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linc.cis.upenn.edu>Here are a few notes about points raised by different subscribers concerning the so-called "banning" of English in Quebec: To Ellen Prince: Quebec and Canada are different from the United States in more respects than are superficially evident. While the U.S. long acted as if it were truly a "melting pot" and has only recently begun to realize that it may in fact be a "tossed salad", the very biculturalism of Canada has from the very begin- ning always had the practical effect of discouraging Canadians (as opposed to British colonial officials) from trying to sup- press immigrant cultures into a single "Canadian" one. In this respect, Quebec in particular is no different from Canada as a whole. The flourishing Vietnamese and Haitian communities in Montreal attest to this cultural diversity and prove that a group can retain its cultural identity even when it adopts French as the language of education and business. The particular goal of the linguistic policy of Quebec is not to force immigrants to lose the rich culture they bring with them but to add it to the tapestry of cultures in Quebec, of which the numerically-dominant one happens to be the culture which has evolved from that of the first French settlers starting in 1608. The sense in which Quebec is protecting its own culture is that, by encouraging the official use of French, immigrants come to be aligned linguisti- cally with the group already numerically-dominant in the prov- ince, rather than reversing the demographic balance by joining the economically attractive English-speaking group which is dominant in North America as a whole. Concerning "charcuterie": it is true that, in Standard French, this word has come to designate (a shop for) the making and selling of pork dishes, but this meaning does not seem to be the predominant one in Quebec French. Etymologically, the word is related to "chair" and does not specify the type of meat being used. Before looking at the Petit Robert, I would have sworn that the word does NOT imply pork; the definition I would have proposed and would still propose for Quebec French is: (i) a place where processed meat is sold (as opposed to unprocessed meat, as sold in butcher shops) or (ii) the processed meat itself. Any kind of meat can be used: beef, pork, turkey, etc. Since nobody forced the Charcuterie Hebraique to choose that name, I suspect that they did so because they have the same definition of "charcuterie" as I do and therefore did not see any contradiction in the terms. This hypothesis is reinforced by the fact that there is not a single pork item on their menu (I was there at Christmas, so I could check this in person); it's all beef and chicken. The owners may also have consulted the bilin- gual "Dictionnaire canadien/Canadian Dictionary" (1962ff.), which gives "charcuterie" as the sole translation for "delicatessen". *********** To Margaret Fleck: Your comment on the different varieties of English is compatible with my reasons for saying that Quebec and France French are no more different than American and British English. I did not want to write too much in the first message and thus did not elaborate on the reasons why I made that state- ment, but, given your comment and that of Bert Peeters, I would like to make my position clear. It is true that, for someone who is not used to hearing Quebec French, it first seems to be drastically different from France French. This difficulty is to be attributed to a number of phonological characteristics that differentiate Quebec French from most geographical and social varieties of French spoken in France. There are also a number of lexical and idiosyncratic differences, some of them impeding communication (like the use of "magane'" for "abime'", among other meanings), others only requiring a fraction of a second's reflection in order to guess what their meaning is (e.g., "engraissant" for "qui fait grossir" or "ca a pas d'allure" for "ca a pas de sens"). Syntactically, however, all the social varieties of Quebec French which I know of basically do not differ from the corresponding varieties of European French (one has to make sure that the varieties compared are compatible; that is, one must not compare academic European French with informal working-class Quebec French!). Another reason why Quebec French is usually considered as being difficult to understand is other people's relative lack of exposure to this dialect, which perhaps makes it seem quite exotic. No matter whether one is a student of French like Bert Peeters or a native speaker of French who grew up in Europe, the almost total unavailability of Quebec French in the non-Canadian media makes it almost impossible for a non-Quebecois to become familiar with it outside of Canada. The same thing happens to me with certain dialects of European French which are not very well represented in French films. I would wager that many non-Pari- sians have considerable difficulty with recent argot from Paris when it appears in French films. E.g., Pierre Merle's 1986 "Dictionnaire du francais branche'" lists "zonga" as a slang term for `marijuana'--it's the Verlan-deformed version of "gazon" `lawn, grass'. It might be difficult for Bert Peeters to imagine how hard it is to understand British English, and even academic British English, for a French learner of English who has been exposed mostly to American English: every single time I listen to a British speaker, it takes me a few minutes to remember the most important features of their phonological system in order to understand them. Can you imagine, now, what kind of problems I experience with Australian English, even in its academic form? I once was unable to understand a young Australian man enough to carry on a conversation with him even though he valiantly kept on talking to me for several minutes. Once again, the important phonological differences between American and Canadian English on the one hand and British and Australian English on the other, combined with a relative lack of exposure to those varieties, account for the comprehension problems I keep experiencing. The same reasons are very likely to apply to Bert Peeters' problems with Quebec French, even in its academic form. Finally, the tremendous prestige of Parisian French vis-a-vis non-standard dialects (like regional patois) is so great that many native and foreign speakers of the standard must be totally unprepared for the fact that an entire province with millions of speakers has its own everyday standard which is consistently different from what they believe to be the only correct French. In this regard, it's known that social differences can affect speakers' perception of their mutual comprehensibility; e.g., all linguists and most speakers regard the Laguna and Acoma languages of two neighboring New Mexico pueblos as mutually intelligible, but some Lagunas who don't like Acomas have been heard to say that they "cannot understand" Acomas. I agree with Margaret Fleck that, at some point, we might have to concede that differences between two varieties of what we now consider to be a single language become so great that we may be tempted to speak of two different languages. In the case of French, however, it seems that the two varieties that are drift- ing apart are spoken French vs. so-called standard French, the latter either in its newscaster version or in its written form. Different geographical varieties of spoken French, on the other hand, show surprisingly few syntactic differences. In any case, though, the question of deciding when two varieties are different enough to be called two languages raises such difficult political issues (which I am not planning to address further here) that most linguists treat it as at least partly a non-linguistic question. E.g., someone once said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. At the very least, one would have to consider the issue of which aspect(s) of grammar have to change in the differentiation of dialects into languages: how would we, for example, evaluate two varieties whose syntax was identical but whose phonologies were so different as to prevent intercom- prehension (if such a situation is possible)? ************************ To Charles Hoequist: The French language has survived in Quebec, in spite of the British rulers' efforts to eliminate it, mostly because of the strong influence of the Catholic priests who dominated the life of the French-speaking population until 1960. Many modern Quebecois characterize the regime of the priests in the following way: they told French-speaking Quebecois to remain in the countryside, grow wheat and raise cows, make lots of chil- dren, and avoid any urban jobs which could make them rich, because money and cities were sinful. The result of this situa- tion was that, even in those areas where English-speakers immi- grated (as in the Eastern Townships), there was in most cases basically no contact between French-speaking Quebecois and the English language, and no real reason for them to want to acquire it. Until 1960, for example, the Catholic Church controlled virtually all francophone schools and did not emphasize the teaching of English. Things have now changed drastically: the influence of the Church is much more limited, and it is no longer considered sinful to be successful and wealthy. Lay Quebecois have increasingly taken control of the destiny of their province, and they are proving to be quite successful at it. This results in more openness to the rest of the world, and the immediate rest of the world is Eng- lish-speaking, so there is now much more contact with English. It is very possible that some Quebecois resent the economic success experienced by their English-speaking neighbors in the province, but I myself feel that the nationalist movement ob- served in Quebec in the 90's is not fueled by a desire for revenge but is rather a consequence of the growing conviction that Quebecois can take care of their destiny more successfully without the rest of Canada. In this respect, the present nation- alist wave is different from the one that led to the '80 referen- dum, which presumably failed because it was not backed up by a strong economy and may have seemed rather spiteful. With respect to Paris dictating to the whole world what French should be: does the United States adopt all the words and spellings of British English? Obviously not! In fact, the Americans have imposed some of their spelling reforms on the British (e.g., Noah Webster's proposed "public" and "music" ousted the British "publick" and "musick"). If Quebecois feel that "stop" is an English word and that it is therefore prefera- ble for them to use "arret", why not? Another example is "fin de semaine": we have used this idiom instead of "weekend" for ages; why should we change it now? The fact that a few lexical items differ does not suffice to take the two varieties of French so far apart as to make them no longer the same language, just as the lexical differences between American and British English do not create two languages. As for the use of "joyerie" instead of "bijouterie": I have NEVER seen the former word used in Quebec, but, even if isolated individuals use it (perhaps mistakenly or as a joke), we still cannot draw from this any conclusions about the whole Quebecois variety. If you ask Quebecois, I suspect that not one of them will accept "joyerie" as a possible word for "jewelry". E.g., "joyerie" is not in any dictionary or glossary that I have consulted. Maybe what you saw was the perfectly fine French word "joaillerie" (or a misspelling of it, or a pun on "joie" `joy'?). Still, "joaillerie" refers to precious stones, whereas "bijoute- rie" refers to all kinds jewels. I realize I've gone on rather at length about all this, but it seems to me that the purpose of the Linguist network is primarily to share information and not misinformation. The fact that certain English-speakers who once lived in Quebec later left because they felt linguistically oppressed is an important piece of information of the sort that French-speaking Quebecois will have to deal with if they want eventually to have a unified home of their own. But name-calling (like the outburst by a previous author about the "disturbing", "outrageous", "ultimate stupidity" of "linguistic fascism") does not get us anywhere. --Julie Auger [End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 182]Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue