One of my fellow roadtrippers was friends with a guy from Quebec, so on the second day of our stay in Montreal we met up with him at a local bar, where he taught us the swears (there's a cheatsheet somewhere, but basically Quebec hasn't made the switch from blasphemy to profanity, so tabernac (sp?) is one of the worst things you can say) and answered our other questions about Montreal.

I can't tell you how nice it was to finally find out what those little triangle marks were called: circumflexes. As Fred tells it, to convert French into québécois, you should pronounce every vowel as if it had a circumflex accent.

Who knows if that's correct. Since reading a post on Foreign Place Names over at Linguism, I've been terrified of French phonology:

For instance, of all the forty-odd phonemes of English, and the similar number in French, only two are identical in the two languages (and there may be small differences even here): /f/ and /m/. All the other sounds of the two languages have differences that contribute to the sound of a French accent in English, or an English accent in French.

After drinks (but also before yet more drinks), Fred took us on a walking tour of the city. He paused outside of a Second Cup to show us the tiny type that had made it into a Les cafés Second Cup.

As I understand it, the business name "Second Cup" is permissible under the Charter of the French Language, even if the predominant language on everything inside the building has to be French.

The "Les cafés" was added to some signs in 2000, after the French Self-Defence Brigade (a translation of the official name, I'm sure) attempted to firebomb three franchises in Montreal. And there were protests last year when the chain considered changing the name back to just "Second Cup."

Successful protests, as far as I could tell.

(Check out this post at Fagstein, the blog of a copy editor in Montreal, for a local's take on the Second Cup issue.)

Related: Montreal is also home to a strangely familiar coffeehouse chain called Café Starbucks Coffee.

We may have actually had drinks at McKibbin's, the Irish pub that was cited for decorating its interior with vintage English-only beer ads (my goodness!), but I wasn't paying attention so I can't be sure.

One article on that particular tempest in a teapot had some nice trivia at the end: a list of "other cases over the years that have attracted the interest of the language watchdog or people seeking to protect the French language." Enjoy.

1996: A woman warns the owner of a Quebec pet store she might get in touch with language authorities because Peekaboo, the parrot she wanted to buy, didn't speak French.

1999: The Old Navy chain is asked to rename its stores "La Vieille Rivière." It never happens.

2000: The owner of an Indian restaurant is told he's breaking the law by having coasters for "Double Diamond," a British beer.

2001: Some people express disappointment that race-car driver Jacques Villeneuve calls his restaurant "Newtown."

2005: Language authorities say they will investigate complaints that Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay's party used the word "Go" on its posters and pamphlets, as in "Go Montreal."

2007: Imperial Oil says it will keep its Quebec-only "Marché Express" name for its Esso gas stations after protests against a proposal to change the name to "On the Run," as they are known elsewhere in North America.

2007: About 50 people protest outside a Second Cup outlet to demonstrate against the words "Les cafés" being dropped from "Les cafés Second Cup" at some of the chain's outlets.

2007: Language activists decry that callers to many Quebec government offices are told to "press nine" for English before instructions are delivered in French. Some of the departments have since changed the message to put English at the end.

...And that's all I have to say about Canada at the moment. We now return to your regularly scheduled anti-prescriptivism.

Labels: Canada, grammar politics, pronunciation

It seems like these days everyone is talking about the semicolon (it's so hot right now!), but I think John McIntyre summed up the situation nicely:

I wonder at the writers who carp and cavil about the semicolon, finding it unpleasant, artificial or even ugly, when it is the apostrophe that is the source of most of the trouble in English punctuation — inept plurals, bungled possessives, nasty little hooks in the wrong place all over the landscape

It should come as no surprise that Canadians have all the usual issues with the apostrophe, though I have to give them some props for their invention of the Canostrophe.



(original pic here)

These were everywhere as soon as we crossed the border. Here's one on an Arby's sign. I could've sworn that I saw one on a McDonald's somewhere, but the Internet is skeptical.

Fact: in a perfect world the Canostrophe wouldn't be restricted to signage, and MS Word would autocorrect regular apostrophes for users in Canada.

Apostrophes were notably absent on all signage for the ubiquitous Tim Hortons, birthplace of the repeater double-double, a Canadian term for "coffee with two creams and two sugars."

There are theories that the lost punctuation in Tim Hortons has something to do with Quebec's language laws, but then why does this McDonald's in Montreal get to have apostrophes?



(original pic here)

From the moment I saw this McDonald's, the apostrophe placement in that vertical sign really bugged me...

More on Quebec's crazy language laws in a future post.

Labels: Canada, punctuation

A quick post to start, while I collect my thoughts.

On the drive through Quebec, we tried to master a few key phrases with some help from an old high school French textbook. I needed only "What beers do you have?" and "Have you seen four American girls?", but when it turned out that I could only hold two new French words in my head, I settled on "American girls?" — and I can still remember how to say it, but don't ask me to try to spell anything in French for you.

It turns out that it's much easier to get by without French in Montreal than it is in France. Nevertheless, this ode to rudimentary French quickly became our official roadtrip theme song:

Labels: Canada, vocab