quebec arrogance | Page 2 | GTAMotorcycle.com

quebec arrogance

timtune said:
Went to NL for a month. Both ways thru quebec not a single english sign. For miles on the Transcan we were being warned about something. That much we could decipher but with french only the specific danger was unclear.
With at least 3 english only provinces on either side of them you would think some english signs might be offered as a curtesy,but no.
To me that is the height of arrogance.
We made sure to only buy gas and drop off garbage (in a proper receptacle) while going thru.
Click to expand...
I can help with the English problem...

Curtsey is something a Frenchmen does in front of another Frenchman.

You were probably looking for the word courtesy.
 
The times I've been to Quebec I've had nothing but Steller service and great experience. Helps to have an aussie accent and actually try to do the French speak thing I think.

Friends/family/colleagues from Ontario get treated like garbage though 😆 those frenchies hate you ontarians...
 
DownUnder said:
The times I've been to Quebec I've had nothing but Steller service and great experience. Helps to have an aussie accent and actually try to do the French speak thing I think.

Friends/family/colleagues from Ontario get treated like garbage though 😆 those frenchies hate you ontarians...
Click to expand...

I remember going to a restaurant in Quebec City one time and asking the waiter, "What's the soup du jour?"

He answered completely straight-faced, "Well, eeet eees like a sooop of ze day..."
 
Lightcycle said:
I remember going to a restaurant in Quebec City one time and asking the waiter, "What's the soup du jour?"

He answered completely straight-faced, "Well, eeet eees like a sooop of ze day..."
Click to expand...
We were doing an installation in the Eastern Townships and hired locals for the labour force. No one thought of it but they couldn't speak English and we couldn't speak French. The foreman thought they would understand him better if he spoke English with a French accent. The job actually went well. It's amazing what can get done when people dump the attitudes.

A Francophone friend from Montreal was in TO and went to a posh restaurant where the waiters spoke with a French accent. He started talking to the waiter in French and found out the guy was faking it, couldn't understand a word.
 
nobbie48 said:
We were doing an installation in the Eastern Townships and hired locals for the labour force. No one thought of it but they couldn't speak English and we couldn't speak French. The foreman thought they would understand him better if he spoke English with a French accent. The job actually went well. It's amazing what can get done when people dump the attitudes.
Click to expand...

Sometimes that works quite well.

My wife is fluent in Italian. When we were traveling through Latin America and Spain, she just spoke Italian with a Spanish accent and pretty much everyone understood her. But then again, those languages are pretty similar.

My first time riding in Spain, a local guy pointed at my ADV sticker which was shaped like an EU country sticker on my pannier and asked what country that was. I don't speak any Spanish at all, but I replied with my best Spanish accent "AD-ven-TOOR-ah".

"Ah, si. Claro!"

173742414-L.jpg
 
jc100 said:
Apparently 1/4 of the population now no longer have English or French as a first language.


So just a guess but pretty soon if things go by population…French will be replaced by Mandarin as an official language.

Now that I’ve dropped a stinky turd I’ll just hang about and see what develops.
Click to expand...

My money is on French being replaced by Punjabi. 32% of thr 400k immigrants came from India last year while only 8% came from China.
 
when christia freeland made a stink about the CEO of air canada not being able to speak french, I said on social media that its a bastardized version of an irrelevant language.

The frenchies were not happy.
 
nobbie48 said:
A Francophone friend from Montreal was in TO and went to a posh restaurant where the waiters spoke with a French accent. He started talking to the waiter in French and found out the guy was faking it, couldn't understand a word.
Click to expand...
If i put on a full Quebecer accent, some people from France won't understand me. But then people from the south/Marseille...also have quite the way to pronounce things.

But like..this isn't better either
 
LePhillou said:
If i put on a full Quebecer accent, some people from France won't understand me. But then people from the south/Marseille...also have quite the way to pronounce things.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had that experience in France as well. I'd be talking to a store clerk in what I thought was perfectly clear (albeit grade school vocabulary) French and they'd look at me like I was speaking Martian or something.

"Avez-vous un sac?"
..."quoi?!?!"
"Avez. Vous. Un. Sac?"
..."ahh, tu veux dire 'Avez-vous un sac?'"

That is Exactly. What. I. Just. Said...

Outside of France, the French-Canadian accent seemed to be perfectly understandable, Belgium, Morocco, no problems at all.

When you're traveling, the locals are very appreciative of you attempting to speak their language. They're a lot nicer to you as a result.

Except in France. There they look down on you if you don't have a perfect Parisian accent...
 
Lightcycle said:
Yeah, I had that experience in France as well. I'd be talking to a store clerk in what I thought was perfectly clear (albeit grade school vocabulary) French and they'd look at me like I was speaking Martian or something.

"Avez-vous un sac?"
..."quoi?!?!"
"Avez. Vous. Un. Sac?"
..."ahh, tu veux dire 'Avez-vous un sac?'"

That is Exactly. What. I. Just. Said...

Outside of France, the French-Canadian accent seemed to be perfectly understandable, Belgium, Morocco, no problems at all.

When you're traveling, the locals are very appreciative of you attempting to speak their language. They're a lot nicer to you as a result.

Except in France. There they look down on you if you don't have a perfect Parisian accent...
Click to expand...

Have a good friend that's chinese but from French Polynesia. He came and stayed with me for a few weeks and we did a trip out to Montreal and Quebec etc.... his direct quote after the first encounter with some of the locals was. "Wtf, they are barstardizing my language".
 
DownUnder said:
Have a good friend that's chinese but from French Polynesia. He came and stayed with me for a few weeks and we did a trip out to Montreal and Quebec etc.... his direct quote after the first encounter with some of the locals was. "Wtf, they are barstardizing my language".
Click to expand...

The Chinese do get around.

I have several Jamaican-Chinese friends and if you close your eyes when they slip into patois, you'd swear they were black Jamaican through and through.
 
LePhillou said:
Sometimes i think people don't grasp how French quebec is outside of the big city centers and touristic attractions. People don't learn/speak/understand english for the most part if they don't need it
And also NB is technically bilingual and there are a lot of francophones/acadians closest to that border.

Now should there be indicators in both languages...definitely, yes.
But are we talking about a temporary sign for a hazard/danger that was put up by construction crews that only finished their high school diploma, on the outskirts of the province (and probably don't speak English at all?) In that case i might see it as more plausible that they wouldn't have bilingual indicators if they interchangeably use those same signs for all their local construction projects.

If it's a permanent installation then probably something should be done about it.

Growing up in Quebec city, my "high level" of bilingualism back then was quite rare. So this doesn't really surprise me.
Click to expand...

You grew up in La Capitale Nationale?
 
Oddly as an Englishman I was not the most hated person in my workplace when I worked in France, the Quebecois guy was. I still got “hooligan” quips nearly every day or some comment about burnt meat being a national dish or something, occasionally a snide remark about mad cow disease but the poor Quebec guy was just at the bottom of the heap and got trashed regularly.

I figured that they expected that I would butcher the language but that the Quebecois guy had no excuse!
 
backmarkerducati said:
Still comes back to when in Rome....

The only "arrogance" is expecting Rome (or in this case QC) to accommodate you!
Click to expand...
If it's arrogant to expect warnings off danger ahead to be clearly labeled in one of the official language of the country that I (and clearly the majority of Canadaians) speak then put me down as arrogant.
 
robertv19 said:
You grew up in La Capitale Nationale?
Click to expand...
Yes!

timtune said:
If it's arrogant to expect warnings off danger ahead to be clearly labeled in one of the official language of the country that I (and clearly the majority of Canadaians) speak then put me down as arrogant.
Click to expand...
I'm still curious though, in what area of the province was that?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom