sharynne at Université de Montréal

I enjoyed meeting with Prof. Susan Rvachew and Prof. Elin Thordadottir of McGill University. We discussed multilingual perception and production of speech and language, and ideas for assessments. We also discussed Susan’s new book: Developmental Phonological Disorders: Foundations of Clinical Practice.

Prof Elin Thordardottir, Prof Susan Rvachew, Sharynne