Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Note that Québécois kids who move to Ontario and go to Franco-Ontarien schools may also get mocked for not knowing English and all of its cool expressions - since in a Franco-Ontarien schoolyard English is the "in" language.

You are not allowed to speak English on school property in the French school system in NB. They are very strict - you will be punished!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Not being part of the culture, I've been somewhat insulated from these nuances, but I've always wondered how it plays out, both socially and politically... and culturally as well. From what I've seen, the ability of people to speak 'proper' French does seem to be more important among francophones than proper English use does among English speaking people (in fact, butchering of the English language seems to be almost cool in terms of using Americanized urban slang, etc.).

That being said, any time I've been to Quebec, I have always attempted to speak French to the people I met (as a sign of respect, and not a sign of mastery of the language), in my bumbling broken-up way, and have never been treated negatively because of it. In fact, I got the impression that they thought it was sort of 'cute' that I was trying to speak to them in their first language, and often would graciously switch the conversation to English to save us all from the pain of my skewering of their language.
.

I think part of it is related to French having more and more defined "levels of language" than English does.(For example there is a much greater difference between spoken and written French than in English.) And so depending on the context, and even where you're from to some degree, there is an expectation or an assumption that you'll sound and speak a certain way.

Quebec French is certainly not always polished (in fact most of the time it isn't) but even when it comes to slang there is a certain norm or standard. If you diverge too much from it (as many Franco-Ontariens do, Acadiens not as much) then it just sounds off to people.

That doesn't mean they'll shun you or treat you badly of course. But you might get questions about where you're from if your speech makes people curious. And some people actually find those types of interrogations alienating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X9Gc4F27LA

(BTW the comedienne is Franco-Ontarienne.)

Here she is with her real accent. At 1:40 she talks a bit about being a Franco-Ontarienne comedienne.

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

[O-tacular]

I went through French Immersion in AB and virtually none of my peers except the actual francophones spoke french outside french class. Some who graduated from french immersion barely spoke passable french at all. I'm guilty of always responding to my francophone mother in English. I only practice with my Quebec relatives. I also have Ontario francophones on my other side of the family but again have always spoken to them in English. I could speak in french but by default usually choose english.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

You are not allowed to speak English on school property in the French school system in NB. They are very strict - you will be punished!

They have the same rule in francophone schools in Ontario as well. Not sure what the actual "punishment" is, though. Either in NB or Ontario.

I would also assume that less enforcement is required in some regions than others. Probably not a big issue in Caraquet or Tracadie. Or even Hawkesbury.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

I went through French Immersion in AB and virtually none of my peers except the actual francophones spoke french outside french class.

I went to a French immersion school for a time in the ROC. (We spoke French at home.)

There were a few of us francophone kids and even we didn't speak French that much outside of class.

I was even admonished once by a teacher for not speaking French, and was "you of all people should be leading by example".

(As an aside I just looked him up, and see that he died about five years ago. He was a really nice man.)

[harls]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

You are not allowed to speak English on school property in the French school system in NB. They are very strict - you will be punished!

Yeah, my kids have been told not to speak English in class.. but the schoolyard they don't really care.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by harls

Yeah, my kids have been told not to speak English in class.. but the schoolyard they don't really care.

It's a rule in most Quebec schools as well I am pretty sure, though it's not really applied as most kids still speak French naturally amongst themselves, and English hasn't taken over the schoolyard.

Though at my kids' elementary they actually imposed French only in the schoolyard because there were so many Lebanese kids and they'd say naughty words in Arabic that the teachers couldn't understand.

[rousseau]

It's been discussed here before, and I guess I understand the reasoning behind it, but every time I hear about restrictions on speaking languages it stirs up latent libertarian impulses in me that would otherwise lay dormant. My wife grew up in Taiwan at the end of Chiang Kai-shek's rule when the strict policy of adopting Mandarin was still in force and you were fined a penny each time you spoke the local Taiwanese dialect at school. I can't help but feel revulsion at the idea of people in authority penalizing underlings for using what comes naturally to them to communicate.

I recognize how biased my leanings are, of course. I look at Quebec and feel a bit smug at how comparatively less top-down we are sociologically on the anglo side of Canada, but then I also feel confounded at how utterly ingrained and vehement the lack of trust in government is in large contingents of the US. I'm quite convinced that Ontario is the only sensible place to be in this regard.

I taught ESL in Taiwan for six years. The ultimate ideal was to replicate an English environment so that kids would absorb the language in the same way they would were they surrounded by it in the US. The school was supposed to be like a linguistic embassy where the local laws and conditions didn't apply. It never worked of course, and I never obsessed over haranguing students for instinctively shouting things out or talking to their classmates in Mandarin or Taiwanese (I actually learned a lot of both languages in the classroom where they were supposed to be learning English!).

[someone123]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I recognize how biased my leanings are, of course. I look at Quebec and feel a bit smug at how comparatively less top-down we are sociologically on the anglo side of Canada, but then I also feel confounded at how utterly ingrained and vehement the lack of trust in government is in large contingents of the US. I'm quite convinced that Ontario is the only sensible place to be in this regard.

I'm not sure there is "one true way". You can approximate cultural preferences with democracy, autocracy, or social norms and different places have different distributions of preferences. Societies are harmonious to the extent that most of them have one general preference and can control the norms.

I think the context matters a lot for language. If you're opting in to a French only school for your kids so that your kids learn French I don't think it's oppressive for them to be punished if they speak English. If you take a linguistic group and force them to go to some school where you punish them if they speak the language of their preference then that is oppressive.

I also have a bunch of Francophone older relatives and would often prefer to answer in English when I was a kid. Speaking French was definitely "uncool", and through that sentiment you can understand the direction of assimilation pressure.

[MolsonExport]

the status of English is that of a language that has never been under threat.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think the context matters a lot for language. If you're opting in to a French only school for your kids so that your kids learn French I don't think it's oppressive for them to be punished if they speak English.

I totally get that. And yet, I still totally disagree. Authoritarian social engineering makes me itchy.

"You got detention for refusing to stop speaking English on the basketball court because your dad sent you to this school to learn French."

Do the ends justify the means? I wouldn't have a problem with a lower level of proficiency in French at an immersion school in Ontario if the students' freedom to speak the language of their choice in the hallways were preserved.

[Acajack]

I mean, I can understand that someone in Rousseau's position would have that view as his "ideal" or even "norm".

But I think he is lucid enough to understand that that can never work for us.

In the same way I guess that choosing to not heat your house is a different proposition depending on whether you live in Winnipeg or Miami.

[ErickMontreal]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

You are not allowed to speak English on school property in the French school system in NB. They are very strict - you will be punished!

That’s an empty threat that is not inforced. My kids attend Samuel de Champlain and English is predominantly spoken outside of class.

Some parents went public last year because their children felt bullied for speaking French in a French school. I do not know the loophole English parents are using to have their children enrolled in the French system but it greatly affects children like mine, that are perfectly bilingual… why are they not attending French immersion instead?

[Acajack]

It's also worth mentioning that French schools in the ROC are an "optional" system that parents willfully choose to enrol their kids in. They know the rules and what they are getting into. (These rules when in place when I attend French school in the ROC in the 1980s.)

If people don't want that then they can just send their kids to regular English public school and the kids can speak English all day to their heart's delight.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I mean, I can understand that someone in Rousseau's position would have that view as his "ideal" or even "norm".

But I think he is lucid enough to understand that that can never work for us.

In the same way I guess that choosing to not heat your house is a different proposition depending on whether you live in Winnipeg or Miami.

Huh. I'm going to have to think about that analogy for a bit.

What would the counterfactual history of Quebec be if the Quiet Revolution hadn't proceeded the way it did?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

In the same way I guess that choosing to not heat your house is a different proposition depending on whether you live in Winnipeg or Miami.

I think a part of the disconnect is the difference in historical perspective or lack thereof. A lot of English Canadians see Quebec as the French part of North America and see a bunch of prickly laws. But Quebec was just one part of French North America or French Canada and other parts went through various traumatic events that barely register today outside of the specific regions where they happened.

I don't think English is under any particular pressure but I think a lot of people are kind of naive about what it means for your language to be official or not or a lingua franca or not and what roles English plays today or how that could change. If you take a long historical view you don't really have to go that far back to see English threatened. The balance between French and English shifted around 1750-1800 or so.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think this drives some of the sentiment too. French is seen as "high class" in Western Canada to some degree, and lower class people feel excluded. It's not high class in rural Quebec or NB. I don't think there's much similarity in median life privileges between the rich kids of Toronto or Vancouver and rural Acadian NB.

In Anglophone cities in NB it absolutely is a class thing. I went to schools with French Immersion - all the FI classes were upper middle class, well-to-do students who were on their way to bigger and brighter things. You'd want to be in FI classes because English-only path classes were seen to be occupied by lower-income, rougher students. You didn't want to be in English-only classes because they were seen to have more disruptive, less motivated students (ie poor). Same goes when comparing high schools with French programs versus those without.

Originally Posted by someone123

This also pops up with people policing whether or not Canadian French is "real" French, although I hear that stuff less these days.

It's usually Francophones doing this.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by JHikka

In Anglophone cities in NB it absolutely is a class thing. I went to schools with French Immersion - all the FI classes were upper middle class, well-to-do students who were on their way to bigger and brighter things. You'd want to be in FI classes because English-only path classes were seen to be occupied by lower-income, rougher students. You didn't want to be in English-only classes because they were seen to have more disruptive, less motivated students (ie poor). Same goes when comparing high schools with French programs versus those without.

Sure. My point is that while going to immersion as a middle class Anglophone kid in New Brunswick may make you better off than a kid in the normal stream, it is incorrect to extrapolate this to the unilingual Francophone population and assume that this gives them a similar privilege. Not growing up speaking English is probably a much bigger practical penalty and it extends beyond getting federal government jobs.

People like to bring up how Canada's best and brightest move to the US. I doubt this is as easy if you grew up as a unilingual Francophone. And it doesn't show up in Canadian statistics at all.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

Sure. My point is that while going to immersion as a middle class Anglophone kid in New Brunswick may make you better off than a kid in the normal stream, it is incorrect to extrapolate this to the unilingual Francophone population and assume that this gives them a similar privilege. Not growing up speaking English is probably a much bigger practical penalty and it extends beyond getting federal government jobs.

People like to bring up how Canada's best and brightest move to the US. I doubt this is as easy if you grew up as a unilingual Francophone. And it doesn't show up in Canadian statistics at all.

As usual no one cares about the millions of unilingual francophone Canadians, whether we're talking about access to federal jobs in their own country or anything else.

Just like no one cares about the substantial and growing population that speaks French and Arabic, or French and Haitian Creole, or French and Wolof...

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JHikka

It's usually Francophones doing this.

I'd disagree that it's mostly francophones who talk about Canadian French being "real" French.

I have a significant number of "international" francophones in my midst (including work colleagues on my team, my next-door-neighbours, friends, etc.) and we and everyone else gets along and understands each other just fine.

People from France may initially react to some of our many quirks but almost all of them back down and blend in pretty quickly when they realize they're the ones with an accent on this side of the pond.

Discussions about "real French" in this country are overwhelmingly something anglophones do.

And I don't think it's because most of them are PhD students in linguistics.