Monday 24 March 2014

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me the Quebecois.

Ah Quebec.. stubborn, little Quebec. In what would seem an increasingly monolingual, standardised and globalised word, Quebec is like a child refusing to let go of its play toy when it comes to the French language. Now there's pride in your heritage, and then there is plain defiance.

Since the Parti Quebecois won a minority in September 2012, there have been increasing reminders that French should reign supreme in the language department in the small province, with the help from the OQLF. As an example, there were 60 signs erected around Anglophone schools in Montreal telling drivers to slow down, and the OQLF and its squad were ordered to take them down and replace them with their french counterparts. Similarly, all advertisement signs have to be in French, and if english was present it has to be at least 50% smaller than the french words. Also, a lot of international brands have had to accommodate these excessive laws if wanting to trade in Quebec. For example KFC is now PFK (poulet frit Kentucky), even though in other French speaking countries, France included, it is still KFC.



Similarly, Quebec is one of the only places in the world to have translated the red STOP signs to its French equivalent. 


The few Quebecer's I have met over the course of my life have all corrected me when I say 'Oh! Cool so you're canadian?!' Usually this question is met with the response 'Um no, I'm a Quebecker….' Which just goes to show the how incredibly the population can be- even the supposedly left wing students! The internet is positively plagued by propaganda-like literature written by and for the province of Quebec. These biased 'academic' articles use irrelevant metaphors and so-called 'precedents' (for example somehow making an incredibly vague connection between the Jews and Israel to the French Canadians and Quebec) to back up their idea that Quebec is a nation and  should be completely separate from the rest of english speaking Canada, and with it, eventually any form of the english language. 

1 comment:

  1. What is the story behind a slice of Canada being so stubbornly, fascinatingly, French?

    ReplyDelete