Do people in northern Vermont and New Hampshire speak French?

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GingerPinoy@reddit

I used to live in northern New Hampshire, right near the Canadian border, I don't think I heard French once in two years

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so if you went to a town in quebec near you, would the atmosphere be completely different? everyone speaking French, different architecture and culture in general, even though you guys are so close to each other?

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Y35C0@reddit

The New Hampshire / Vermont borders are almost like an optical illusion in a sense, they often give people a misleading impression about the relationship between the two states.

If you ignore the borders and just consider that humans concentrate near coastlines in gradients, you realize there is a reason New Hampshire has double the population of Vermont despite the puzzle piece look.

Yet even with this in mind, Vermont and New Hampshire are at the end of the day, two distinct governments, and have been the majority of their existence. For this reason if you look on google maps right now and zoom out a bit, you will notice the roads kind of line up with the state borders.

What I'm getting at here is that despite living in NH all of my life, in various different parts of it even. I have only entered the state of Vermont a handful of times, somewhere around ~4 times, most recently I visited for the solar eclipse (I'm 28 years old). Meanwhile I have been to Massachusetts and Maine uncountable times. I literally commute to Massachusetts for work.

But why the discrepancy?

I kind of think of Vermont as a lid to NH, much fewer people live there so there isn't much reason for me to visit unless I'm planning to go hiking, skiing, or the like. Yet if I want to do any of those activities, it's faster to just drive to Maine or northern NH, since that's where the roads are biased.

As you travel farther north into NH it's all just wilderness basically, people live there of course, but it's usually small towns that run on tourism. The very tip of NH is in fact a giant state forest, so in order drive to Quebec you would need to travel on this very small two lane road through the forest to finally reach a fairly rural town in Quebec.

Vermont is of course flipped, it's got tons of roads to Quebec, and so if anyone from NH in practice wanted to travel to Quebec, they would need to travel through Vermont first. Which they are already less likely to visit.

So Vermont might have some french influence, but I wouldn't be able to say the same about NH. I can only speculate though, as I've rarely ever been to Vermont! :)

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jonny300017@reddit

Do Texan, Californian, Coloradsn or Arizona Americans who aren’t Hispanic speak Spanish? No more than anywhere else in the US.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

Colorado is not even in the Mexican border, lol. And those places have a lot of Mexican influence, some cities having like 40% of their population being Hispanic, with Spanish named places. There are even groups from the original Mexicans before the Mexico-American war. If this is not a influence on those states, idk what it is

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jonny300017@reddit

So non-Hispanics in Colorado speak Spanish at a significant rate?

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

no, but the Hispanic population in Colorado is 21%

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jonny300017@reddit

Again, not what I’m talking about.

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TheRauk@reddit

Of the 26 people who live there, 8 speak it.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

the biggest city in Vermont, Burlington, is very close to the quebecoi border. So don't make jokes about the 51 people that live there

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dabeeman@reddit

Burlington is not the NEK.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

the what?

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HarveyNix@reddit

I'm guessing there's more crossover than in Detroit, where there seems to be a general indifference to the fact that there's a really quite different culture across the river in Windsor, Ontario. No real influence of Windsor comes over to the Motor City. Except for those of us who grew up on the U.S. side but loved watching Bozo, Mr. Dressup, and Chez Hélène on Canadian TV. Oh, and The Friendly Giant. Look up....waaaay up.

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TheCloudForest@reddit

A small number do speak French, also in Maine. But remember that Northern New England has few people to begin with, and French Canadian migration to the area was many, many decades ago.

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TheAndorran@reddit

Maine’s former governor, colossal asshole Paul LePage, grew up in Maine speaking French as his first language. Shame he isn’t a more pleasant person, because he really did overcome a horrific background to achieve great success. Then he told the NAACP to kiss his ass.

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dabeeman@reddit

he also said black people from CT were coming to maine to impregnate “our white women”.

dude fucking sucks. glad he fucked off to florida.

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TheAndorran@reddit

His voicemail to Drew Gattine was also fucking bonkers. Guy had the chance to be an inspiration and chose to be a scheisskopf instead. Florida can keep him. We only elected him with a third of the vote anyway.

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jeffbell@reddit

The old joke is that as you go further north in Maine the accent becomes more and more "clipped" until it fades of entirely to silence.

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PavicaMalic@reddit

Bert and I' s "Which Way to Millinocket?" is a classic.

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TheAndorran@reddit

You cahn’t get theah from heah.

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mcm87@reddit

Ayuh.

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RoyalWabwy0430@reddit

Generally, no, but *tons* of people in northern vermont have family in Quebec, and French Canadians love to visit vermont, so you see Quebec license plates literally everywhere you go and running into people speaking french in public is very normal.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

it's a similar cultural influence that quebec has in other provinces like new Brunswick and PEI, or very little compared to these?

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RoyalWabwy0430@reddit

I've never been to PEI, and have only driven through new brunswick once, so I really couldn't compare, but theres 600,000 people in Vermont vs 8 million people in Quebec, so Quebec definitely does have a degree of cultural influence over vermont. There was a massive wave of French Canadian immigration to Northern New England in the 1870s as well.

For the most part, towns in Vermont & such mostly feel very American and New England, moreso Anglo than French. Virtually everyone still speaks english as their first language, etc, its the French aspect is moreso a very large secondary feature - the area is Anglo/American with some French trappings if that makes sense.

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earthscorners@reddit

I lived in Burlington for many years!

Other people have spoken to the language stuff (no, not many Vermonters speak French, but it’s common to hear in public because of Quebecois tourists, and many signs are bilingual), but I’ll say the most marked place I see cultural exchange is in the folk music tradition.

I play fiddle and dance contra, and in the Burlington area the music and dance is often more inflected with French-Canadian traditions than elsewhere. The use of podothythmie particularly stands out. You do see it elsewhere, but it’s much more common in Burlington (Northern New England in general) than it is in, say, New York.

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

In my experience more Canadians came from New Brunswick - from towns like Shediac & Bouctouche. They came to Boston and lots of the small cities in Massachusetts. There are still some masses in French at the French churches and there are still Franco-American clubs and they sell poutine at the holidays (the old school stuff not the new french fry version.

Growing up my neighbor-friends' moms spoke French.

This was the 1970s and that generation is dying out and there's not jobs like there used to be in Massachusetts. Out factories closed down.

They were poor, uneducated conservative farm families with a bunch of kids and some came down to make money and went back home, and some stayed.

The French names that are so common here like Cormier, Boudreau, Thibedeau, & Béliveau.

Mass and RI have huge populations because of the factory jobs that are now gone...

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

that is really interesting. And there was a French Canadian neighborhood like you see from other ethnicities in Boston?

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

I was in a way smaller city (like 25K) but yes. They had a French area with a neighborhood name, like "French Corner". There was also an Italian section.

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MammothAlgae4476@reddit

I haven’t seen any of it at all personally, but my understanding is that the old mill towns way up North still has pockets of people that speak French at home. Our state welcome sign has “Welcome, Bienvenue” on it.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

and how is the relationship with quebec? can you see any influence of the french speaking province being so close to the area? so, like the architecture or just the general sphere

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cheftlp1221@reddit

The west side of Manchester, NH was/is heavily French-Canadian influenced. While the classic Quebecois are aging and French is no longer prominently spoken, there still remain lots of cultural markers.

St Marie Parrish is a French Gothic style church that dominates the West side skyline and there are several French-Canadian convents that are still active. French street names and French named store fronts are still common as well as 3-4 active French Canadian social clubs.

When I first came to NH from California in the late '80's the local cable TV company did not carry Univision or Telemundo but did carry 2 French language channels from Canada.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

that's really cool, even though Manchester is way more southern, I guess it still contains that French Canadian influence

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Acrobatic-Hat6819@reddit

Manchester was the site of Amoskeag Manufacturing, (one of) the worlds largest textile mills. Or really Manchester was built around the mills. They heavily recruited labor from Quebec in the late 19-early 20th century.

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MammothAlgae4476@reddit

A good few of us even in the South of the State are of French Canadian descent or have a French surname. I’m a quarter blooded myself.

Architecture, I’m not sure. We were never a French colony ourselves. I understand there was a big immigration wave of Quebecois workers around the turn of the century.

For one, the drinking age in America is 21. So when I was 18, I went with a bunch of friends to Montreal to drink at the bars for a weekend. Thats something a lot of kids probably still do around here.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

do french Canadian descent still have family in quebec?

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scoschooo@reddit

people are french canadian. no one in NH speaks French. not in most of the state

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AshTheGoddamnRobot@reddit

I had a coworker from New Hampshire who was French Canadian descent. VERY French name. Not only can she speak French... she lived in Quebec in the early 2000s.

Def not true about "no one."

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scoschooo@reddit

maybe this is more accurate: many people in NH have french Canadian ancestry and most don't speak French. To answer OP.

I am from NH born and raised there.

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AshTheGoddamnRobot@reddit

I'd say so. Kind of like Italians in Connecticut

I will say tho, in my experience, New England is the one region where tons of white US born ppl speak a second language other than Spanish, the most.

Does that make sense? Like you got French speakers up north but also Portuguese and Italian speakers down South. When I went to Provincetown it seemed many of the locals are Portuguese. Last fall I was in Logan Intl. and this white lady next to me was on the phone. In English, she spoke with a very strong Boston accent. No Rs at all lol. Then she switched to perfect Portuguese, but with an American accent, but fluent and natural Portuguese.

I loved it lol

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SkiingAway@reddit

The French-Canadian remnants in the region are from the waves of immigration and where those immigrants settled, not so much from proximity to the border.

For much of the region, you find the heaviest influence in the mill towns (Lewiston ME, Berlin NH, etc) that were most heavily populated by them, not necessarily along the border.

(The northern-most bit of Maine is the exception here where border proximity does equal heavy French usage)

History:

Much of the area near the VT/NH border in Quebec (particularly, the "Eastern Townships") was historically settled by English-speaking persons, most of those settlements got their start in English-speaking Loyalists who moved north of the border after the Revolutionary War.

It's also why most of the place names around there are English - places like "Cookshire-Eaton" don't sound very French - because they aren't.

There was less of the "your neighbors right over the border speak French" historically than you may think with regards to VT/NH.

Also on a topography note: The landscape changes pretty radically. Quebec largely turns into pretty flat farmland not far from the border. VT/NH largely....are not, so settlement patterns have always been very different between sides of the border.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

wow, nice history lesson on your reply. It's very interesting to know those details from that region. But also, that immigration you talked about from loyalists to Vermont, did that had any influence on the independence from Vermont in the 1780's?

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ashsolomon1@reddit

LIVE FREE OR DIE

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costumegirl1189@reddit

Literally, because seatbelts aren't required for adults in the front seat.

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MammothAlgae4476@reddit

Fuckin a right

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PPKA2757@reddit

Best license plates in the country.

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Master-CylinderPants@reddit

Best state motto. Your Route 66 plates look better.

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TopProfessional8023@reddit

Virginia has entered the conversation ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ ‘Thus Always to Tyrants’

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PPKA2757@reddit

Fair enough, I won’t fight you on that!

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antimeme@reddit

Live, freeze, then die.

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Entropy907@reddit

My buddy from far northern NH swears only in French.

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BocaGrande1@reddit

to a degree but there’s less back and forth than before . Folks from Quebec came into New england to work decades ago but that cross cultural exchange is largely gone

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MrLongWalk@reddit

A very small number do, but not many.

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TillPsychological351@reddit

The architecture of much of Quebec (with some notable exceptions) is mostly generic North American too.

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SkiingAway@reddit

Yeah, like 3 miles away from the historic old part of Quebec City you can find.....a sea of generic North American subdivisions that look virtually identical to what you'd find in the US.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

fr? I really thought that Quebec City and Montreal looked like a European city

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SkiingAway@reddit

Sure....in parts.

You don't have to go that far before it doesn't, though.

Picking on random areas, here's 5 mi from the old city wall in Quebec City: https://www.google.com/maps/place/46%C2%B052'23.3%22N+71%C2%B015'59.9%22W

And in Montreal: https://www.google.com/maps/place/45%C2%B029'26.6%22N+73%C2%B027'09.9%22W

(to be fair to Montreal - it's mostly more densely developed on the island).

You'll find the same in most of the smaller cities in the region too - the part that developed before the car might be dense, but there's a whole lot of the metro areas that are basically standard North American post-WWII subdivisions.

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deleted_by_reddit@reddit

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TillPsychological351@reddit

Old Quebec City, yes, probably moreso than any other North American city looks European. Montreal... you see European flairs, but it is unmistakably North American. But most of the rest of Quebec looks not much different from Ontario and New England.

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CtForrestEye@reddit

Smugglers Notch ski area used to have both English and French signs on the trails.

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ZaphodG@reddit

Jay Peak is split 50/50 between Quebec customers and US customers. They have poutine in the cafeteria.

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AshTheGoddamnRobot@reddit

I mean poutine could be just cuz its near Canada and influenced by them so poutine could just be a popular dish for locals.

Poutine is pretty popular in Minnesota and not cuz of Canadian tourists lol but we have strong Canadian influences and also love gravy and fries.

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TillPsychological351@reddit

They also allow Canadians to pay at parity with the US dollar.

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RoyalWabwy0430@reddit

Yeah lots of places in Vermont do that but its more for Quebecois tourists than locals I think

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TillPsychological351@reddit

Like the "No trucks" signs in English and French on the road to the notch.

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ziggygersh@reddit

That sign can’t stop me, because I can’t read!

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norecordofwrong@reddit

It’s not commonly spoken but NH still has Bienvenue on the welcome to NH signs.

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bonanzapineapple@reddit

Kingdom trails does that haha. Jay Peak too

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dabeeman@reddit

Many homes in Maine speak french

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Meilingcrusader@reddit

There are some. Our signs do say Bienvenue on it. We have a chunk up in Coos County, esp in Berlin who speak French, there's a decent Quebecois community in Manchester, heck I learned French in school because like a lot of New Englanders, I have French Canadian lineage. Rural Quebec looks a lot like Rural Vermont with the rolling hills and farms.

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SaintsFanPA@reddit

The short answer is that the French & French-Canadian influence is minimal.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

not even historically?

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SaintsFanPA@reddit

Not really. The French were the first to colonize Vermont, but it didn’t last long. As noted there are a couple of isolated communities in Northern Maine that historically spoke French, but no real Quebecois influence to speak of in VT and NH. French is possibly more popular as a second language than in, say Texas, but that would be about it.

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CommandAlternative10@reddit

There is a small town in Maine where the majority of people speak French at home. It actually borders New Brunswick but it’s close to the Quebec border.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madawaska,_Maine

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Buttermilk_Cornbread@reddit

Maine has the highest percentage of Francophones in the country

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lopingwolf@reddit

I remember having my mind blown when I found out my new Mainer friends thought of Canada as to the east, not the north. They were from north of Houlton.

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Ana_Na_Moose@reddit

Detroiters see Canada as being their southern neighbor

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dan_blather@reddit

And the Ontario side “suburbs” of Buffalo could be thought of as the Westtowns.

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norecordofwrong@reddit

Ha I’ve been to Madawaska like once. I had a client say “oh yeah I can meet you on Thursday” and they’re from Madawaska. We scheduled a zoom meeting.

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Rattlingplates@reddit

No

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oneirritatedboi@reddit

I live in Burlington and I haven’t heard many people around here speaking French.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

being so close to the border, don't you guys feel any cultural influence? c'mon, you guys are an hour away from Montreal, there isn't any french canadian bar? any french canadian channel on the tv, or radio? people going to quebec to do something?

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oneirritatedboi@reddit

Burlington is pretty diverse especially compared to the rest of Vermont but I don’t notice much influence from across the border. Though it might just be the fact that I’ve only been here since July and need to get out more.

I’ve heard that Coös County NH has a significant French-speaking demographic but I’m from the southern half of the state (which is basically just a purple version of Massachusetts) and I’ve seen very little influence from Quebec down there compared to other cultures. Just a bunch of old rich white folks mostly.

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YmamsY@reddit

They can’t even pronounce “Montpellier”

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Adept_Thanks_6993@reddit

I took a bus from NYC to Montreal once*. It was cool to see the bilingual signs once we got up there. Still very much in New York but French everywhere.

*Do not do this.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

i think Amtrak now has a line from nyc to montreal, maybe it is better?

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Dizzy_Lengthiness_92@reddit

I’m from northern Maine and my grandfather spoke fluent French. My mom never learned it and neither did I. One joke up there is everyone is fluent in three languages English, French, and swearing.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

don't you guys ever listen to a radio from quebec? or go across the border for something?

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ncconch@reddit

My mom came from a town in NY on the St Laurance River (border with Canada) across from Quebec. My grandparents were from Quebec and spoke French. Back in the 70s/80s, we had a friend that lived on the US side of the river and would meet up with someone from Quebec and he would trade the Coors Beer for the good Labatt's.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

are they influenced by quebecois culture influence? do they eat poutine, are Catholic, and consume French Canadian radios or tv?

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Spud8000@reddit

nooooo. not at all.

it is VERY localized to the Quebec side of the border

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

so closed but so different

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squidwardsdicksucker@reddit

In some of the Northern towns near the border, yes.

It’s definitely dying out though, once the 60s rolled around, the immigration from Quebec slowed down almost entirely. In Aroostook County and Coös County though about 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 people do speak French at home though so you do run into people every now and then who are Francophones.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

and do they consume French Canadian culture? eat poutine, are catholics, watch quebecoi TV and radio, sum like that?

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Current_Poster@reddit

When I was young, in junior high, they offered us the chance to learn Spanish or French. I chose French because I lived in a pretty Francophone area of southern NH. Historically- LaFayette Societies, old French-language newspapers, the whole thing. The Jr High itself was attached to a French-Canadian built Catholic parish.

Historically, they moved down into the area because of the old mills and factories- they were in competition with the Irish immigrant communities coming up from MA.

The thing is, the community was bilingual like that because families wanted to talk to older members for the most part. The younger family members could speak English as well as I can. Still, our cable package (growing up) included Channel 13 out of Sherbrooke. We got Nords games as well as Bruins games, on tv.

I'm much more likely to run into someone who speaks Spanish and not English than I am someone who speaks French and not English. (And I'm going to be honest, my French was not good. People in Quebec opted to switch rather than hear me beat up their language like that.)

Anyway, my sense of it was that there were much more distinctive Quebecquois communities before I was born, but by the time I rolled around they were about as French-Canadian as my family in Lowell were Irish. There were little touches, but nothing major.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

I think they either mixed into the American culture or moved back to Canada, right? it's a similar story for what is happening to Cajun French, and what happened to French communities in the Midwest descendent from French colonization( unbelievably that was a thing)

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Suppafly@reddit

I can't imagine a much larger percentage speak it there than anywhere else in the US.

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guywithshades85@reddit

I lived in Burlington, VT and in Plattsburgh, NY. Virtually no one that lived there spoke French. Although, they do get some French speaking visitors from Quentin.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

do people cross the border in any situation? it's 1 hour from Montreal, does it really feel like a completely different place and culture if people drive there?

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anneofgraygardens@reddit

I had a friend from northern Maine (he moved back to Maine ages ago and I haven't seen him since) who told me that everyone in his town was French-Canadian and spoke French. He'd moved to the town as a child and said he'd been made to feel like an outcast his whole life. Despite how helpful it would have been to learn French, he took Spanish in school because he didn't want to have anything to do with the French speakers surrounding him.

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

there is another reply talking about madawaska, really influenced by French Canadians indeed (even though they are on the new Brunswick boarder)

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ashsolomon1@reddit

My gfs side her dad and family is from northern Vermont near the border they do speak French but not as their main language and it’s definitely a dying bread

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Adaaad15@reddit (OP)

do they have any family in quebec? or go to quebec for anything?

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peacesigngrenades203@reddit

Not really. I’m from the Vermont border. What I think is mostly older people who emigrated from Québec still speak French. Like my uncle’s father. My uncle had lived on the U.S. side for 50 years and he rarely speaks it. He can though. My cousins don’t know any at all.

Most of the buildings in Burlington nowadays I think are built by a company called Pizzagalli Construction. They kind of have a theme. It’s not like what you’d see in Montréal. Lots of houses in Québec have second floor decks for some reason. It’s not they we build things in Vermont. The farms are laid out in skinny plots. You can actually see the difference on satellite images. It literally changes as soon as you cross the VT border.

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visitor987@reddit

Some in northern Vermont and New Hampshire speak French and others do not speak it. It also true for northern New York.

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Snackdoc189@reddit

I've know a bunch of, mostly older, people who speak French in NH.

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MeanTelevision@reddit

Many of us study a second language in school.

Hubs of people who speak it daily...I don't know of any French dominant speaking places in the U. S. offhand similar to Quebec, no.

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MontEcola@reddit

Some do. Most do not. It is not just near the border. It is people have a connection to Canada and still speak French at home.

Wilmington VT. The kids next door spoke both French and English. And kids down the road a way also spoke French at home, and they all had French names. This is very south in Vermont.

When I lived farther north in VT it was about the same. I knew some French people, but only a few. And most of them would speak it at home, but not in public.

Just my personal experience.

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sneeds_feednseed@reddit

Northern Maine, NH, and Vermont have the highest Francophone concentration outside Louisiana. I grew up in Southern Maine and a couple of my friends called their grandparents mémère and pépère

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Zardozin@reddit

The last big wave of cross border migration from Quebec was during the Depression.

By the nineties there were more Catholic Churches in Maine doing mass in Spanish than French.

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norecordofwrong@reddit

Less and less over the years. Some still do but it’s very rare these days.

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NHDart98@reddit

Fewer now than in the past, but many do. In a lot of the manufacturing cities throughout both states, large Quebicois minorities exist and there were French language Newspapers until the 1970s and some churches still have Mass in French.

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NoContextCarl@reddit

I mean, the culture is probably there and plenty of families with roots across the borders but I never encountered anyone in NH or VT that seemed strongly rooted in French Canadian heritage.

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RamenLoveEggs@reddit

Some do but English is more common.

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Vegetable-Star-5833@reddit

Never seen it but it doesnt mean there aren’t any at all

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ajfoscu@reddit

Americans in those areas not really, but during the tourist high season Burlington VT feels like a bilingual city

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Aggravating-Shark-69@reddit

I’d be willing to be one or two of them do

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Springlette13@reddit

Growing up in a mill town in NH there were kids at my school whose grandparents primarily spoke French, but I think that’s less common now. I definitely remember kids walking into our French class in middle school with conversational Canadian french. My dad’s aunt moved to the states from Quebec City as a young girl and always spoke with a strong accent. When her family visited they spoke only in French, including her niece who stayed with my parents for a few months to help out while my mom was sick when I was a baby. I had one friend whose extended family was nearly all from Quebec so gatherings at her house were a mixture of languages. Truthfully this all feels less common now than it did in the mid 90s when I was growing up.

There is an active local French club here, and poutine is on many menus. But I’d be hard pressed to think of other influences. Though, since I grew up here I might not recognize the influence as anything out of the ordinary or unique to places with Québécois influence.

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CalebCaster2@reddit

not if they can help it

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ScatterTheReeds@reddit

Yes, some do, and some in Maine do, too.

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TexasPrarieChicken@reddit

I’ve been up there, can’t say I heard any French.

I know in Manchester NH there’s a French speaking community. Apparently it’s an old dialect from Northern France.

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handsomesquid886912@reddit

No

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ATLien_3000@reddit

By and large, no.

Schools are English language. The language of commerce, business, local government is English.

Closest you'll get is that the default foreign language in local schools in some of those areas is French.

As opposed to (say) Florida or Texas where it's Spanish, or some areas of NYC or Southern California where it might be Korean, or some areas of Michigan where it might be Arabic. Etc, etc, etc.

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TillPsychological351@reddit

I practice medicine in northern Vermont. I have a handful of patients who speak French as a native language, but they're all at least 60 or older.

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StationOk7229@reddit

Parlez vous humma humma?

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Jumpin-jacks113@reddit

I have an aunt and uncle who live in Northern NY between Plattsburgh and Montreal. They’ve lived there since the 70’s, but are transplants from Connecticut. They speak no French at all.

I’ve known some of their friends since I was a kid. I detect no accent with them either.

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ImpossibleSir508@reddit

Yes but what few remain are very Americanized. French settlers were mass deported from the region (known as Acadia) to Louisiana after the French and Indian war.

Very few lived in the region and after that. And their descendants mostly speak English.

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MattinglyDineen@reddit

There are a number of towns in Maine and one in New Hampshire where the majority of the people speak French.

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Kevincelt@reddit

Some people do, but it’s not too many these days. There’s a large population in New England who are of French Canadian descent (around 1.9 million people or 13.1%), with probably the most French speaking area being in the far north of Maine where there’s some villages inhabited by people who speak a variation of Acadian French. Besides that there there’s fewer and fewer people who speak French since old people are dying who didn’t pass the language on, there’s a lot of assimilation pressure that’s difficult to overcome, and not as many French speakers moving to the area. There’s some architectural and environmental trends that extend across the whole northwest North America, but I don’t think these parts of New England would feel especially like parts of Quebec.

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1maco@reddit

People are saying no but Maine has ~2x the per capita rate of French speakers vs Louisiana.

In Northern milltowns, it’s not uncommon

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DistributionNorth410@reddit

I know a guy from NH who has lived in Illinois for decades. He speaks it as his first language and we chat in it sometimes. When he talks to family members of his generation back up there they speak French. But that's someone in their late 60s or early 70s.

There can be a significant number of French speakers in an area but if someone isn't around those specific folks they can get the impression that nobody speaks it anymore.

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jonny300017@reddit

lol nope

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IanDOsmond@reddit

At least when I was a kid in the 1990s, high schools in northern Vermont and northern Maine offered French as a foreign language. Outside of Boston, I could choose from Spanish, Latin, French, or German, and that is basically the list in popularity. As you went north, French got more popular and replaced Spanish as the top choice.

Other than that, though, not really.

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