World Englishes, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 493–502, 2012. 0883-2919 English as a minority language in Quebec CHARLES BOBERG ∗ ABSTRACT: The variety of English spoken by about half a million people in the Canadian province of Quebec is a minority language in intensive contact with French, the local majority language. This unusual contact situation has produced a unique variety of English which displays many instances of French influence that distinguish it from other types of Canadian or world English. The most obvious instances involve the adoption of French words or senses of words, though influence at other levels of linguistic structure can also be observed. This paper discusses the historical background of the contact situation and how this motivates hypotheses about its linguistic effects. It then presents both anecdotal and quantitative survey data that demonstrate empirically the distinctive character of Quebec English. It concludes by categorizing the individual examples considered into a typology of five distinct patterns of influence arising from language contact. INTRODUCTION Unlike English in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, or the rest of Canada, English in the Canadian province of Quebec, henceforth designated Quebec English (QE), is a minority language in every sense. Not only are native speakers of English a small minority of the provincial population (about 8% in 2006), but English has no official status in Quebec. In the 1970s, the Quebec provincial government introduced language legislation designed to sustain the vitality of French, Quebec’s majority language, partly by demoting English to non-official status and suppressing its public use. Since that time, English has had no legitimate role in local public life: the business of government, public administration, industry, commerce and civic life is supposed to be conducted entirely in French. A further effect of the legislation, which was viewed by many Anglophones as a hostile attack on their rights and on their two centuries-old historical status as one of the founding peoples of modern Quebec, was to diminish the size of the English community even further, by prompting an exodus of over 100,000 native speakers of English. Over the following decades, this was the main factor in reducing Quebec’s English-speaking proportion by a third. Prior to the legislation, English had played a prominent role in public life despite its minority status, being widely used, for instance, in business and on commercial signage, especially in areas with large English-speaking populations. In this bilingual context, there were comparatively few reasons for QE speakers to learn or use French and contact between the languages was more limited, manifesting itself more in English influence on local French than in French influence on local English. Today, by contrast, the intent of the legislation is to make English no different from the many other unofficial languages spoken by immigrants in their homes and social groups, which have no application at the broader community level: interaction outside the domestic or neighbourhood context requires French. Minority status of this type – not just in particular ∗ McGill University, Department of Linguistics, 1085 Dr. Penfield, Room 111, Montreal QC H3A 1A7, Canada. E-mail: charles.boberg@mcgill.ca C  2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd