Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by harls

Here's an anecdote -

I have 2 kids, they have a Québécoise mother. They are fully bilingual, go to French schools, have no accents when they switch from French to English. I went to Manitoba a couple of weeks ago. On the plane, I watched my kids use the in-flight entertainment.. they ask you what language you want. English, of course.

My kids hate French tv. It's pretty sad because I discovered a lot of great Québec TV shows as a blockhead.

If you mean they prefer to watch movies in the original version rather than the dubbed French version, that's quite understandable.

Although a few times, the French version is actually better. For example that series, Married with Children (anyone remembers? ), I've always found it to be way more hilarious in the French dubbed version. When I first heard the original English version, I was so underwhelmed. Perhaps because it's the sort of humor that suits French more than English. And also the actors who dubbed it were excellent (the husband in particular, his voice is 10 times better in French).

• Video Link

"Milwaukee, cette ville qu'on a bâtie autour de ta mère."

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

fair enough. we all have our anecdotes. I recall that on my last visit to Paris, while speaking English to my wife on the metro, there were two occasions when a guy came right up to me and started bellowing (in French) all these anti-American sentiments and derogatory insults about the character of English people.

You self contradict yourself.

[kool maudit]

He really doesn't. You're picking at his statement because you don't like what he has to say.

There really do exist ill-tempered Continentals who do not place as much of an emphasis on 1776 as you might see in, say, Boston.

From some angles, the animal has five eyes.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

You self contradict yourself.

no I am not, as both Americans and English/British were being disparaged.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

no I am not, as both Americans and English/British were being disparaged.

Metropolitan French have long cast disapproving eyes and made disparaging remarks regarding their English neighbours.

And, yes, it makes no difference if they were UK citizens, Americans, Australians etc. They're all le meme chose

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Metropolitan French have long cast disapproving eyes and made disparaging remarks regarding their English neighbours.

And, yes, it makes no difference if they were UK citizens, Americans, Australians etc. They're all le meme chose

Even if Quebec, "les Anglais" is still a very common term for the groups otherwise known as "Anglo-Quebecers" or "English-speaking Canadians".

I heard it for the last time just a couple of days ago.

[New Brisavoine]

In other news, the Queen of Canada has just died. Pretty sudden and unexpected.

The new députés in the Assemblée nationale of Québec will have to swear allegiance to Sa Majesté le roi Charles III. I wonder how well that will go down with many of them...

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

He really doesn't. You're picking at his statement because you don't like what he has to say.

I think I am a little bit more acquainted with the average Frenchman in the street than he is. I'm telling you you almost never hear things about the Brits in France (except to mock their food, but it's usually said ironically, not in a serious way). You're free not to believe me based on the one experience of someone who was only briefly in France if that suits you better.

[harls]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Although a few times, the French version is actually better.

I would say 99.9% of the time, most Quebec people would like to watch a movie in its original language. That's just my experience. Maybe in Gaspésie or Abitibi it's different.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

In other news, the Queen of Canada has just died. Pretty sudden and unexpected.

The new députés in the Assemblée nationale of Québec will have to swear allegiance to Sa Majesté le roi Charles III. I wonder how well that will go down with many of them...

There is serious talk of changing it:

https://www.lesoleil.com/2022/05/02/shir...a-reine-616983eff38c3518a1bc6917f38b3824

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

I think I am a little bit more acquainted with the average Frenchman in the street than he is. I'm telling you you almost never hear things about the Brits in France (except to mock their food, but it's usually said ironically, not in a serious way). You're free not to believe me based on the one experience of someone who was only briefly in France if that suits you better.

We could trade anecdotes all day, but that leads down such a boring and pedantic road. Trying to prove the superiority of one group through anecdotal evidence is only slightly less tedious than debating about angels dancing on the heads of pins.

That evolved monkeys be jerks to different evolved monkeys is as old as the species itself. Let’s maybe aspire to something better, perhaps.

[mousquet]

I didn't know their queen was dying while I said something that might have pissed them off a little bit in this thread.
I just saw it in the news and wasn't aware, didn't do it on purpose. It's not my fault.

I'm a French Republican and I think their queen was a regular person entitled to God as we all are.
So I wish her a most enjoyable trip up there in the universe.

She joined her hubby that she'd lost a little while ago. That reminds me of my grandparents, they died pretty much at the same time too.
These old-fashioned couples married to death are always a most romantic and lovely story...
Respect to that.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by thewave46

We could trade anecdotes all day, but that leads down such a boring and pedantic road. Trying to prove the superiority of one group through anecdotal evidence is only slightly less tedious than debating about angels dancing on the heads of pins.

That evolved monkeys be jerks to different evolved monkeys is as old as the species itself. Let’s maybe aspire to something better, perhaps.

It's not a question of superiority. It's, as Mousquet rightly pointed out, a question of indifference. The French are mostly indifferent to the British. It's not a people who agitate their mind (it used to be, in the 18th and 19th centuries, but not anymore). Nowadays it's the Americans who agitate French minds. The French talk a lot about the Americans, often in clichés ways, and you hear lots of anti-American comments in daily life, said in the same cool and matter-of-fact way I heard in London regarding the French. You do not hear comments about the British, that's extremely rare, except for food like I said.

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by harls

I would say 99.9% of the time, most Quebec people would like to watch a movie in its original language. That's just my experience. Maybe in Gaspésie or Abitibi it's different.

It’s a generational think I would say. Younger demographics tend to avoid anything that is dubbed so that they can experience a movie or series the way it was designed. Nothing worst than bad dubbing to kill the immersion. I tried to watch Money Heist in English and it was terrible. That’s my experience is the larger urban centres at least, but yeah maybe things are different in Gaspésie and Abitibi.

I notice that old people tend to not care if it’s dubbed - they actually prefer it this way more often than not. I personally can’t stand anything that has been dubbed - it’s original language with subtitles all the way for me.

[vanatox]

Originally Posted by harls

I would say 99.9% of the time, most Quebec people would like to watch a movie in its original language. That's just my experience. Maybe in Gaspésie or Abitibi it's different.

*Most perfectly bilingual Quebec people

Otherwise dubbed versions are the most popular. Personally, I am very 50-50 on that even though I consider myself bilingual. For any non-French content, I watch the dubbed version or sometimes l use subtitles. And i am not old, I am in my thirties.

[New Brisavoine]

Le Devoir has an interesting take on what's happening today.

The queen of Canada, seen from Québec

The surprising longevity of Elizabeth II will not have prevented, at least in Québec, her being a not very popular monarch

https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/754188/...beth-ii-la-reine-du-canada-vue-du-quebec

[New Brisavoine]

A few translated excerpts from the article:

Queen for 70 years, Elizabeth II does not, however, hold the record of the longest reign over Canada. It is Louis XIV, the Sun King, who reigned longest over the territory bearing that name: 72 years.

Under Elizabeth II, 17 prime ministers succeeded each other at the head of Québec, from Maurice Duplessis to François Legault. This surprising longevity will not have prevented Queen Elizabeth II from being, at least in Québec, one of the least popular monarch of all times. According to a Léger poll, only 12% of Québéc's people supported the monarchy in 2021. In fact, 74% of Québec citizens think that a crown should not govern them. This figure climbs to 81% when only French-speaking Québécois are polled.

The very symbol of the queen does not go down well [in Québec]. In 1954, when Donald Gordon, president of the Canadian National Railways, announced that a new hotel under construction in Montréal would bear the name of the monarch, indignant demonstrators made themselves heard. Opinion leaders of the French Canadian society huffed and puffed asking for this grand hotel to bear the name of someone from here, for example Maisoneuve, the founder of the city. Why name this establishment after Queen Elizabeth II? When the hotel was inaugurated in 1958, a whole VIP assembly of US personalities was invited, which reinforced the idea of a dispossession. The queen herself only stayed briefly in this establishment, the following year.

In 1951, before her coronation, the princess had come for the first time to Canada, accompanied by her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, on the occasion of a visit to this Dominion of the British Commonwealth. [...] In Québec City, the heir to the throne followed more or less the same path as General Wolfe, to whom she owed the power to reign over this territory. By setting foot on the spot where the general had landed with his troups on September 13, 1759, at the start of his attack, she sat in a convertible limousine to ascend, like him, Gilmour Hill, before reaching the Plains of Abraham.

The article then goes on about how despite the historic significance, the Québecois population of 1951 didn't seem to care, and applauded enthusiastically the princess, with the Le Devoir reporter writing a rapturous portrait of the princess, "prettier and slender than pictures of her had led us to believe". They contrast that with how the mood in Québec had changed completely by the time of her visit in 1964, when there were protests and riots due to her visit, and fears about her security.

The queen derives her authority in principle from God. Her [or His, it's not clear in French] supreme authority was invoked by the authorities to justify, now and then, political power struggles. In 1962, to express his refusal of a pay rise in the civil service, prime minister Jean Lesage theatrically declared: "The queen does not negotiate with her subjects." He was immediately contradicted by René Lévesque, one of his most influent ministers. In 2014, to reject the accusations of fraud which rained down on her, former lieutenant governor Lise Thibault, for her part, invoked in front of the courts the sovereign immunity of the Crown that she was representing.

The article ends with the fact the death of Queen Elizabeth II comes just after a constitutional reform in Québec which will allow the Assemblée nationale to survive the monarch (there was a loophole before that constitutional reform, which meant the death or abdication of Elizabeth II would have disbanded the Assemblée nationale).

[MolsonExport]

^Interesting article.

il faut considérer que des langues canadiennes auront léché le derrière de millions de timbres de sa Majesté.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

A few translated excerpts from the article:




The article then goes on about how despite the historic significance, the Québecois population of 1951 didn't seem to care, and applauded enthusiastically the princess, with the Le Devoir reporter writing a rapturous portrait of the princess, "prettier and slender than pictures of her had led us to believe". They contrast that with how the mood in Québec had changed completely by the time of her visit in 1964, when there were protests and riots due to her visit, and fears about her security.

The article ends with the fact the death of Queen Elizabeth II comes just after a constitutional reform in Québec which will allow the Assemblée nationale du survive the monarch (there was a loophole before that constitutional reform, which meant the death or abdication of Elizabeth II would have disbanded the Assemblée nationale).

The loophole would not have mattered, since she was considerate enough to die during the electoral campaign.

[New Brisavoine]

Justin Trudeau aired on French television saying (in French) how he will miss the queen. You don't quite see Justin Trudeau on French television everyday!

PS: He shaved his beard?

PPS: Ah, they even have a French reporter now live from Vancouver, saying how the queen was super liked in Canada from one end of the country to the other end (she must not have read that Le Devoir article...).