Shopping in French
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Most francophones who live in a region where they are in the majority can be greeted and served in their own language when they shop.
In 2006, nearly all sales and service workers in the urban areas of Quebec knew French and used it at work. The proportion of sales and service workers who were able to converse in French was over 90% in the Montréal region and on the Quebec side of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA), two areas where the anglophone and allophone populations are both relatively large.
Outside Quebec, knowledge of French among sales and service workers varies by region. For example, on the Ontario side of the Ottawa–Gatineau CMA, the proportion of sales and service workers who knew French in 2006 was 41%. In Moncton and Greater Sudbury—the two regions with the largest concentrations of francophones outside Quebec—the corresponding proportions who knew French were 59% and 41%. However, fewer of those workers actually used French than knew the language.
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