The ostrich certainly does not bury its head in the sand when it is frightened; like everyone else, she runs. But the expression suits us only too well, to us, French-speaking Quebecers, who pretend not to see the dazzling anglicization of Quebec and the dramatic fall in the quality and use of French in our conversations and in our minds over the past two decades.
The latest data from Statistics Canada only confirms the decline of French which bursts our eardrums on a daily basis. Listing concrete, indisputable examples of anglicization in businesses, in workplaces, in cultural spaces, everywhere, would be tedious. Without counting the aberrations, like this “Hello-Hi! or the English required of judges in the regions of Quebec, a matter of marking the occasion, for those who have not yet noticed, that one can easily live without speaking a word of French in Quebec. Message that immigrants receive five out of five, they who already have enough worries with their integration into the labor market and into society. We have even come to this paradoxical idea that the state whose official language is French should offer its services in English to immigrants! It’s only in Quebec that ridicule doesn’t kill.
20 years ago, I fell asleep in Montreal, I wake up today in Toronto.
There is, in the heart of Montreal, an inescapable progression of English, which gains always more ground, conquering, in the districts hitherto French-speaking. On the Plateau, west of Papineau, it seems that only the old people still speak French. This is where I experienced the height of the absurd: a French-speaking Montrealer speaking to me in English. Asked, he replies, all smiles, that he doesn’t know, that English is good. In short… a reflex.
The steamroller of English
This reflex, everyone caught it, it seems. On the radio waves, in the press, on TV, on the Internet, it is impossible for journalists, columnists and other speakers to make three sentences without using an English expression, more “trendy” than the equivalent French expression. I hear English everywhere, all the time. We listen to series, films in English; we browse the Internet in English; we write each other with English words; we think more and more with English concepts.
In fact, we are all subject to the steamroller of English, which crushes everything in its path, especially among young people. Their noses firmly glued to social networks, they are immersed from morning to evening in a largely English-speaking universe. Many don’t care much about preserving their language. She has been so mistreated and ignored throughout their youth that they appreciate her very little. It is with them that the battle of French is being played out. And get lost, I’m afraid. From this point of view, Law 96 is the equivalent of a bandage applied to a gaping wound.
The problem is that a language never comes alone. It brings in its wake a culture, a perception of the world, concerns that reflect the society from which it comes. And English here is the United States. Our new American masterminds impose the codes and subjects of “conversation” that we adopt without firing a shot. New expressions, innovative ideas (like the most reactionary ones), fashions, experiences, everything comes to us from the south.
Even politics is written in Washington. We now have entire segments devoted to American politics in our daily news programs. So much so that we know more about American senators than about our own ministers.
Worse, we now model the great American debates and conflicts on our own little world, which had nothing to do with it until then. The n-word is the most eloquent illustration of this. Here, in French, this insult has never been in common use. But in the United States, the English word is a serious insult, of proven racism. So we adopt the American perspective without asking questions; we throw teachers and writers in the garbage by sticking on our reality a story that is not ours.
Breaking American cultural hegemony
By integrating American English into our lives, we feel like we are opening up to the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are few countries more focused on themselves than the United States. We sympathize with the poor Russians or Chinese locked up in their respective “echo chambers” while rushing, with open arms, into those where the Americans lock us up.
By speaking, by living in French, we have the opportunity to break the narrow conception that American cultural hegemony imposes on us. We see elsewhere, we hear something else, we think differently. French opens a small door to us towards difference, towards other countries, other cultures. So why choose to wear blinders when you have the chance to see wide and far?
French-speaking Quebec culture has greatly contributed to making Quebec a unique society in America; an imaginative, open, tolerant, democratic and more egalitarian society than many others. All the studies, all the polls show it: Quebecers do not think or act like other Canadians, and even less like Americans, in many areas. Will we still be original when all our references, all our inspirations come from south of the border?
In this chorus of demands for the diversity of sexes, genders, races, ethnicities, colors, cultures, etc., it seems that only French-speaking Quebec culture is not has no citizenship. Why not claim our distinction rather than wanting to assimilate us to the greatest number? If you want to follow the current too much, you risk getting lost…for good.