30 Jun
2004
30 Jun
'04
10:13 a.m.
The opposite is true in Canada and most other
countries. You also
have to do everything in two langauges (by law, no less!).
Only in rather special
circumstances are you required by law to do
anything in both languages. But in any case, you've proved my point. Many
people in the US
doen't want to deal with other countries because of the language (and
other) problems.
Oh, I know. Their loss. They're welcome to crawl back into their
insular little hole and pull it in after them.
[...] they are required by law to greet you in French
and to try
and initiate the conversation in French.
By law? Did you check this?? That's another one of the French preference laws.
If your children
haven't started school before you move to Quebec then they MUST go to
a French speaking school regardless of where you're from or what
language is spoken at home.
When was that? I suspect that your description would have been on the
mark some twenty or thirty years ago but is very out of date today.
If true, [the "must greet in French"
law is] certainly widely
ignored.
It might be now but it wasn't when I was there. In fact, one shop owner in Montreal was arrested for
having English
signs up in his store window while I was there. It made the news all
over Canada. But since you don't own a TV I guess you don't know
what's going on, do you?
My dear friend, I live and work in downtown Montr?al. I think I know
what is going on here (as opposed to what *was* going on here) better
than you, describing your what, decades-ago? experience, do.
Yes, I heard of such an event - occurring in the '80s or maybe late
'70s. I was writing about today's Montreal, not twenty years ago's.
Fortunately,
language bigotry is fading here.
It wasn't even as much bigotry as stubborness.
Ever since the French Canadians arm twisted Canada
declared that it
was a dual language country, the French Canadians in Quebec have been
trying to force the rest of Canada to speak French!
And they've been having a lot less success than the anglicization of
Quebec has been. Basically all native Montrealers, and an awful lot of
the imports like me, are passably competent in both languages.
I came to Montreal in September 1980. Sometime in the early '80s, I
was in some public place chatting with an acquaintance (in English) and
a bystander - a complete stranger - snapped "Parles fran?ais!" ("Speak
French!") at us - or rather, at one of us - and stomped away.
I can't see such a thing happening today. The grudge that fueled the
linguistic bigotry is now just that, a grudge without the substance
behind it that there once was, and without that substance to drive it,
it's dying.
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