MONTREAL – “Bonjour/Hi” is out. Just “bonjour” is in.
But it’s fine for the government to communicate in French and English with businesses and hand out bilingual forms to citizens.
In another chapter in Quebec’s long history of studying the way Quebecers interact, a government advisory body has found a majority of Quebecers disapprove of the increased use of English in greetings at the mall or coffee shop.
“Bonjour/Hi,” a safe fallback line for clerks and merchants trying hard to not insult either linguistic group, is disapproved of by 79.8 per cent of Quebec people, a study has found.
It is rare to hear someone complain about the classic greeting, but the majority of Quebecers – including those off island – believe that if a merchant does not know the preferred language of a client entering his or her store, “he should greet him first in French.”
The finding is included in the study – the Importance and Priority of French for the Quebec population – commissioned by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française.
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Backing up the finding, a huge majority of Quebecers, 95.1 per cent, believe everyone who lives in Quebec should be able to speak French. And 92.4 per cent say immigrants settling in Quebec should learn French first.
“In other words, to highlight the sense of belonging to Quebec society, to contribute to the good functioning (of society), to have interesting social interactions and to communicate with immigrants, French is considered most important,” the study says.
The study appears to confirm earlier findings that while the issue of the French face of Quebec – in the form of commercial signs – is less controversial than before, there has been a slip in the use of French in ordinary interactions in Montreal’s downtown.
In 2010, undercover language inspectors working for the government’s other language agency, the Office Québécois de la langue française (OQLF), were greeted in French 89 per cent of the time in downtown Montreal shops.
Two years later, French greetings had dropped to 74 per cent, a study released this month shows. Bilingual or English-only greetings were up to 13 per cent.
Saying bonjour in both languages is certainly not illegal under the rules of the Charter of the French Language, OQLF president Louise Marchand said.
“But it can constitute an irritant that gives the impression to people that Montreal is becoming anglicized,” Marchand said.
As was also noted in the OQLF study, the greeting problem isn’t helped by the fact 57 per cent of francophones don’t bother to insist on being served in French when French is not spontaneously offered.
And despite recent other studies showing anglophones don’t care about French, the conseil’s study shows a majority of anglophones “perceive French as more or just as important as English.”
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