Week 8 ( 課文) The War of the Two Languages

Week -8 ( 課文 )

The War of the Two Languages

By Prof. Stephen Ohlander

In the short video you see a country divided by--as the reporter, Morley Safer, calls it--“a war of words.”  But, ironically, they are words from two different languages: French and English. 

Here’s the general situation: the province of Quebec, which is in Eastern Canada, is mostly French-speaking (francophone) and the majority of its residents wants it to stay that way.  In other words, they don’t want their language and their culture to be dominated or “swallowed up” by the English language and its cultures—something that, they point out, has happened in the rest of Canada.

In fact, along with other like-minded politicians and their support groups, Louise Beaudoin, the female minister that you see interviewed in the video, is in favor of Quebec breaking away from the rest of Canada entirely and forming its own nation.  Actually, the people of Quebec have already voted this idea down (rejected it) twice in the past so, as of now, it doesn’t look like this will happen any time soon.

Nonetheless, the government of Quebec clearly feels: if we cannot get enough popular support to separate (secede) from Canada, at least we can prevent a wholesale takeover of our French language by English by making laws that limit the written usage of English in public notices. 

Specifically, written public notices can be entirely in French—without any English—or they can be in French accompanied by English translations.  But that’s not all: the English letters (fonts) must be smaller than the French letters.  In the video, someone mentioned that the English words must be half the size of the French words.

Also in the video, I was surprised to learn that the government of Quebec also wants all business dealings to be conducted (spoken) in French.  If true, that means that the government wants to control not only the written use of English, but how much English is spoken in certain settings as well!  OMG!  The government really wants to restrict their people’s use of English, whether the people like it or not! 

That doesn’t sound like a free country to me.  As you can see from the dialogue I have written between Jeff and Marge, I believe in giving people the right to speak the language of their choice, though I do agree that every country should have one official language spoken by everyone, or nearly everyone.  By having one official language, a nation has a better chance of maintaining unity and not splitting apart, which would be an unfortunate outcome if the people really have common interests and want to stay together.

In Quebec, however, I think the government has gone too far in its demands regarding restrictions on English usage. And quite of number of its residents agree with me:  as reported in the video, over 250,000 have left the province, having gotten fed up with all its restrictive language laws. 

To sense their frustration, you can listen to the PowerPoint slides in which Rebecca Wolfe, who runs the café Mandy’s along with her sister, complains to the reporter about how difficult it is to run even a small business like theirs when they have to worry about the language restrictions of the OQLF.

To sum up, the government of Quebec may have good intentions, but it has gone too far!

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影音對話參考
The Language Police – Quebec’s Own

Presented by Prof. Stephen Ohlander
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Under the headline, “Quebec language police order Mandy's Salad Bar to remove English signs from shop in anglophone [English-speaking] area,”…
…Canadian newspaper, The National Post, filed the following report…

Mandy’s, a Montreal salad bar, is under fire from (in trouble with) the Language Police because its décor (decorative signs) features vintage (very old) English signs.

The Office québécois de la langue française (Quebec Language Police) told sisters Mandy and Rebecca Wolfe they would have to remove the decorative signs from their shop in the traditionally anglophone Westmount district.

Rebecca Wolfe, who doesn’t plan to remove the signs, spoke to the National Post’s Hillary Robert on this matter.
(Next slide shows a photo of the two sisters with one of their signs.)

Rebecca & Mandy with their English Sign

Recently, the OQLF went after the Facebook page of a boutique (small shop) in Chelsea, Quebec called Delilah in the Parc.
It was operating a “supposedly prohibited [forbidden] unilingual [one-language] social media presence.”

Though the store’s staff was fully bilingual and its signs and documents were in line with the law (i.e., legal), its online updates had to be in French, too, according to the OQLF.

The agency sent owner, Eva Cooper, a letter threatening legal and financial action (e.g., a fine) if she did not translate into French her Facebook page.
Fortunately, both sides were able to reach a mutually satisfying agreement.
At Mandy’s, however, the problems were not as easy to solve…

Here is a series of questions and answers between the reporter and Rebecca:
Q (by reporter, Hillary Robert): Did you ever think that your décor might be a problem?

Rebecca: No, we take pride in having bilingual images all over our store and making sure that it’s 90% French.
We do have a little English because 95% of our clients in Westmount are English.
Q: Is your other location different?

A: If you go to our store in the French community, we have zero English. It’s all French.
At our English location because we do have English clients, we felt that it wasn’t the end of the world [i.e., not very serious] if we put up some anglo [English] text.
Rebecca and the OQLF


Q: What was your reaction when you were confronted by the OQLF?
A: We said our signs were artistic. They were “decorative pieces that we picked up along the way of our travels with our family, pieces of our heritage, of our background.”

“It was at a place that we go to in Maine that we picked them up. We do have other pieces of décor in the store from that same place.”
We want our shop to have a vintage-feel.

Mandy’s Decorative English Sign

Q: The name of your store is in English, has that ever been an issue with the OQLF?
A: No, we don’t have the apostrophe on the outside of our store, so they can’t really come after us for that. It just says “Mandys.”
And it says “Salades Gourmands” in French underneath it.

Mandy’s Window Sign (in French)

(N.B. The photo does show the apostrophe, and it says “Salades Gourmandes.” –ed.)
Q: You seem to be shocked by the OQLF’s response to your décor--that it attacks the way you run your store. How do you feel about the French images of things?

A: We love them! We have a lot of French-speaking clients, we have a lot of French-speaking employees, and we have a lot of French-speaking suppliers.
We’re very proud to be in Montreal.
We love that it is a bilingual community.

Mandy and I are both very bilingual.
We have Quebec francophone [French-speaking] members of our extended family.
It is a part of the richness of living in Montreal in terms of its culture, so I just think this [the OQLF] is a very unfortunate turn of events.

Q: Do you feel your shop was targeted because it is in Westmount?
A: I don’t know why we were targeted. I think that they go door-to-door in Westmount because it is an English-based community.

The only person that has ever criticized [us] was an employee of [the OQLF] that came in, took photos and sort of intimidated [made anxious] our customers.
He stayed here for a long while during our busy lunch hour and just took photos of everything, took notes and then took off.

Q: How do customers react when an OQLF employee is present?
A: All the customers were very clearly disgruntled [upset], and know what [is] going on when this happens. This climate of animosity [ill-will, conflict] between the two communities is so unnecessary.

The English community is well aware that it’s an issue [problem] since it has happened twice; … people have noticed what is going on.
Q: I understand that the first time you were contacted by the OQLF was over a separate issue regarding your menu, could you elaborate on [explain] that?

A: They don’t want to have English translations.
We [had] a double-sided menu [English on one side, French on the other], with the English & French texts the same size.

[But] the English has to be significantly smaller than the French text.
Everything had to be reprinted.
(N.B. The OQLF say it does not seek to control the spoken language, only written English. –ed.)

Q: In other interviews, you have mentioned feeling like you are “fighting to stay here,” could you elaborate on that?
A: It’s more of an inner conflict. We’re fighting with ourselves.
What are we really doing here if our own people don’t want us here?

We have a lot of friends that are leaving, most of whom are going to Toronto, [though] some are going to the states
 We’re sort of at a pinnacle [peak, high point] of political unrest here.

It’s based on these small petty [trivial] roles that we feel quite frankly is a waste of everyone’s time.
(End of interview)

Everything is a little bit scary and unstable in Quebec right now.
It is more of a fight against, do we leave? Do we stay? Are we made to feel comfortable?
Are we encouraged as small businesses in Quebec to thrive [prosper] or are we just made to feel uncomfortable?