First at a sporting event: the Canadian national anthem was sung in Punjabi and English before last Saturday’s Jets game in Winnipeg. An event which has not erased French, believes the Société de la francophonie manitobaine (SFM), which would still like French to be more present in the activities of the National Hockey League (NHL).
According to the SFM, the organizers instead wanted to “highlight” the language of another linguistic minority. “We are fundamentally opposed to the idea of pitting minorities against each other,” added the SFM, in a written statement sent to the Duty.
Punjabi or not, theO Canada is “often sung only in English at Jets games”, underlines the association. She also judges that the “NHL could do more to enhance the place of French in all its teams”, and invites it to transmit “a directive throughout the league regarding the use of the bilingual national anthem” . “Not only is Canada a bilingual country, but a large part of its players and coaching staff are French-speaking, not to mention the fans,” underlines the SFM.
Since it was a special event honoring Manitoba’s South Asian community, “we would not have been opposed to the anthem being sung entirely in Punjabi,” said the association.
French “called into question”?
On Saturday, before kickoff of a game between the Winnipeg Jets and the Colorado Avalanche, the choir from Ambers Trail Community School in Winnipeg performed the Canadian anthem in English and Punjabi, without no words in French.
Mastered by more than 100 million speakers, mainly Indian and Pakistani, Punjabi is the second most spoken non-official language at home in Canada, behind Mandarin, according to the 2021 census. Across Manitoba, Punjabi is more often spoken at home than French.
In general, translating a national anthem or declarations of recognition of indigenous territories, for example, helps to “include,” indicates the director of the Center for Research in Franco-Ontarian Education, Emmanuelle Le Pichon-Vorstman. Translation allows speakers of the target language to “understand what we are saying, what the story is, why we are saying that,” she adds. “If the person feels welcomed, they will want to learn twice as much [la culture et la langue]. »
But “accepting languages does not mean replacing French with another,” she says, offended. According to the assistant professor at the University of Toronto, the three languages should have been mixed. “What displeases me about this incident is that English was never questioned. It was French that they called into question. »
The Montreal Canadiens faced the Jets on Monday evening at the Canada Life Center in Winnipeg.
This report is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.