Language in Canada

Language in Canada can be a sticky business. As is the case with everything else in this complicated country, there are rules galore.

The majority of Canadians speak English as their first language. Only in the province of Quebec is French widespread and fluently spoken.

That being said, when outsiders come to an English-speaking Canadian city like Toronto or Vancouver one of the first things they notice is that there is an awful lot of French everywhere. There are French signs at the airport, French labels on the milk cartons, and French buttons on the ATMs. Why all the French you ask? Why that is due to Canada's fabulous...

Pierre Trudeau was elected Prime Minister of Canada in 1968, at a time when there was a lot of unrest between French Quebec and English Canada. He came to power pledging to bring a new spirit of "co-operation" to the country's two linguistic communities, and thus calm Canada's internal tensions.

One of Pierre Trudeau's earliest acts as prime minister was the passage of an "Official Languages Act" which declared English and French to be the "official dual languages" of Canada. Under the terms of the new law, the Canadian government was henceforth obligated to provide all goods and services to all Canadians in both languages. All English-speaking civil servants across the country were put in mandatory French classes, and French became a mandatory subject for all Canadian students who wished to graduate highschool. The post office, the courts, the police stations, and all other departments of the Federal Government became obligated to offer French service to any Canadians who requested it. All corporations were ordered to put French on their packaging, or their products would not be sold.

As a result, today just about every product you can buy in Canada, from rat poison to a DVD player will come in a box where every single bit of text is reproduced in French below the English. For example, this bottle of body wash I have here declares that it has a "fresh woody scent." Then right under that it proclaims, in equally big letters that it also has "la fraîche fragrance boisée."

This makes our packaging very crowded with words, and until recently, Canadian cereal boxes never had those cool games on the back, because the French translation of everything used up too much room. All this extra text costs untold millions for companies who wish to sell commercial products in Canada, and it's often argued as being one of the main reasons why Canada often lags behind the United States in terms of the availability of the latest foods, electronics, clothes, books, and other trendy goods.

Here is a handy chart explaining where you will see French in Canada, and where you will not:

A common assumption is that the Quebeckers' shared desire to protect their French language from English assimilation forms the heart of the Quebec nationalist/separatist movement. Prime Minister Trudeau's hope was that if Canada became an officially and seamlessly bilingual nation Quebec would no longer feel "different" and thus the separatist movement would deflate. Of course, things did not work quite as planned.

Despite the millions of dollars spent on the project, 30 years later there remains little evidence that all this imposed French has had much of a practical effect on making Canada a truly "bilingual" nation. A stranger who goes to British Columbia, Alberta, Newfoundland, or even most of Ontario and tries to break into spontaneous French will likely get little more than odd stares. Today only 25% of Canadians claim to be able to speak French, and the vast majority of that 25% lives in Quebec.

To add insult to injury, despite the best efforts of the Canadian government, the Quebecois continue to reject English. The language act of '69 did little to please them, in fact, it made them even madder because now English text was being forced onto their boxes and packages. In 1977 the Quebec government thus passed the now infamous "Bill 101" which made French the only legal language in the province. Access to English schools became severely restricted, English was banned on all public signs, and all sorts of other complex restrictions and rules were cooked up to limit the Quebeckers' daily exposure to English as much as possible. Bizarre as it sounds, they even created a special Quebec language police force whose duty was to search and and prosecute anyone who violated the sacred "French only" language laws. These sorts of intimidating tactics caused much of Quebec's already dwindling English-speaking minority population to pack up and leave.

Quebec thus remains the only province that openly undermines the very policies of bilingualism that were created to appease them. In other words while we in English Canada are still being forced to learn French for apparently no reason, Quebeckers can merrily undermine English, the language of the country's majority. The kinds of shenanigans can prove incredibly frustrating, and are responsible for helping foster a deep and ongoing divide between French and English Canada.

The other aspect of Canadian language worth noting is the somewhat distinct character of Canadian English. Due to our prolonged status as a British colony, Canadian English is still a lot like British English, spelling wise. That means there are extra "u's" in words like "colour" and "honour" and so forth, and "re's" rather than "er's" in words like "centre" and "theatre." Unlike British English, however, Canadians are not generally expected to use bizarre spellings like "feotus," "tyre," and "manoeuvre."

Like many Canadians, I don't use the "correct" British/Canadian spellings of words most of the time when I write, mainly because I am more used to reading American spelling and I can't be bothered to remember where all these extras u's go. Plus most computer programs recognize British spellings as errors, and for bad spellers like me second-checking the spell-checker is a hassle I am eager to avoid. Nevertheless, the Canadian government appears to have some sort of rule demanding that things must use proper Canadian-style spelling before they can be bought/sold/displayed in Canada. Likewise, in school teachers will often mark you down if you use American-style spellings on papers and reports.

Why the authorities are so anal about all of this I don't know. It's just one of the many illogical struggles that makes Canada Canada.

In my experience, I've found that most Canadians will vigorously deny that they possess any sort of crazy accent. There is some truth to this. Canadians who live in big cities simply speak with the general North American accent most people on this continent consider "normal." There are exceptions of course. Canadians in rural areas often have stronger regional accents than those from urban areas. Many Canadians who live in the Maritime provinces likewise have very unique accents, although some have noted this unique trait is starting to disappear among the younger generation. People in Quebec speak French, obviously, but they do so with a unique accent as well. Quebec French is generally regarded as being much rougher and less elegant than France French. Many Frenchmen actually look down their noses at Quebecers for bastardizing their beautiful language.

It's a well-known stereotype that Canadians say "eh" excessively. Like most stereotypes this one is at least partially based on reality. You do hear "eh" thrown around a lot in casual conversation, but many Americans use it too. The most extreme, cliched form of using "eh," ie: ending every sentence with it (nice weather, eh? I hope it doesn't rain, eh?) is generally only associated with really lower-class hick people and Indians.