Having read with great interest your letter to Duty on French in Montreal which is not folklore, I fully subscribe to your desire to “make French the social binder in Montreal”. I humbly admit my surprise when I heard your project for a “French-speaking” neighborhood announced in a city that must fundamentally be a French-speaking city while being open to diversity. I easily understand that your goal was not to disavow the French-speaking status of the city.
However, when I consider that the largest cities in the world do not have a specific district named in the majority language of the place, I wondered. Is there an “English American” neighborhood in New York? No. There is a Chinese neighborhood whose streets I walked, but not a neighborhood that reminds tourists of a specific neighborhood of the majority culture, because that is intrinsically self-evident.
I am delighted to hear you say that “the Latin Quarter remains an unrivaled center of influence for French-speaking culture”. Thus, to illustrate this influence, it seems more appropriate to attach the label “French-speaking cultural district” to it, rather than, simply and reductively, French-speaking district.
To watch on video