In defense of our language

I retired as a high school French teacher in 2003 after a 32 year career in the wonderful world of teaching. Today, with hindsight, it is clear that the quality of our language is deteriorating and that its defenders are becoming increasingly rare.

Constraining factors

Throughout my professional career, I have had to deal with young people for whom communication, oral and written, was of secondary importance, the main thing for them being to make themselves understood regardless of the clarity of the message.

Language was in their eyes a simple tool of communication. Moreover, today, in a world where social media have invaded the world of communication, our language has metamorphosed into a litany of abbreviations incomprehensible to the layman that I am.

In addition to this context of turbulence, there is the phenomenon of the anglicization of our young people who desert the French-speaking CEGEP for English-speaking institutions, a trend that will not cease to increase until the day when the government requires that our young people attend compulsory school. French-speaking CEGEP.

If you add to all these factors which considerably annihilate the efforts made by the defenders of our language the arrival of immigrants who almost invariably go to the English language, you will understand that the challenge inherent in the defense of our language lies in the ‘heroism.

What future for our language?

Faced with all these observations, is it possible, even realistic, that French in Quebec will one day regain its letters of nobility? Is it possible that our youth, with the complicity of their teachers, develop a feeling of pride in their mother tongue? To this end, why not set up a course in the history of the Franco-Quebec language in high school that would highlight the historical struggles our language has faced since the beginnings of its epic in New France?

It was Saint-Exupéry who said: “If you want to build a boat, don’t bring your men and women together to give them orders, to explain every detail, to tell them where to find everything … If you want to build a boat. boat, instill in the hearts of your men and women the desire for the sea. ”A very evocative message that enlightens us on the need to awaken in our young people the desire to promote and become defenders of their language.

Our youth must constitute the bulwark against the progressive deterioration of our language. However, for this, it needs a trigger to set it in motion towards this ideal … And this trigger will activate its start when the stakeholders in the education sector, in a spirit of consultation, communicate to them the pride of speak “the language of our region”!

Henri marineau

Former high school French teacher

Quebec