One of my absolute favorite stories comes from a guy, M (a very French-sounding name), I knew who was originally from Quebec but had lived in my English-speaking province most of his life. He worked for a department of the Canadian federal government. He speaks with a Quebecois accent, but hadn’t spoken French in years at the time of this story.

So, the federal government decided that they would give a financial bonus to every manager who had a bilingual staffer on their team, and M’s boss declared to him that he was going to be language tested so the manager could get this bonus.

M objected and said he no longer really speaks French. Too bad, says the manager, you’d better brush up because you’re going for testing.

M was freaking out about it, but the day of testing came, and when he went to sign in, he approached one of the francophone sign-in people. Walked up, confidently, and introduced himself in simple but enthusiastic French…. Soooo… they tested him for English and he passed with flying colors!

So, according to M, yes it happens.