French loanwords in Quebec English: Bilingualism, language proficiency and intraregional variation

The article examines the issues associated with the difference in the relative frequency of French loanwords in Quebec English in Montreal and other cities of this Canadian province. The existing studies note that the loanwords with fewer occurrences are more widely used outside Montreal, the largest and most bilingual city in Quebec. The study illustrates this phenomenon with regard to the use of French loanwords in X (formerly Twitter) publications for the period from 2014 to 2024. It provides statistics on the use of various French loanwords in Montreal, as well as in the other major cities of the province: Quebec City, Saguenay, Gatineau, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières. The research seeks to explain this counterintuitive observation, as bilingualism is generally thought to facilitate and encourage borrowing. To this end, the paper discusses the nature of bilingualism in Quebec, its historical and cultural origins, as well as the geographical and demographic boundaries for the different levels of bilingualism and the English language proficiency in the province. The study concludes that less frequent French loanwords are relatively more widely used in Quebec outside Montreal because bilinguals there, speaking almost exclusively French in everyday life, tend to have it as their dominant language and therefore rely on French as a mediator when expressing concepts in English.