Tag: bilingualism

The Bonjour-Hi controversy

Catherine Shieh

As a language teacher, I like the idea of hearing more languages being spoken everywhere. It translates to a persons’ full linguistic repertoire being used and honoured. However, in Quebec, the act of greeting people in more than one language has become a controversy. It is so well known that Saturday Night Live even made a skit about it.   

According to Van Herk (2018), code switching is a common phenomenon. It is a linguistic resource many communities use to signal a bi-cultural identity. Montreal being in a French province within an English dominant country, complicates the situation. As stipulated by the Charter of the French Language, all workers must carry their activities in French. However, many retail and business workers use the expression Bonjour-Hi, to indicate their fluency in both languages and to provide courteous customer service.

In October 2019, the Quebec government expressed his will to eliminate the bilingual expression Bonjour-Hi in businesses and government services. This statement came after the Office Québécois de la langue française (OQLF), who oversees the preservation of French, revealed that greetings in French dropped from 84 to 75% between 2010 and 2017.  Thus, Simon Jolin-Barette, the minister responsible for the French language, sees this as evidence that the official language of the province is under threat.  

Following Jolin-Barette’s announcement, the Bloc Québécois posted an advertisement on Twitter promoting the alternative expression “Bonjour-HO”. This holiday campaign aims at stamping out the bilingual greeting Bonjour-Hi. However, many people on social media pointed out the that the phrase might not be appropriate because the word “ho” carries a markedly different meaning than Santa Claus’s ho-ho-ho.

In my opinion, the expression Bonjour-Hi is what makes the city of Montreal unique. This greeting should be kept in the same way because it promotes inclusivity and respect for both languages. Our province’s financial resource should not be allocated to separate the anglophones and the francophones any further. Policies should also focus on expanding and not reducing people’s linguistic repertoire. That said, what are your thoughts on the proposed banning of Bonjour-Hi?

References

Gouvernement du Québec. (n.d.). Office québécois de la Langue Française. Accueil – Office québécois de la langue française. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/accueil.aspx

Québécois, B. (2020, December 13). Avec la campagne “2021. Twitter. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://twitter.com/BlocQuebecois/status/1337915163090030596?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1337915163090030596%7Ctwgr%5Ecdecb1b29c9448fb27db955ae6e0d4e1f375c097%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timeout.com%2Fmontreal%2Fnews%2Fheres-how-montrealers-are-reacting-to-replacing-bonjour-hi-with-bonjour-ho-121420

Sandler, G. (2022, January 12). SNL did a skit about Montreal last night & it was brutal. MTL Blog. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://www.mtlblog.com/montreal/snl-did-a-skit-about-montreal-it-was-brutal

Van Herk, Gerard. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-      Blackwell.

Does Bilingual Music Threaten the Future Of The French Language & Culture?

Catherine Shieh

            The French language Hip-Hop genre has undergone one of the most interesting and complex transformations amongst other genres of music in the past few decades. In Montreal, the rap scene reflects the city’s location within North America (predominantly English) and inside the province of Quebec (dominated by French), as well as other diverse immigrant communities. Sarkar and Allen studied the multilingual code-switching in Quebec rap and cited in an interview:

“Montreal style… is the only place where you have a cultural mix like that, whether it’s English, [Haitian] Creole, then French, but all the same as Quebec French” (2007).

The mixture of language in the music industry has contributed to the rise of a new unique subculture known as Franglais (French + English) and the French traditionalists of Montreal are afraid the bilingual nature of these songs and its ideologies could threaten the future of the French language and culture within the province.

            Among the bilingual rappers of this generation are Loud, FouKi and the Dead Obies.  They have received backlash from columnists such as Mathieu Bock-Coté from Le Journal de Montréal who says, “Franglais is a slippery slope toward Anglicization. These bourgeois-bohemian adolescents who think speaking English or Franglais will make Montreal into a New York are deluded because it is the French language that gives the city its cachet” (Soupcoff, 2020). Bilingual artists rapping in Franglais are known to face serious political and social challenges. Quebec’s music industry is heavily subsidized by the Provincial government, but only if artists and record companies are producing music in French. Some groups have lost subsidies from the Provincial government for Francophone artists because it did not reach at least 70% of its lyrics in French. Many rising artists severely depend on these types of grants and need to carefully ensure they meet the French word count requirements in their song. For the sake of language and cultural preservation, bilingual rappers are constantly rejected and are treated unfairly by Commercial French radio stations.

            For bilingual artists, rapping in multiple languages allows for more creativity. In terms of rhymes, it opens the world to more lyrical possibilities and a better rhythmic flow. In my opinion, Montreal being one of the biggest multicultural cities of our country, the music should reflect the state of our modern cultural evolution and space. Sadly, the music industry is still dominated by cultural elites, that are white Francophone artists, and they will continue to suppress the rise of this subculture. Music has long been used by many as a tool to expose social injustices. By restricting and limiting an artist’s freedom to express as they desire, are we preventing the evolution of sociocultural growth?

References

Hornberger, N. H., & McKay, S. (2010). Sociolinguistics and language education. Multilingual Matters.

Sarkar, M. and Allen, D. (2007) Hybrid identities in Quebec hip-hop: Language, territory, and ethnicity in the mix. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 6 (2), 117–130.

Soupcoff, M. (2020). Marni Soupcoff: What’s worse – unilingual labelling or contracting … National Post. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://nationalpost.com/opinion/marni-soupcoff-whats-worse-unilingual-labelling-or-contracting-covid-19

Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Benefits of Being Bilinguals

Sabrina Chang

Edwards (2004: 7) states that “Everyone is bilingual….there is no one in the world (no adult, anyway) who does not know at least a few words in languages other than their maternal variety.” Why do people strive to become bilinguals in present days? In Asian countries, parents tend to let their children learn English as early as they can. They do not want their children to fall behind others due to the lack of language learning experiences. So, I want to talk about the benefits of being bilingual.

If you happen to speak some terms in other languages, chances are, you belong to the world’s bilingual and multilingual majority. Being a bilingual has several benefits. First, being a bilingual means you can travel more easily. You might encounter some challenges or problems while travelling which can be solved by communicating with others. Second, by being bilingual, your brain will be healthier than those who are monolingual. In the video that I have posted below, it states that being multilingual gives your brain some remarkable advantages. It can also help delay the onset of diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia by as much as five years. Moreover, getting to know various languages can broaden your horizons by making you more open-minded. When we learn a language, we would also learn about the country’s culture and customs which is highly beneficial if we are heading to that country in the future. Last but not least, the advantage of being a bilingual also includes other benefits for brains. It reinforces the executive function, problem solving ability, and the function of switching between tasks of the brain. Even if you didn’t learn a second language at a young age, it is never too late to learn a language in this modern world.

For me, being a bilingual indeed brings a lot of advantages to my life. Since I was little, I was immersed in a bilingual environment. Learning a language is not a difficult task when it happens at a young age which is related to the critical period. I admit that being a bilingual increases my self-esteem and the confidence of communicating with others. We cannot deny that learning an L2 in the critical period is the best situation due to the flexibility of children’s brains, so that’s why parents are trying to let children become bilinguals as soon as they can. Therefore, I definitely agree with having children learn an L2 at a young age. Do you agree with the benefits that I have mentioned above? What is your language learning experience? Please share your thoughts with me!

The Benefits of a Bilingual Brain

References:

Nicholas, H., & Starks, D. (2014). Language education and applied linguistics: Bridging the two fields. New York: Routledge.

Treating Language as a Strength: The Benefits of Bilingualism

A letter to fluent trilinguals

Mengting H.

Hi trilinguals,

As a bilingual person who can speak two languages (English and Mandarin) quite well in Montreal, I am very jealous of you who can also communicate fluently in French. I have lost many study/job opportunities, since I am not qualified enough in French, or sometimes even in English. Sometimes, I wonder how much better my life in Montreal will be if my French can also be native-like.

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Burgers and bootlicking bilingualism

Victoria

I witnessed a rather interesting interaction downtown the other day that sparked some thought for me, so I thought I would share it here. I’d like to preface this by saying that I did a whole lot of inferring during this brief observation, so please take my reading of the atmosphere with a grain of salt.

While grabbing lunch at an A&W, I was expertly served by a lovely lady with a strong Mediterranean accent (maybe Greek? I wasn’t entirely sure) in excellent English, her demeanour polite and friendly. While I was waiting for my order to be finished, a customer with a Chinese accent approached the woman to ask for a drink. The customer appeared to still be in the fledgling stages of English-learning, pointing at the drink machine to try to make her choice clear to the server. However, in that moment, the server’s entire attitude changed. Rather than smiley and outgoing as she had been with me, she rolled her eyes at the Chinese woman, pointing at the machine as she tried to figure out what the woman wanted, asking “this one? This one?” loudly enough to draw other customers’ and workers’ attention. After the woman and her children left the restaurant, the server turned to complain about the woman to her coworkers, lamenting about how she had slowed down the lunch rush with her difficulty communicating.

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Translating Journey Part 1 – Training your brain

Lucía Ringuelet

While lately I have been trying to be more flexible, I have always had a clear tendency towards a “monolithic” type of interaction, or “double monolingualism” (Rymes, 2014, p. 5). My family immigrated from Argentina to Canada when my brother was 15 years old and I 12. From the moment we arrived, both my brother and I refused to speak in a language other than Spanish in our home, with our parents and among ourselves. I believe this can sound odd, as it is usually the parents who adopt that stance, seeking to protect the development of the mother tongue. Instead, my mother wanted to practice French with us, but we refused. Code-switching was almost taboo a for us. We wanted to speak “proper” Spanish. To be honest, I am not sure where this strict distinction came from at such a young age. It was certainly more emotional than rational.

Today, as an adult and from a rational point of view, I can find good reasons for it. In fact, I am happy we did it that way. It allowed my brother and particularly I, being the youngest, to maintain a good mastery of our mother tongue. The avoidance of code-switching to mix French in our Spanish has lent us to practice a wider range of vocabulary in the latter language. When I go back to Argentina or I speak with other Hispanic individuals whose repertoire does not include French or English, I am much more confident in my abilities to express myself solely in Spanish.

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Bad bi(lingual)s, bad bi(lingual)s, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

Victoria Tothill-Brown

“Are you bilingual?”

“Yes.”

“When did you start learning French?”

“I don’t speak French.”

“But you said you were bilingual.”

I have had the above conversation more times than I care to acknowledge. I will never forget the time my high school counsellor, after I told her I wanted to forego the standard French classes to take Japanese, called me a “bad Canadian”. More than 10 years of studying and seven years of my life spent in Japan, I sometimes wonder if there’s space in the Canadian identity for “bad” bilinguals like me who struggle with a lack of national identity.

I will admit that I am a bilingual in the purest sense of the word. I speak two languages: English and Japanese (save for some sacres and enough French to stutter my way through buying a sandwich). I’m also a “bad” language speaker.

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Montreal code-switching

Natalie Lark

Like most other North American cities, if you wander down the streets of Montreal and through its neighborhoods, you will hear most of the languages of the world spoken and brought to the city by immigrants.

However, Montreal offers a particular twist to linguistic diversity in urban areas by the number of native-born speakers using two languages in their day-to-day lives (French and English), while the immigrants can use three or more languages. So, this final post is dedicated to my favorite topic called code-switching in Montreal, in which I am about to discuss the reasons of code-switching mentioned in the textbook and based on my own observations.

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Bonjour, Hi! This is so wonderfully Montreal!

Xiaoke Sun

“Language shapes a city” (de la Hosseraye, 2015). While walking around,
Montrealers never feel too surprised to hear the bilingual greeting. I suppose “Bonjour, hi” is the most appropriate expression to depict the uniqueness of this city — of being fairly bilingual. According to Statistics Canada in 2011, the greater Montreal area has nearly 2 million bilingual people. Young Montrealers have a rate of bilingualism as high as 80% (de la Hosseraye ,2015). Beyond the obvious cultural richness that bilingualism brings to this city, it also creates an advantageous environment for learners to acquire French/English as a new language.

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Language and Identity

Hina

I started using English when I was four. My parents decided to move to Boston, and consequently, I began to attend an American kindergarten. Because I couldn’t speak any English at that point, I never really understood what was going on around me. I distinctively remember the first day of school, when I found myself staring into the eyes of a boy who had jet-black hair and dark brown eyes. He looks just like me! That must mean he’s Japanese! However, when I enthusiastically invited him to play with me in Japanese (「一緒に遊ぼう！」), he stared at me before shaking his head and walking away. That was a blow to my self-confidence; at the tender age of four, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to play with me. It quickly became evident that in my new surroundings, learning English was a complete necessity.

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