April 29, Parle vous francais?
A friend once said after visiting Montreal, “It’s weird. People here look and dress like Americans. The city looks like America. But they speak a different language.” Such is bane for the American travelers in Montreal and the province of Quebec. Montreal, the second largest French-speaking city in the world, has a third of its population speaking English as their native tongue, yet English signs are still rare here. While Toronto is still well within the comfort zone of Anglo-Americans, Montreal does feel like a different country (Surprise)! So one is always grateful whenever a useful English phrase is discovered. Which reminds me, how about the increasing use of Spanish in the U.S? While it may seem like a waste of space on paper or extra seconds on the phone, what a life-saver it must be for new immigrants and visitors of Hispanic descent of the country? It is not difficult to imagine what it was like twenty years ago. Whenever I step tentatively into a shop or a restaurant in Montreal, the start of yet another scavenge hunt for English phrases, I am reminded of my father, who first arrived in the U.S. nearly three decades ago, in a time and place where bilingual education was unheard of let alone controversial and all of his money was in his wallet borrowed entirely from family in China instead of a friend with the initials, A.T.M.
posted by hedgehog @ 9:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home