En anglais s’il vous plait?
Posted by Jose Alvarez on March 8, 2009
Have you ever walked into a store or a restaurant in downtown Montreal and seen this sticker on the front door?“Here we do business in French,” is basically how you get greeted at may retail outlets. Now, of course, you may think -as I do- that having these stickers on the doors of Montreal businesses is absolutely unnecessary. After all, it’s Montreal, I know you speak French. What I would really want to know is if I’m going to be able to order my cheeseburger in English. How about a “we speak English here” kind of thing? You know, just so I can feel more welcome. I looked for a “we speak English” sticker the other day as I walked into a clothing store. It must be somewhere, I thought, but in smaller print of course. But no, I couldn’t find it.
The “Ici on commerce en français” stickers are part of the Office québécois de la langue française’s (better known by anglos as the language police) latest campaign against the English language. And yes, I say against the English language because it is exactly that. It is more an attempt to suppress English than to encourage French. The message is very clear: here we do business in French, deal with it, if you want to get served in English, go to Toronto.
Well, surprisingly, in Toronto they’d be more than happy to serve me in French. A recent article in the highly acclaimed 24 Heures explains how Toronto is increasingly becoming French friendly. There are roughly 200 thousand francophones living in Toronto, the article states, and the population of French-speaking Torontonians seems to be on a rise. But unlike us Montrealers, our anglophone friends in Toronto aren’t putting up “here we do business in English” stickers in an effort to protect the English language. On the contrary, they’ll do anything it takes in order to make francophone customers feel welcome, including serving them in French.
Why then do francophone Quebecers insist in making anglos feel like strangers in their own home? Of course I’ve never had any problem getting served in English in downtown Montreal, but those blue stickers, along with some other French-language campaigns, seem to me almost confrontational. And let’s not mention the fact that you can get fined if the language police finds that your business is breaking one of the absurd language laws. Better make sure your English signs are smaller than the French ones!
What’s going on in Toronto is an example of how things should be done. Rather than confronting people, we should make them feel welcome. Anglophones are an important part of Quebec and they feel as proud of being Quebecers as francophones do. It is of course very important to protect the French language, but not at the expense of alienating others.
Hawn said
I could give you a few Hawaiian words to use. I didn’t know this was such a issue. I thought everyone was bilingual in Quebec.