I love that Canada's ruling class decided to sent out every amber and weather alert as presidential alerts. I have over a dozen phones on my desk letting me know that a MIRV is about to hit Toronto with air raid sirens. They can even get it without a SIM.
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If the phones don't have a Canadian SIM, they see it as the real category (Presidential alert) instead of it using the generic "EMERGENCY ALERT / ALERTE D'URGENCE". By the way, French isn't even a top 10 first language in Toronto and look how much space they're wasting on that.
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I'm no expert in Canadian french, but it seems to be changing the meaning? (Also not even top 10 ? Wow didn't expect this).
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Answering for myself: it would be fair to say that among people not speaking English, french is not in the top 10. Or that among native tongs, french is not in the top 10. But yet, french seems to be the #2 language people in Toronto understand.
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The number of people truly fluent in French is greatly overstated. Most people take French as a minor subject starting at some point in elementary school. Few people take it for 10th grade and beyond once it's no longer mandatory. It's semi-mandatory in 9th grade (high school).
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That's not enough for them to be at all fluent but people will often still state they know French. There's essentially a 2 tier school system where well off and smart kids get funneled into french immersion but many of them stop taking it. I know first hand you forget it all.
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I spent 10 years of school taking most subjects in French and was fluent in it but I cannot speak French at this point and mostly can't understand people speaking it. I can sort of read French and could almost write it. I could pick it up again in a few weeks if I had any reason.
I don't consider myself as really knowing French at this point even though I used to and I would say that nearly everyone who says they know it are greatly overstating it. They would need weeks or months of relearning it to actually be able to use it as a language regularly.
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Kids currently in French immersion are certainly fluent in it but that's gone in another 5-10 years. They don't let you use English for classes that are in French so you genuinely need to have a solid grasp of the language and are probably only a few years behind native speakers.
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