Québec has language laws that prevent businesses from using English in their advertising among other things, and some controversial rulings have come from it. One such ruling was the use of “le week-end”. Québec was punishing businesses who used this term instead of “la fin de semaine”. There was an interview done with an official from the language police where the interviewer had a dictionary from France which showed “le week-end” is proper French. The Québec official said “France doesn’t decide what words are French. We do.”
L’Académie française disagrees
Prescriptivist jerks. Let’s all dress up in $50,000 robes, call ourselves immortals, and pretend that we can control language.
L’académie française deez nuts
TIL the French Language Police is a thing
Il y en a deux ! Une pour la France et une pour le Québec mais la majorité des locuteurs du français sont en Afrique.
Are we talking the language? West of Quebec French is rare.
Yeah in Sask I’ve encountered two french speaking people (first language Quebecers)in the last decade. Both spoke English.
Both commented on how people’s expressions turn negative when they hear the accent. Which I can understand as it sounds very gutteral and unpleasant to the ear to me as well.
Plenty in Manitoba but they’ll also speak English. St Boniface is an entire neighborhood in Winnipeg where French is primary, including the arret signs. There’s a number of towns around the province where it’s the primary language as well. Bilingual of course but French is the usual spoken language.
