We adore it, we criticize it, we treat it, we defend it and, sometimes, we deny it. Since the beginnings of New France, the language has accompanied its inhabitants, while remaining the embodiment of their specificity and their solitude in America.
This language, the documentary filmmaker Hélène Choquette wanted to trace its course throughout history, from the Conquest of 1759, when French Canadians found themselves alone with their language in America, and with its destiny. This gives the documentary A story about the taste of the tonguewhich is showing in Montreal and Quebec.
Already at that time, the language here was changing, far from the old mother country. In the streets, on the roads, Anglophones and Francophones rub shoulders without understanding each other. To the point where a 19th century English travelere century remarks that, in conversations, we often begin a sentence in one language and end it in the other, hoping for an understanding halfway through, with the help of “lame turns”. “It’s a time when there is still a lot of under-education among French Canadians,” says Chantal Bouchard, linguist and author of the book The tongue and the navelwho is interviewed in the film.
Neologisms
But from the beginning of the nineteenthe century, the French language spoken here carries its neologisms which are considered to be errors. It was at this time that the word “blonde” for lover and the expression “grumpy”, used in derision or contempt for a small man, appeared in glossaries.
“My film is not a film for scholars,” said Hélène Choquette in an interview. What she wants is for people who grew up in French in Quebec to understand the origins of their language.
“When we see the course of the language in French Canada, then in Quebec, we understand all our complexes, our activism, and our attachment to the language,” she underlines.
An unknown story
If the recent history of the French fact in Quebec is better known, that of its evolution from the Conquest deserves to be better disseminated.
In this regard, the comments of Chantal Bouchard and historian Éric Bédard are eloquent. Thus, Chantal Bouchard argues that it is the prestige that the French language enjoyed, particularly among English speakers, in the 19e century which means that it is still spoken today in America.
“At the time, it was prestigious to speak French,” continues Hélène Choquette. It was very much associated with Louis XIV. The English of the upper classes liked to speak French. They were Francophiles. Éric Bédard also adds that the colonization of the territory by the British coming from Great Britain did not take place at the rate and with the expected assimilation consequences.
In addition, the debates of the Parliament of Canada took place exclusively in English until 1848, notes Biz, alias Sébastien Fréchette, who also intervenes in the documentary.
At the time, the French-Canadian “patois myth”, which was not “true French”, persisted. “The language of politics was English,” notes Hélène Choquette.
In 1855, there were still French-Canadian “barbarisms and solecisms”, such as when one speaks of a “well-coiled” person to designate a person dressed warmly, or when one speaks of a “good trotte” for indicate a good distance to go.
The documentary also touches on certain myths, including the fact that the patriots were ardent defenders of French. Historian Éric Bédard notes that some patriots were Anglophones, and that it was especially after their defeat that the French-Canadian nationalist movement took on a more cultural and identity-based colour.
The fact remains that until the end of the 20th century, Francophones will remain at the bottom of the social hierarchy in Quebec, where they are dominated by Anglophone business leaders, fewer in number, but powerful.
A history and a literature
Ultimately, this people “without history and without literature” that Lord Durham had described would form what is now called the people of Quebec. In this regard, Hélène Choquette skilfully follows the course of the famous song The big six footerwritten in 1961 by Claude Gauthier.
In the first version of this song, Gauthier said to be of French-Canadian nationality, which became, in later versions, Quebecois-French then Quebecois.
The documentary also crosses the more recent era, that of the adoption of Bill 101, in particular, where the political periodically approaches the cultural or the identity, to then move away from it.
As Hélène Choquette finishes her film, the use of French is declining in Quebec, and from coast to coast in Canada.
A responsability
In an interview, she says that she turned on her heels, a few weeks before our interview, in a store in the Rockland center where she could not be served in French.
Francophones, she says, have a responsibility for the survival of their language. At the end of the documentary, several speakers, including Biz, also talk about the need to support Indigenous languages in Quebec. “French could, like big brother, accompany indigenous languages in their reappropriation,” says Biz. “It’s a natural solidarity, adds sociologist Jean-Philippe Warren. To recognize the need to defend a language is also to recognize the fragility [des langues] others. »