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Comment by floki999 | Hacker News Reader

Quebec language rules and the minions that enforce them can be quite pathetic. Just a couple of months ago, the debate be was about the right of shop-keepers being able to greet their customers in both English and French, or only in French. Totally ridiculous.

I am also a native French speaker from Europe, and left Montreal because of the backward mentality. I totally respect Quebec’s need to protect their heritage, but you can’t force it down people’s throats. It is counter-productive. It wouldn’t be so funny, if Quebec French wasn’t so hilarious to listen to... they took perfectly good French and turned it into something that is often unrecognizable.

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Why did the language laws make you leave Montreal? It's an island of bilingualism and many people here get by with no French. Unless you own a business or are dealing with an immigration issue, this is the one place in Quebec where the language laws have the least effect.

And I respectfully disagree that the French here is "hilarious to listen to", and I am not Quebecois.

Why would you get to decide which French is the good French? Formal register Quebec French is totally fine. Of course, on the street you can hear pretty deformed French, but guess what: in France too. That's just how language registers work.

I’m actually from Belgium, which is in a very similar situation as Quebec: (a) heavy accent which the French love to make fun of and (b) where language wars have been raging forever and taken to ridiculous levels. This mentality of wanting to keep a culture ‘pure’ by trying to control how and where language is used, is a losing battle. Some Quebecers, just like purist francophone Belgians have taken this language obsession to irrational levels, and it has knock-on effects in other aspects of daily-life. I wish Quebecers would just lighten-up about it..

> they took perfectly good French and turned it into something that is often unrecognizable.

As I understand it, you’ve got that switched. International French, the French of metropolitan France, is the one that had changed dramatically.

You are correct - I was making light of this overly serious subject

> they took perfectly good French and turned it into something that is often unrecognizable.

This kind of talk, is one of the reasons French are hated in Quebec.

Nearly half of a population of Riga has Russian as their native language. And yet it’s forbidden to greet customers in Russian for any shopkeeper in Riga.

That’s quite sad..

Maybe you won't have a good time somewhere if you find the local language hilarious to listen to, unrecognizable or no-good.

Just my 2 cents, and wishing you the best wherever you are now

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