Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[dleung]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

What fun would be left on online forums without strawmen?

To be fair I see strawmen in all directions in this thread.

lol "both sides". So Biden's Poland speech ok now?

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yes, I know that song. Cool.

I was expecting a song that was critical of les Parigots. Since my song was a very sarcastic caricatural one.

Something like this, but focused on a city's residents, as opposed to a socio-economic class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCHi5apc1lQ

Nobody criticizes the Parisians in France. That gets you sent to the penal colonies in French Guiana immediately.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by dleung

So Biden's Poland speech ok now?

Arrogant, imperialist, very "Rambo" style.

The French like to mock that typical US style. Here for instance this great team of comic actors from the 1990s, mocking the Americans in this rendition of "The life of Jesus".

• Video Link

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Acajack

One of the places I lived in Ontario growing up had an anglophone majority and a sizeable francophone minority, and the anglo kids would joke that a "French breakfast" was a "Pepsi - May West".

Where I live the joke back in the 1980s was that the ideal French Canadian breakfast was "un Pepsi et un Jos Louis."

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

The sort of op-ed in the Le Devoir today that you'd never read in an Anglophone newspaper.

Interesting coming from her. She's a Québécoise but she works for both francophone and anglophone media. Usually in either language she's very harsh on Quebec and francophones, and quite soft on the rest of Canada and anglophones.

I guess maybe she's trying to be more balanced.

[MolsonExport]

I'm going to spend the weekend reading the latest editions of "Le Figaro"

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Guys, we're gonna have to stop this eventually, because the ROCers are going to think that in normal real life circumstances we'd all be speaking in English and not French with each other! (Confirming all of their suspicions.)

Speak white, 'stie!

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I'm going to spend the weekend reading the latest editions of "Le Figaro"

You should. Healthy reading. Mostly behind a paywall though. That's the Right-wing for ya!

This is one of their recent articles about Canada:

Québec, Montréal : dans quel quartier s'installer ?

Autant dans la métropole que dans la vieille capitale, certains secteurs urbains se présentent sous un jour nouveau et attirent de plus en plus de Français. Petit tour d'horizon de ces quartiers tendance.



https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/quebec-montreal-dans-quel-quartier-s-installer-20220928

PS : I do not recommend Le Monde anymore, as they have become woke-central.

[lio45]

What makes you think MolsonEx wouldn't like Le Monde...?

[New Brisavoine]

Hm, I see they have that article too (from last December).

Le buste de Champlain, le père de la Nouvelle-France, banni d'une université du Canada anglophone!

L'Université Trent, en Ontario, a retiré un buste de Samuel de Champlain, fondateur de la ville de Québec, arguant que sa vue serait susceptible d'outrager et de blesser certains étudiants. Jeune intellectuel québécois, David Santarossa critique cette décision et l'idéologique qui la sous-tend.



https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/le-bus...universite-du-canada-anglophone-20221202

[ErickMontreal]

.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I'm going to spend the weekend reading the latest editions of "Le Figaro"

As if it's somehow a bad thing that a dude in Paris reads Québec newspapers...

Read that with a clear head.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Where I live the joke back in the 1980s was that the ideal French Canadian breakfast was "un Pepsi et un Jos Louis."

In Acadia it's "two eggs, side by each, a side of toast and a Pepsi large........"

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Hm, I see they have that article too (from last December).

Le buste de Champlain, le père de la Nouvelle-France, banni d'une université du Canada anglophone!

L'Université Trent, en Ontario, a retiré un buste de Samuel de Champlain, fondateur de la ville de Québec, arguant que sa vue serait susceptible d'outrager et de blesser certains étudiants. Jeune intellectuel québécois, David Santarossa critique cette décision et l'idéologique qui la sous-tend.



https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/le...phone-20221202

Big deal - elsewhere in Anglophone Canada, angry mobs have taken down statues of multiple historical figures (including Queen Victoria in Winnipeg), changed names of universities (Ryerson -> Toronto Metropolitan), and renamed multiple parks and buildings in a sad attempt to correct perceived past historical wrongs, and to attempt "reconciliation" (whatever that is).

This is no different, and was not done in an attempt to humiliate francophone Canada. It is what it is. I do not agree with it, but this action must be viewed in the historical context of the times.

I just hope that when the current woketarian witch hunt has passed, that we will be able to take all these "offensive" statues (including Samuel de Champlain) out of storage and remount them on their pedestals where they belong.

[Acajack]

We know it is not really an anti-French thing, and recognize the entire movement as hysterical, even if some of the statues torn down are of people we aren't fans of.

[New Brisavoine]

In Martinique some far-left militants in favor of independence (which is opposed by a majority of Martinique's voters) destroyed the statue of Joséphine de Beauharnais on the central square of Fort-de-France, and the authorities did not dare to intervene, for fear of I don't know what.

• Video Link

Some of these extremists went even as far as destroying some statues of Schoelcher, the French MP who had been responsible for the abolition of slavery in the French Republic. Apparently, for them, having a "White man" honored for ending slavery is an outrage.

• Video Link

Macron weak on law and order, as usual. In the French West Indies as in Metropolitan France.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Where I live the joke back in the 1980s was that the ideal French Canadian breakfast was "un Pepsi et un Jos Louis."

The "breakfast of champions" I've heard the most reference to in Canada post-2010 would be Pepsi and cigarettes, although in my experience this is a more broadly blue-collar thing and not specifically associated with Francophones or Quebec (although almost certainly derived from older Quebec references).

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by dleung

lol what? No one here including myself would've ever known of the "frog" slur if you and lio haven't been always using that example to show that Francophones suffer from racism as much as the blacks/indigenous or something

I actually learned that in ~8th grade history class (in NS), at the same time that we learned "Limey" came from a British age-of-sail habit of eating plain limes to prevent scurvy. "Frog" was because frog legs were a delicacy in France around the same time.

In modern Canada/Anglosphere we do still see that kind of stereotyping although not so much the inverse ("French People" subsist on wine and baguettes now instead of frogs, whether they're "French French" or French-Canadian; while "English Food is boring" [edit: and I guess Rosbif!] isn't really applied to Anglo-Canada the way it is to England/UK itself). If not for this forum, I never would have realized that "frog" was still used, maliciously, as a slur against French Canadians beyond, like, the 1700s.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Never heard that in French. Of course, I've heard "redneck" in English.

Originally referring to White Southerners' tendency to sunburn easily - especially apparent in rural areas where they would more often be working outdoors, in the days before sunscreen. On average I think they get more sun (and thus sunburns) in Louisiana than in Quebec, so it makes sense that "cou rouge" developed as a term in one and not the other.

[lio45]

The demeaning part of the insult wasn't that you (would) sunburn easily, it's that you actually did, indicating that you did menial outdoors labor yourself (rather than own people who'll do it for you).

Basically, by having the back of your neck sunburned, you outed yourself as poor/uneducated working class, hence the insult.