You say frittata, I say melee....
WATCH YOUR MOUTH
If you’re a business owner in Quebec, you have to be careful about how you use language or you could be fined. While Canada is officially bilingual, in 1977, the Charter of the French Language defined French as the language of the majority of the population, and thus the official language of the civil service and of business in private workplaces in Quebec with over 50 employees, and it banned the use of languages other than French from commercial signs.
In time, all of the bilingual traffic signs became exclusively French; STOP/ARRÊT signs were replaced by the unilingual ARRÊT. Critics of this change have said that arrêt isn’t even proper French. Arrêt would be more appropriate for a bus stop, and in French the word used to describe coming to a halt at an intersection is stop or stoppez. As such, in France, stop signs read STOP. Some have said that misunderstandings over the meanings of the signs have led to accidents.
Nevertheless, in upholding the French identity of the province, Office Quebecois de la Langue Francaise (fondly called “the language police”) “safeguards” the language, which is spoken by about 94 percent of residents there. (Outside of Quebec, only 4 percent of Canadians percent speak fluent French.) The work has not been without its contretemps.
FINICKY FRENCH
In 2013, a language inspector told the owner of an Italian restaurant in Montreal that words such as botiglia, pasta, and antipasto should have a French translation written next to them on the menu. Prompted by public outcry, the head of Quebec’s Office of French Language, Louise Marchand, resigned. The office eased off the pasta edict, but the establishment was still not permitted to use the word ristorante outside. Here are some other language police orders.
• A British-themed restaurant had to change fish and chips on its menu to poisson frit et frites.
Snag in the Yukon Territory had the lowest Canadian temp at -63° C/- 84.4° F in 1947.
• A restaurant was forced to mask out the word redial on its phones.
• Another eatery was told to remove WC (short for water closet) from its toilets.
• A pet shop owner was threatened because it had a parrot named Peekaboo that only squawked out phrases in English.
• A high-end restaurant was commanded to remove the word steak from a blackboard in the kitchen that the chef used as a shopping list. They told him to change it to bifteck. The same restaurant owner was asked to cover up the words on/off on a hot water switch.
• The tiny apostrophe has often been a target of the language police. The French use an apostrophe but not for the possessive. That’s why Tim Horton’s became Tim Hortons. Somehow, McDonald’s has been allowed to keep its apostrophe.
• In Quebec, Kentucky Fried Chicken is known as PFK, or Poulet Frit Kentucky.
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AIMEZ-VOUS FRANCAIS?
The strict attitude toward language has a long history in Quebec. In the 1630s, Quebec’s founder, Samuel de Champlain, would not tolerate blasphemy and issued an order prohibiting it. If you were caught, the punishment was having your tongue cut out.
More recently, in an effort to sustain the purity of the French language, France recently banished the word hashtag and introduced mot-dièse, which means “sharp word.” In related news, a Federal Court judge in 2011 awarded an Ottawa couple $12,000 for Air Canada’s failure to serve them in French. Bilingual computer technician Michel Thibodeau ordered a Sprite in French and received a 7 Up.
Niagara-on-the-Lake has the only festival in the world devoted to the plays by George Bernard Shaw.