Multilingualism 'a gift' for this Montreal family
Bill 96 has made language political, with Quebec's premier concerned over language spoken at home
Kimchi, chopsticks, Korean, French and English. It's just a typical dinner time at the Langevin Kim family home in Verdun.
At the table, little Jiho Langevin Kim can count to five in Korean, but in French, his three-year-old brain churning, he points to his fingers and says "comme ça, comme ça, comme ça."
Jiho and his five-year-old brother Taeho are bilingual, speaking French with their mum and at daycare, and Korean with their dad. Depending on who you ask, they are trilingual, partially understanding what their parents say to each other in English.
Andréanne Langevin is a francophone Quebecer. Her partner, Jung Yoon Kim, is originally from South Korea.
Legault comment sparks heated debate
Quebec Premier François Legault says the language spoken at home is one indicator of the state of French in Quebec, intimating that fewer and fewer Quebecers are speaking French with their families.
The latest data on language from the 2021 Statistics Canada census won't be released until August, but what languages are Quebecers speaking at home?
According to the 2016 census, just over 6.3 million people in the province called French their mother tongue, but answers are more nuanced when it comes to language spoken at home. About 5.7 million Quebecers noted they only ever spoke French at home.
WATCH | CBC's Sarah Leavitt meets the Langevin Kim family to talk language:
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