English vs French

I think if an English person has difficulty in speaking French and the French person continues the conversation in English, we can't assume that he is feeling sorry for us. If he is, that would be a particular case but I would give the Frenchman the benefit of the doubt and say if he wanted to relate in English, why bother feeling sorry. Everybody has their own limits as far as language abilities is concerned and the average bilingual French Quebecer doesn't have to feel sorry for anyone if he is capable of operating in both languages. That said, it is often difficult for the new immigrant or resident anglophone not to feel challenged by someone speaking the extra language when he doesn't. That challenge may be wrongly taken as a threat to their ability to communicate and immediately the anglo will more easily cop out or put up barriers to hinder communication. I have had friends from English Canada who started reacting that way but then when they realized they had a chance to meet people from a different culture, they became more understanding of a need to drop their barriers and attempt to speak the major language in this province. The city is multicultural and there is no way an anglophone is going to want to stay on unless he/she makes some effort to bridge the language barrier. The francophone has the advantage of saying we are all in a French province where the major language is French, so technically he doesn't have to feel that French is secondary to English. I was happy reading Ramsey's book on the French Canadian question years ago where I became aware of the intricacies of how language, law and culture are intertwined in Quebec. Having read that and witnessing the quiet revolution, the FLQ crisis, the Levesque era and current politics, I don't need to read this read this book. Why read something I already know. I could write my own book on the subject. The bigger issue is to see that French makes it to the rest of Canada for real bilingualism to occur.