Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Acajack

There is definitely an Acadien brotherhood and solidarity that exists across the provinces and regions, and it has been growing in recent decades. People don't dislike each other at all but if you visit communities you'll really see how different they are. Speech is notably quite different and so is the culture and cuisine, so you have rappie pie (râpure) in Nova Scotia which most people in northern New Brunswick couldn't make if their life depended on it. Poutine râpée (not related to the Québécois poutine) is a SE New Brunswick dish that my family in the north of the province has never eaten.

Northern New Brunswick Acadiens swear like Québécois but with Acadien accents, but that type of cussing is not heard from Nova Scotia Acadiens, and even only sporadically heard in southeastern New Brunswick.

Part of this is due to being in different provinces (I haven't even touched upon PEI Acadiens) so under different education systems, and institutional frameworks more generally. But even in New Brunswick there is a difference between the north and the southeast, with life in the north being more wholly francophone, as opposed to the southeast where Acadiens rub shoulders with English all day and often use that language more than French. The Acadien communities are also generally separated from each other by often very long stretches of anglo areas where lamost no one is Acadien. So until more modern communications and transportation they were fairly isolated from each other.

Interesting how there is probably less diversity and more commonality between francophones over great distances in Quebec, than there is between Acadien regions that aren't really that far apart.

How complex and fascinating our country is!

[ciudad_del_norte]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Very interesting. I guess being 'from' here I had somehow become blind to it... or people from other places were more sensitive to a certain 'vibe' that was given off? Among the 'locals', of which I was one, there was never really a thing where we would snub somebody from elsewhere, or knowingly make them feel like an outsider. That said, if somebody came from 'the big city' and treated us like a bunch of lowly know-nothings (it did happen from time-to-time), that was considered to be insulting, and animosity would be felt.

I recall briefly having a summer job with a business owner from somewhere in Ontario, who made it no secret that he thought all Maritimers were a bunch of ignorant idiots, who were obviously below him (he literally verbalized it), and that was my first real experience with an arrogant idiot from the "ROC" () who held some sort of superiority complex over people from the east cost that he viewed as being below him. I was somewhat naive to it at the time, but when I later realized what it was about, I was somewhat by it. The irony of the situation was that he was some fly-by-night vacuum cleaner salesman, and I, at the time, was an engineering student. I could have just as easily flipped some sort of superiority complex on him, but I have never worked that way (still don't).

Anyhow... sorry for the derail from 'choses sur le québec'... just got carried away a little. Fascinating stuff, especially looking back on it from today.

To clarify a bit, it's not necessarily a snub, or social exclusion. I wouldn't characterize it as inherently negative, although it may be considered less cosmopolitan if that is the goal. It can even have an endearing feel to it. It's less of a "you aren't from here, so we look down on you" and more of "you aren't from here, so you are different and we are aware of that".

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

To clarify a bit, it's not necessarily a snub, or social exclusion. I wouldn't characterize it as inherently negative, although it may be considered less cosmopolitan if that is the goal. It can even have an endearing feel to it. It's less of a "you aren't from here, so we look down on you" and more of "you aren't from here, so you are different and we are aware of that".

Thanks for the clarification. Being 'cosmopolitan' was never one of my goals anyhow...

[Architype]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

To clarify a bit, it's not necessarily a snub, or social exclusion. I wouldn't characterize it as inherently negative, although it may be considered less cosmopolitan if that is the goal. It can even have an endearing feel to it. It's less of a "you aren't from here, so we look down on you" and more of "you aren't from here, so you are different and we are aware of that".

Asking someone where they are from was, or still is, not considered a rude thing, it's actually a form of extended greeting, an indication of interest in the person and the outside world, and opening up a topic of conversation. I haven't experienced it in a negative form. To deny this because of some wokish notion is a disingenuous form of social strangulation.

[ciudad_del_norte]

Not sure how this became about wokeness or asking somebody where they are from. I don't think anybody has said that asking somebody where they are from is rude. It's just a conversation considering the degree to which the answer to that question impacts relational identities with respect to who is, or can be considered local. I'm not even trying to suggest that any end of that spectrum is inherently better or worse, just that it does indeed vary.

I guess if we really want to delve into "wokeness" I do think there are ome contexts where that question can be rude, but that is pretty tangential to the discussion thus far.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

... the Halifax/Dartmouth I remember from the 1970s and 80s feels very different from the same area of today, in many ways (and then I've changed as well, as people tend to do - moving goalposts and all that).

But then I think that is true to a certain extent for almost any area. I first visited Calgary in 1983, ...

Ha! So it's not merely the "Dartmouth" that's old, it's also the "Mark"!

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I'd agree that Americans are often better at identifying a Canadian accent than is generally recognized. I find other anglosphere types like Brits and Aussies can be quite clueless though, unless they have more direct experience with Canadians.

And yes, second-language English speakers around the world (including Québécois) often can't distinguish CanadiAns apart from Americans. Those who are a bit better often lump English speakers into two groups: a "Britishphere" and an "Americanosphere", with Canadians part of the latter.

I remember when I was younger a Franco-Ontarian friend of mine (who spoke really good second language English) had an Australian girlfriend, and he'd say of her and her family: "Ils parlent comme des British".

Australians have a pretty awful accent, to be honest. They speak like lower-class Brits.

As for North Americans, for us in Europe it's nearly impossible to distinguish US English and Canadian English accent. I'm very good at languages, I have a musical ear, and I've lived in the US, but was never able to distinguish a specific Canadian accent. What's very distinguishable, on the other hand, is the Southern US accent from the rest of US accents.

In any case when you live in the US, there's almost no exposure to Canada. It's almost as if there was nothing north of the border. Most Americans are largely ignorant of Canada, even in a place like Seattle, so close to Canada, you'd be surprised how ignorant they are.

I don't know whether I've said this here before, but when I visited Canada (Vancouver) with some people from Seattle, the three things that made me laugh in terms of their cultural shock was: 1- "oh my God, 100! (after seeing a speed sign) they drive at 100 miles per hour, crazy people!", 2- freeways don't reach downtown Vancouver as they do in Seattle (and most American cities), which greatly troubled my travel companions, and 3- you're kidding me I can't pay with US dollars?! (now that I think of it, there was also 4- "oh my God, so many vagrants in the streets", but I suppose Americans could hardly find that shocking in Vancouver nowadays given the situation in most US cities...).

Canada is almost never mentioned or discussed in daily conversations in the US (whereas Mexico definitely is). The only time you hear about Canada is when people have this joke that if everything fell apart for them and they found themselves in an extreme situation and became an outlaw or a delinquent in the US, then they could move to Canada as a last resort option, but the feeling I always got from these jokes was that it was some sort of gallows humor, as if US was paradise and "moving to Canada" was like a really desperate option.

Anyway, US views of Canada for you guys, but I suppose you already know most of it.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by lio45

Ha! So it's not merely the "Dartmouth" that's old, it's also the "Mark"!

Experienced, perhaps? Were you even born in 1983? I was enjoying my first flight out of my home province. Great times, friendly people... very unlike the current.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Another observation - more in response to posts about "the inevitable drift towards English";

French has actually had a noticeably growing presence in Halifax over my lifetime, with CSAP (Acadian/Francophone public school board) steadily growing larger relative to HRSB (the "Mainstream Anglo public school board", which includes French Immersion; it is still significantly larger than CSAP). Aside from Dal and maybe NSCAD, the fastest-growing university in Halifax has been Université Ste-Anne, which AFAIK had 0 presence in Halifax even back in the early-to-mid 90s, while now it is effectively the city's 7th university (and has better name recognition than the "6th", AST).

The amount of spoken French heard in public and in business has also increased significantly, both during tourist seasons and otherwise. When I was young, French in Halifax was more something you'd encounter on cereal boxes and official government announcements, and in school, or for the truly ambitious, maybe French-language TV or radio, whereas now it's frequently heard being spoken by actual people in conversation.

A lot of the major office complexes on the Peninsula are full of departments that deal with French-speaking clients/contacts/etc as well as English-speaking ones, which of course requires staff who speak French (and of these, I'd guess ~40% speak French at home and ~40% speak English, with the remainder being "equally both" or "neither"). This seems to be a growing segment here.

A few big factors have been a growing presence of international students (the universities are allowed to charge them higher fees/tuition, and a lot of these students have incidentally been from Francophone countries); the general drift from Rest-of-NS to Halifax, which incidentally included a lot of Acadians; steady migration from NB to NS, ditto; and more recently, steady international immigration (unrelated to post-secondary), which seems to be more Francophone on average than anywhere else in Canada outside of Quebec and NB. I'm not positive but I think there's also been a general drift within the Armed Forces (and various other Federal departments) where Halifax is the "bilingual" Anglo city where you'd put the French-language naval units that for practical reasons (/consolidation of bases) wouldn't be able to operate in truly Francophone parts of Canada, etc - I'm curious whether there are any ships based in Victoria/Esquimault (Canada's "other Navy base") where the crews operate mostly in French. If not, then it's part of an overall trend (which extends beyond the military into the overall bureaucratic and corporate realms) where not only does CFB Halifax bring French-speaking military units and personnel to Halifax, but it does so in a way that actually decreases the presence of the French language in the other Anglo cities where they otherwise would probably have ended up, in this case, Victoria. Within the context of NATO and similar "both sides of the Atlantic" organizations, plus the universities, port, and airport, there are certain advantages to nudging some of Canada's French-language (or more broadly, "non-English languages from the other side of the Atlantic") stuff towards Halifax.

Having grown up here, I naively though that the experience in Halifax - increasing use of French over the 90s-to-now timeframe - was "normal" across Canada, but having seen the rest of the country, I'd actually conclude that it's one of the only cities in the country (possibly even the only one) where this is the case. Which is a bit ironic given the city's early history and raison d'être.

Your observation is not confirmed by the census. The percentage of people living in the Halifax census metro area for whom French is the language most spoken at home went from 1.23% of the total population at the 2001 census to 1.12% at the 2021 census.

Also, the percentage of people in the Halifax census metro area who had French as their mother tongue was 3.12% at the 2021 census, but only 1.12% had French as their most spoken language at home as I've said, which shows a clear Anglicization of the native French speakers.

Halifax is not Francophone Shangri-La I'm afraid.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by lio45

The simplest way to have it the same in both languages is to have it be Québec in both languages (I just confirmed that the word "cliché" is in English dictionaries with the accent, so... no excuse )

See:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clich%C3%A9

To this day, the New York Times still refuses to write "Montréal" and "Québec" with an accent, whereas they now universally use accents when writing Spanish names (such as Guantánamo).

Compare





and





It's just crazy how the old anti-French-papist hysteria still lingers in the American psyche. France is the ONLY nation in the US that is PC to make fun of or deride (any other nation insulted or called in a derogative way would have you "cancelled" by the woke crowds, but making fun of France/the French is still ok). And writing French Canadian names without their proper accents is something the New York Times still cannot endure to do.

So of course they'll give you the usual excuse: "it's tradition, we're used to writing Montreal and Quebec without the accent, it's established spelling, bla bla bla", but then Guantanamo and Cordoba and Medellin were are also written without an accent until recently in US English, so this is essentially bullshit. The reality is, in their subconscious, they have NEVER accepted the French fact in North America, period.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

Not sure how this became about wokeness or asking somebody where they are from. I don't think anybody has said that asking somebody where they are from is rude. It's just a conversation considering the degree to which the answer to that question impacts relational identities with respect to who is, or can be considered local. I'm not even trying to suggest that any end of that spectrum is inherently better or worse, just that it does indeed vary.

I guess if we really want to delve into "wokeness" I do think there are ome contexts where that question can be rude, but that is pretty tangential to the discussion thus far.

It has most definitely become a woke thing to frown upon asking people when they are from, for reasons of non-inclusivity as it sends the subtle message that people aren't "at home" here and actually belong somewhere else.

Basically, it's seen as racist.

[ciudad_del_norte]

Did I, or somebody else make that argument somewhere in this forum that I missed? I'm aware of that discussion but I may have misunderstood if that was the conversation people were having.

If we want to go into that realm, I'd also argue that is a bad faith, superficial understanding of that argument. The concern with being asked where you are from is very linked to context, tone, and manner of the question. If I, as the only non-white person in a group am also the the one peson that gets asked where I am from, then yes I will roll my eyes at that. The melanated portion of my ancestry has been on this continent far longer than most people of european ancestry. This can also be particularily weird if it isn't used as part of an introduction or getting to know somebody conversation but is isntead directed to undermine/discredit an opinion when it is not relevant to the conversation in order to suggest that somebody's experience or education is not valid because of where they are from.

Anybody on the left that is making the argument that you can't ask anybody where they are from is taking an absolutist and puritanical position (which is a real problem on the left, but is generally a more chronically online take). Likewise, the whining from the right of "you can't even ask people where they are from anymore" is a just a way to deflect from something that can be a real problem by only engaging with the most extreme form of the argument.

But again - I actually don't think this is the discussion here. The Alberta cities, in my experience are on average indifferent to people being local or not. People may still ask the question, but it has realtively little impact on relational or spatial identities. I certainly wouldn't argue that this is somehow evidence of a lack of racism in Alberta, particularily as the most blatant racism is actually directed at the people that could fully genuinley answer that they are from here.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

Did I, or somebody else make that argument somewhere in this forum that I missed? I'm aware of that discussion but I may have misunderstood if that was the conversation people were having.

If we want to go into that realm, I'd also argue that is a bad faith, superficial understanding of that argument. The concern with being asked where you are from is very linked to context, tone, and manner of the question. If I, as the only non-white person in a group am also the the one peson that gets asked where I am from, then yes I will roll my eyes at that. The melanated portion of my ancestry has been on this continent far longer than most people of european ancestry. This can also be particularily weird if it isn't used as part of an introduction or getting to know somebody conversation but is isntead directed to undermine/discredit an opinion when it is not relevant to the conversation in order to suggest that somebody's experience or education is not valid because of where they are from.

Anybody on the left that is making the argument that you can't ask anybody where they are from is taking an absolutist and puritanical position (which is a real problem on the left, but is generally a more chronically online take). Likewise, the whining from the right of "you can't even ask people where they are from anymore" is a just a way to deflect from something that can be a real problem by only engaging with the most extreme form of the argument.

But again - I actually don't think this is the discussion here. The Alberta cities, in my experience are on average indifferent to people being local or not. People may still ask the question, but it has realtively little impact on relational or spatial identities. I certainly wouldn't argue that this is somehow evidence of a lack of racism in Alberta, particularily as the most blatant racism is actually directed at the people that could fully genuinley answer that they are from here.

We are not really disagreeing.

[New Brisavoine]

I have exclusive access to the NYTimes archives for the next 72 hours. I thought you guys would find these interesting. Let me know if you're interested in more.

I'm not necessarily posting them in chronological order, so pay attention to the dates of each article.









And the response.




De Gaullle's 1944 visit, less well-known than his 1967 visit.















There's plenty more. It's pretty fascinating stuff overall, which shows that this whole debate is nothing new really. I'll post a longish article from 1954 tomorrow about Quebec's "Long French Insistence on Going Their Own Way". French Canadians made up 29% of Canada's population back then according to the article. What a decline since then!

[Acajack]

Holy crap. Anglo-Montrealer John Boyd "getting the point" already... in 1917!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Australians have a pretty awful accent, to be honest. They speak like lower-class Brits.

As for North Americans, for us in Europe it's nearly impossible to distinguish US English and Canadian English accent. I'm very good at languages, I have a musical ear, and I've lived in the US, but was never able to distinguish a specific Canadian accent. What's very distinguishable, on the other hand, is the Southern US accent from the rest of US accents.

In any case when you live in the US, there's almost no exposure to Canada. It's almost as if there was nothing north of the border. Most Americans are largely ignorant of Canada, even in a place like Seattle, so close to Canada, you'd be surprised how ignorant they are.

I don't know whether I've said this here before, but when I visited Canada (Vancouver) with some people from Seattle, the three things that made me laugh in terms of their cultural shock was: 1- "oh my God, 100! (after seeing a speed sign) they drive at 100 miles per hour, crazy people!", 2- freeways don't reach downtown Vancouver as they do in Seattle (and most American cities), which greatly troubled my travel companions, and 3- you're kidding me I can't pay with US dollars?! (now that I think of it, there was also 4- "oh my God, so many vagrants in the streets", but I suppose Americans could hardly find that shocking in Vancouver nowadays given the situation in most US cities...).

Canada is almost never mentioned or discussed in daily conversations in the US (whereas Mexico definitely is). The only time you hear about Canada is when people have this joke that if everything fell apart for them and they found themselves in an extreme situation and became an outlaw or a delinquent in the US, then they could move to Canada as a last resort option, but the feeling I always got from these jokes was that it was some sort of gallows humor, as if US was paradise and "moving to Canada" was like a really desperate option.

Anyway, US views of Canada for you guys, but I suppose you already know most of it.

Life in the US is so US-focused (and when it looks beyond the US, it doesn't look at Canada), that even Canadians and their families who live there or spend an extended period of time there generally seem tuned-out to goings-on in Canada. Unless they really, really make a huge effort to stayed informed about us.

Especially if you speak good English, you just get caught and swept up by it when you're down there, I find. You really need to make a very active effort to resist, in order for that not to happen.

[harls]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

So of course they'll give you the usual excuse: "it's tradition, we're used to writing Montreal and Quebec without the accent, it's established spelling, bla bla bla", but then Guantanamo and Cordoba and Medellin were are also written without an accent until recently in US English, so this is essentially bullshit. The reality is, in their subconscious, they have NEVER accepted the French fact in North America, period.

Hey you forgot the Spanish accents in your post..

[New Brisavoine]

• Video Link

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Québec solidaire has stolen away a Liberal riding in central western Montréal in a byelection.

This was Dominique Anglade's old seat.

This post-byelection cartoon (which I came across only today) made me laugh out loud. Right on the money...


https://www.latribune.ca/2023/03/15/la-caricature-de-cote-b1125c94ae59b036adde4aab275f33d4

[New Brisavoine]

^^When did the PLQ start to become a major party in Québec? I'm curious how long they were a major ruling party (supposing they will now become an insignificant fringe party).