I like words, the classics, the forgotten, the quirky, the evanescent, the pointed and the scruffy. I’m in love with old quilts too. I have a pink one, embroidered with fuchsia and red threads, which has survived a century. I like the quiltsmixed couples and the mixing of genres, in music, love, cooking, “mixology” — Antidote suggests “creating cocktails” —, decoration and, why not, our way of expressing ourselves.
Whether our language is mixed or whether code switching (a term I learned in the series of To have to on French (bit.ly/3D5tCGl) may worry some people, I understand. I have always wanted to protect our language, because it will remain porous and fragile due to multiple infiltrations, including that of American culture. I sometimes fear Louisianization, but the way things are going, the planet risks suffocating before that.
My Gaspé ancestors spoke… Gaspé, mixed with English and Joual (horse). My grandfather Alban went into tic (penthouse/attic), left his “clothes in the drum” (gallery of the house), put away the “grocery in the pantree”.
At home, we speak French, Joual, teenage Franglais, French slang (because the lover), and it was even speaking Spanish and Mandarin at my table last week. My new roommate is Mexican and my adopted son is half Taiwanese, half Quebecer. He invents funny expressions like “Name of a poorly done tax report!” “. He and my son talk in French, in street Québécois and in Franglais: “We got screwed at the restaurant. “We’re not going tip the scale in the elections. ” ” I chill. ” ” This is cringe ” (faintness). ” We have it kicked out (he works in front of a supervised shooting gallery).
Do we speak French or Québécois on the shores of the St. Lawrence? Who among us wants to ask the question that kills?
“But we don’t say words like ‘get mamaw”, because it is rude. It means “fuck your mother” in Creole. It doesn’t make GND, ”underlines my B, who has drawn certain markers and made Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois a model of neutrality. I would rather be Queen Elizabeth.
It is this crossbreeding that interests me, that of words, images, ideas and cultures. I sometimes use “be down (for: being up for it) or “patent à kid”, which sounds like the planned obsolescence described by my father.
I only use these expressions with people likely to understand them. I adapt.
Hey dude! Do not be afraid.
I like to say the word guy » ; you will read his long journey on Wiki, originally from dandy.
I speak international French to my roommate so that her stay is immersive, while showing her how to make blueberries from Lac-Saint-Jean with Belgian chocolate. I am amused by the slang used by my lover, a permanent resident from French rurality which multiplies regionalisms.
He’s buzzing and I’m chattering. These are our references. He “cuts off a piece of fat”, he “warms up”, he says “pété de thunes” (to have money), and also “my money is in my pocket” or “froc”, “walking in the nails” , and so on.
He knows the Joual, the words of bobthornhas not read Michel Tremblay or VLB, but I teach him words like “déflaboxé” or “déguédine”, “building” or “host toasted on both sides”, “take a chire”, “child of nananne” ( the nanannes of the electoral campaigns, for example) and “as such”.
Before entering the village, I crossed wastes; this word found itself at the end of my pencil; it belonged to our old Frankish language
I think I will lend him fancy molasses, the book by Francis Ouellette that I am reading at the moment. He will need a lexicon, though. “He puts swan water in the duck […]. He opens the quail at the end. » fancy molassesit’s the Burgundy by Mélanie Michaud, except that Little Burgundy has become Centre-Sud, the defunct Faubourg à m’lasse where my grandfather lived when he arrived in town. It didn’t speak gentrified in the 1970s, let alone in 1929.
Anyway (I say that too), I don’t speak “Ville-Mo linguo” nor HoMa. I don’t know exactly what I’m talking about anymore.
The standard is changing
I discussed with the “ayatollah of the language” of Radio-Canada, Guy Bertrand, who has nothing to do with a priest of good French speaking. The first linguistic adviser of the big house is rather elastic as regards the protocol. I asked him the killer question: what language do we defend?
“We are not defending rules. We aim for linguistic efficiency, to be clear. Language is a tool of communication, we want to be understood. »
According to him, “Good morning”, a layer of English, will become a regional way of expressing oneself. “The standard is changing very quickly. Five years later, that is changing. Anglicization, Franglais, is not just in Quebec. It’s global, even in Brazil and Italy. Without forgetting the French… top branchouilles, suddenly.
“In France, we use English to show that we are connected,” he says. In Quebec, we want to make people, show that we are not pretentious. Among young people, Franglais ends up passing when they arrive on the job market. »
I asked myself the question a thousand times: am I lazy? What would be the most appropriate word?
I had a run-in this summer with a descendant of the Patriots who speaks in English to his son: “Why are you doing this? Your name is French, his too! »
“We are bilingual; we have always spoken both languages at home and I am against law 96.” God save the king!
From my point of view, it looks more like the desire to adopt the language of power than that of “making people”. Everyone has their own poutine, and this brown porridge has ended up becoming the sad emblem of our gastronomy. But, one thing is certain, if the assimilation is done through education, family, Internet, music, friends, social networks and influencers, it will take more than banning the Hello-Hi, humming a song by Félix taken over by Louis-Jean Cormier or washing your tongue with homemade soap to instill in us the helium pride of the fleur-de-lis. Unless you invest heavily and creatively in it, culture does not trickle down like the economy, the tears and the empty promises of election campaigns.