{"id":749537,"date":"2026-06-20T13:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/749537\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T13:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:25:11","slug":"freed-lets-celebrate-why-nosh-is-a-perfect-reflection-of-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/749537\/","title":{"rendered":"Freed: Let\u2019s celebrate why ‘nosh’ is\u00a0a perfect reflection of\u00a0Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to\u00a0Noshgate, the latest silly language battle since \u2026 er \u2026 I wrote about other silly language battles<\/a>\u00a0last week.<\/p>\n

The language cops\u2019 targeting of the Yiddish word \u201cnosh\u201d (meaning \u201chave a nibble\u201d) at Arthurs Nosh Bar<\/a>\u00a0is reminiscent of their battles\u00a0with\u00a0\u201cpasta\u201d\u00a0and phrases like\u00a0\u201cGo Habs Go\u201d \u2014 both eventually abandoned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I keep waiting for them to demand Thai restaurants convert \u201cpad Thai\u201d to \u201cpad\u00a0cravate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their\u00a0picking on the word\u00a0\u201cnosh\u201d\u00a0is almost too easy to satirize.\u00a0This will\u00a0likely\u00a0be abandoned, hopefully before\u00a0embarrassing stories appear in the international media.<\/p>\n

But why can\u2019t we avoid these\u00a0petty\u00a0hassles in the first place?\u00a0<\/p>\n

To use another Yiddish word, Quebec bureaucrats are being \u201cnudniks\u201d about nosh.\u00a0A nudnik\u00a0describes a \u201cpersistent pest or\u00a0nag\u201d\u00a0who drones on about trivial details.<\/p>\n

In French, it\u2019s an \u201cenquiquineur\u201d \u2014 an \u201cirritating, bothersome person.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sounds like some of our language cops\u00a0when chasing\u00a0after\u00a0runaway apostrophes.<\/p>\n

But with Quebec\u2019s national holiday coming up Wednesday, let\u2019s not dwell on this latest idiocy. Instead, let\u2019s celebrate why \u201cnosh\u201d is very representative of Montreal today.<\/p>\n

For starters, \u201cnosh\u201d is a perfect fit in a city full of celebrated restaurants with English or\u00a0Frenglish\u00a0names, like Foxy, Montr\u00e9al Plaza\u00a0and Knuckles \u2014 all run by prominent francophones\u00a0who want a punchy, global-sounding\u00a0 brand.<\/p>\n

Also,\u00a0the\u00a0playfully named Foiegwa\u00a0restaurant (a pun on how we\u00a0anglos\u00a0say\u00a0\u201cfoie gras\u201d), co-owned by a well-known francophone chef.<\/p>\n

Similarly, many French-named restaurants are owned by anglophones declaring their Quebec roots and pride. Old Montreal\u2019s terrific Garde-Manger is owned by celebrated\u00a0anglos,\u00a0including\u00a0chef Chuck Hughes and Canadian actor Tim Rozon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The famed Vin Papillon restaurant was co-founded by\u00a0anglo chef David McMillan.\u00a0In Montreal, restaurants\u00a0mix and embrace all our worlds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why more than\u00a020 chefs have protested against the\u00a0nosh nudniks<\/a> and several have scrawled \u201cnosh\u201d on their restaurant windows.<\/p>\n

You hear\u00a0the same linguistic mix on our streets, where anglophones, francophones and xylophones change languages as often as they\u00a0change\u00a0lanes on\u00a0D\u00e9carie Blvd.<\/p>\n

Last week, after a\u00a0tennis game,\u00a0I spent an hour with a francophone player speaking only French to be polite, while\u00a0he relentlessly replied in English to be polite.<\/p>\n

We had a great time, in a classic Montreal conversation.<\/p>\n

Days earlier,\u00a0I stood on a\u00a0Plateau street\u00a0for 40 minutes\u00a0with a francophone bike activist, gabbing strictly in French because my second language is better than his.<\/p>\n

But a week earlier, I had a long talk with a francophone journalist entirely\u00a0 in English.\u00a0Why? She long worked for English TV and speaks my language\u00a0 better than I do, so we default to the smoothest tongue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u00a0Montrealers\u00a0do this instinctively: a complex dance that shifts\u00a0 constantly, depending on whose second language is best.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0something I love about Montreal,\u00a0so I\u00a0hate when language bureaucrats get in the way to justify their jobs or recently increased budget.<\/p>\n

Take the\u00a0never-ending\u00a0Bonjour-Hi controversy<\/a>. Store staff and shop owners seem happy to chirp the bilingual greeting, which infuriates government officials. But it\u2019s\u00a0just\u00a0about seeing what language your customer might\u00a0prefer\u00a0to speak.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I don\u2019t care if you add \u201chi\u201d to your \u201cbonjour\u201d or not. But the greeting often reveals\u00a0people\u2019s accents\u00a0and\u00a0avoids those weird\u00a0French-language\u00a0chats where you suddenly realize you\u2019re both\u00a0anglos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I always start in French with store or phone service people, though I use English with tech companies like\u00a0Vid\u00e9otron. It\u2019s hard enough to follow their technicians in English as they tell me to crawl under my couch to do something like: \u201cConnect the HDMI 2.1 RG6\u00a0ethernet coaxial\u00a0cable to the\u00a0high bandwidth optical fibre audio panel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s Picks\t<\/p>\n

Likewise,\u00a0when I\u2019m calling Quebec government health or tax offices, I want to understand every last syllable \u2014 not mistake a simple upset stomach (crise de foie) for a liver (foie) crisis.<\/p>\n

But recently, even when we do select\u00a0English, we must still punch through several all-French menus\u00a0to get there. As reader Jeremy P. wrote me last week:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I call adaptive transport \u2014 oops \u2014 transport\u00a0adapt\u00e9, I have to listen to French first, press the (English) button, then listen to all the rules about\u00a0whether I am entitled to listen and communicate in English.\u201d<\/p>\n

But,\u00a0of course,\u00a0when Jeremy finally gets to a human, \u201cthe agents who answer the phone are all very polite and nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

We ordinary non-bureaucratic\u00a0Montrealers all know the important thing is to communicate with and respect each other, not pass a government language test.<\/p>\n

How did we\u00a0anglos\u00a0become the \u201cPress 9\u201d\u00a0people, anyway? Were the 2 through 8 buttons taken by other languages? Whatever \u2014 like many\u00a0anglos,\u00a0I\u2019ve been\u00a0pressing 9 more often lately.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re trying\u00a0to send a message to the government saying SOS \u2014 Save Our Services \u2014 by showing they\u2019re needed.\u00a0So\u00a0press 9 if you\u2019re an anglophone on the telephone with a gallstone.<\/p>\n

But again, this week, I\u2019d rather celebrate than just berate. Because there\u2019s a lot\u00a0Quebecers do\u00a0right when our government isn\u2019t\u00a0manufacturing dissent.<\/p>\n

As well,\u00a0whether\u00a0anglophone, francophone or\u00a0otherphone\u00a0in\u00a0this city,\u00a0we are all good at noshing.<\/p>\n

So,\u00a0Bonne F\u00eate this Wednesday, everyone.<\/p>\n

Happy nosh, from Josh.<\/p>\n

Joshfreed49@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to\u00a0Noshgate, the latest silly language battle since \u2026 er \u2026 I wrote about other silly language battles\u00a0last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338,92296,222207],"class_list":["post-749537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal","tag-news-videos","tag-quebec-language-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749537","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=749537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}