A bilingual family shifts easily between languages

Peggy Curran, THE GAZETTE 

A bilingual family shifts easily between languages

Tomeo, 2, soaks up words and sorting them into the proper linguistic haystacks

John Kenney / The Gazette

Catherine Leclerc didn’t speak much English growing up in the Plateau and going to school in St. Michel.

“To me, speaking English was something adults knew, like getting a driver’s licence.”

Leclerc never did get that driver’s licence. But as a young woman, she had a boyfriend who was studying set design at the National Theatre School. The program operated in English and French, and everyone switched back and forth between languages.

“I found it fascinating and thrilling. I decided that was how I wanted to live.”

Today, Leclerc teaches French literature at McGill University, where she specializes in studying writers who dip and swing between languages in their novels, essays, poetry and songs. She speaks an accented but flawless English. She shares her life with Stephen Kawai, a bilingual anglo Montrealer of Japanese descent. Their son Tomeo, is 3. Though he is only learning to speak, Leclerc said Tomeo is already soaking up words and sorting them into the proper linguistic haystacks.

Leclerc and Kawai, an artist and chemist, are typical of a new Montreal reality – bright, bilingual thirtysomethings who grew up without the political baggage of their predecessors, moving easily from one language to the other – and sometimes both. “I live it every day.”

Ironically, Leclerc decided that if she was really serious about improving her English, she would need to leave town.

“Growing up in Montreal, you aren’t really unilingual. You kind of start as an upper intermediate. … Once you have the will to do it, you can do it. But it was hard to go beyond a certain level.

“Montreal’s bilingualism meant you could only improve so much before someone would politely switch to the other language.”

So she packed her knapsack and went to England for four months’ travel and immersion.

“Because I was from Quebec, my English was stronger and my French accent was weaker, so it was easier for people to understand me. So c’est encourageant.”

Though she didn’t know him yet, Kawai was growing up on a different section of the same street as Leclerc. He went to English schools and wasn’t really that fluent in French. “Then he went to France to study for three years, learned French and picked up a Parisian accent.” Leclerc, who drifts effortless from English to French in conversation, is fascinated by the differences in the way she and her partner use franglais. “He tends to sprinkle French words in his English. I’m more likely to use half sentences or phrases. Yet there are certain words we only use in French or in English. For instance, it’s always the sac à couche, never the diaper bag.”

Leclerc is also a big fan of phrasal verbs – expressions like “stand up” or “check it out” – that don’t exist in French.

“Once you know them, you can’t live without them,” she said. “Acadians used to conjugate them into their sentences. Il va checker ça out. I can understand why. You are able to use simple words to convey something that would take much longer to say.”

From the start, Leclerc and Kawai wanted Tomeo to learn both languages.

“When my son was little, he would pick up words indifferently. Sometime around time he turned 2, he began to understand which word to use with which person.

“Then he started translating – we would talk about his belly button and then he would call it his bidon button.” For Leclerc, there’s also a vicarious pleasure in discovering the joys of an English childhood. “I love Dr. Seuss!”