Skip to content
Your daily dose of hockey
News

Cole Caufield: his French learning progresses

 Dose
Share : facebook icon twitter icon
Cole Caufield: his French learning progresses

When you think of the “face” of the Habs right now, Cole Caufield probably embodies it best. Even if he’s not the club captain like Nick Suzuki or a seasoned veteran like Brendan Gallagher, he’s still the most popular person on the team.

And while he’s only in the first year of an eight-year contract, Caufield is likely to be in that role for many years to come.

Naturally, being in Montreal means that the question of language often comes up. Without expecting the organization’s big names to be perfectly bilingual, a significant part of the fan base would at least like them to have some basic French.

Whether it’s broken or not, the simple effort to do so is already a big step forward.

And in a relaxed interview with Colby Armstrong (in which Caufield revisits a few topics, including the Taylor Swift concert he attended this summer), Armstrong asks him how his learning of French is progressing:

It’s coming along slowly. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m learning slowly. – Cole Caufield

In the same interview, Caufield says that the Quebecers on the team tend to test him on his French from time to time. He tries to listen to them when they speak in French to try to understand what they’re saying, even if he doesn’t understand everything yet.

I find it interesting that an English-language media outlet asked him this question, to be honest. Questions like this often come up in the French-language media, but this time it came from a Sportsnet employee in Colby Armstrong. Perhaps the latter understood the importance of French in Quebec during his (brief) stint in Montreal during the 2012-13 season.

But even if he’s still at the grassroots level, Caufield is still capable of saying a few words in French from time to time. We’ll remember his “Bonne nuit Tampa!”, and in his recent McDonald’s ad, he also slips in a French “Salut”.

Once again, it’s not tomorrow morning that he’ll be serving up a long speech in French, but we can still salute the effort. Because in the end, it’s the thought and effort that count.

And if Caufield ever wants to improve quickly, he need only follow Armstrong’s advice: in a restaurant, it’s easy to be good in French when you read the menu. I thought it was good.


En rafale

– Well done.

– Not a bad kid.

– Good decision.

– Can you believe it?

– The Pacers star dominated the month of November.

facebook icon Share twitter icon Tweet linkedin icon Share
Copied!
More Content