On her Instagram and other social media, Montreal mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada answers questions sent in by Montrealers. Mostly she answers French questions in French, but sometimes she\u2019ll answer a few in English. That detail is important in the context of a recent post in which she answered the question \u201cWill Montreal ever become a bilingual city?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMontreal is the Francophone city of North America,\u201d the mayor responded, \u201cand we need to preserve that.\u201d Indeed, one of the last things former mayor Val\u00e9rie Plante did toward the end of her mandate was to create the Bureau de la langue fran\u00e7aise, the city\u2019s very own language watchdog, with an allocation from the province of $1.5 million, and Aur\u00e9lie Arnaud as its directrice.<\/p>\n
But there hasn\u2019t been much news coming out of the Bureau since then.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also need to recognize,\u201d Martinez Ferrada went on in her video, \u201cthat we have a very important Anglophone community that helped construct and build the foundation of the city. And even the Anglophone community understands today that we need to preserve and promote the fact that Montreal is the largest and the only Francophone city of North America.\u201d<\/p>\n
The largest, yes. The only, not at all. Perhaps she misspoke. But that is beside the point.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of us speak two languages,\u201d the mayor went on, \u201cand we are bilingual. But the city of Montreal,\u201d she repeats emphatically, \u201cis a Francophone city of North America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reaction to her video was mixed. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of words to say \u2018no,\u2019\u201d said one Montrealer, and Anglophone, while a Francophone The Suburban spoke to scoffed at the fuss. \u201cOttawa has a sizeable French minority and no one questions why it\u2019s not considered bilingual.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Caddell is president of the Task Force on Linguistic Policy, whose raison d\u2019\u00eatre is to promote linguistic equality. He says the reality in Montreal is markedly different than what provincial or municipal leaders would like to believe. \u201cMontreal is a bilingual and multilingual city, and it always has been.\u201d In fact, Montreal is considered to be one of the most linguistically diverse cities in North America. The mayor herself is trilingual \u2013 she is fluent in French, English, and Spanish, coming from Santiago, Chile.<\/p>\n
After French and English, Arabic, Italian, and Spanish are the most-spoken languages in Montreal.<\/p>\n
The oft-quoted argument is that Montreal \u2013 indeed, the province \u2013 is surrounded by English, and French is thus threatened. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s true,\u201d Caddell says. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think any real linguist would argue that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caddell is less concerned about the mayor\u2019s insistence on the city\u2019s official language status. In fact, he applauds her vision. \u201cShe\u2019s a breath of fresh air, because she\u2019s looking at things from a different perspective rather than holding fast to what was done before. And, so, I think, given that kind of approach to things, we\u2019ll see a lot more flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cites the recent relaxing of the rules on Montreal\u2019s unofficial hockey cheer. Last year the OQLF outlawed \u201cGo Habs Go\u201d, particularly on the signs on the front of STM buses. French language minister Jean-Francois Roberge ran to the chant\u2019s defence, and now the OQLF has officially installed the word \u201cgo\u201d in its lexicon of non-French words that are acceptable in certain contexts.<\/p>\n
Not that he is giving Martinez Ferrada credit for that. But he is hopeful that, as \u201cthe whole tenor of the administration is changing,\u201d common sense will prevail over the letter of the language laws. n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On her Instagram and other social media, Montreal mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada answers questions sent in by Montrealers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[203719,203720,203715,49,48,1656,203717,13567,72939,569,203714,48743,2523,203721,136503,50301,2338,203723,203713,1671,203722,203718,203716],"class_list":{"0":"post-513891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal","8":"tag-applied-linguistics","9":"tag-bilingualism","10":"tag-branches-of-linguistics","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-communication","14":"tag-cultural-assimilation","15":"tag-cultural-exchange","16":"tag-cultural-globalization","17":"tag-culture","18":"tag-french-language","19":"tag-human-communication","20":"tag-language","21":"tag-language-education","22":"tag-languages","23":"tag-linguistics","24":"tag-montreal","25":"tag-multiculturalism","26":"tag-multilingualism","27":"tag-north-america","28":"tag-psycholinguistics","29":"tag-second-language-acquisition","30":"tag-sociolinguistics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}