I constantly have an ear and an eye out for places where French and English collide in unexpected ways, and Montreal does not disappoint. All Canadian packaging and documentation needs to be bilingual, but as I discussed with Alana recently, it seems like most companies and corporations only have one copyeditor or copywriter on staff; as a result, it’s par for the course to see one or both languages routinely garbled to a degree that would make me recoil in horror if it weren’t so amusing.  Even things like utility bills come somewhat misspelled; I receive emails from our car-sharing service that confirm our “reservation of vehicule” in the subject line.  And I know that it’s often much worse on the French side.  Sometimes it makes me feel that all of my teacher-ly insistence on the extreme importance of being able to express yourself correctly with the written word is for naught, because there are plenty of corporations around here who seem to have successfully skipped that lesson.

Canadian French is also a pretty interesting case in point when you’re talking about language preservation, because the influence of English is pervasive, even if you don’t speak it; it’s a little island of beleaguered language pride in an otherwise English-speaking continent.  You’re more likely to refer to mon char or ma auto than to ma voiture, and the majority of the ubiquitous signs hung on wrought iron front fences adjoining the sidewalk admonish “Pas de bicyclette!” instead of “Pas de vélo!“  More intriguingly, many words that remain current here — and I’m blanking on examples at the moment, but I’m basically glossing a really complex issue — are retained from a vaguely nautical-sounding 17th or 18th-century French (one “embarks” or “disembarks” elevators, cars, and the Metro), but some of them also happen to sound closer to their English equivalent than the contemporary French-French analogue.  Win-win for the native anglo French learner.  (Or “win-win-win,” if you’re Michael Scott.)

But there are occasions when I just can’t make the Franglais work in my favor.  We were discussing an article that we read in class the other day about how Kids Today are harassing each other online and via cell phone at insanely high rates, which required a bit of specialized jargon.  (My favorite is that web users are referred to as les internautes.  Why do we not use that in English?  Greetings, fellow internauts!)

“It’s like they’re… like they’re…” I said, groping around in French for the verb cibler, or “to target.”  “Like there is a large tar-jhay on many students.”  I knew that something had gone horribly wrong as soon as I opened my mouth, but those in my group who were aware of the collective American middle-class obsession with Target found this as funny as I did.

Remember, kids: you might shop at Tarjhay, but that doesn’t actually make it French.

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