I want to be bilingual, and my new son will be educated in french immersion. Where I live, we have 26% french speaking (mother tongue) people, and the ratio is even higher in the industry that I am in - forestry and logging.
Last fall, I had the privialage of working far up north, and I spent 10 weeks 40 miles in the bush with two fellows from Quebec who spoke not one word of English. Me, I spoke very little french.
We hung out in the evenings in the trailer and yacked back and forth, him trying englishizing his french, me trying to get my ideas across in frenglish. It worked great - though we each tended to use our arms too much to describe things. Good fellas they were.
The other guys I worked with were Cree - I completely struck out there when they fired up their native tongue.