Open the Lights and Pass the Broom!

Let me indulge my passion about language, and especially the languages of Canada.

In English, we open and close windows and doors, but as to house lights, they’re turned on or turned off, as the case may be. Not so in French – one consistently opens or closes windows, doors, and lights. And therein is the subject matter of this missive.

Here in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec we live in a language lab where two vibrant language communities jostle, think and dream sometimes in one language, sometimes in the other, often in both. It’s not unusual to hear a sentence commenced in one and finished in the other. While some citizens resolutely live in just one language, most have at least some degree of comfort in the other. And thus words, expressions, and structures leak from one language community to the other, especially in families and workplaces.

Bilingual individuals whose first language is French, therefore, when conversing in English will often use the French structure with English words. They will ask you to open the lights so they can pass the broom on the floor.

Reduplication of the pronoun is correct and necessary in French, but not in English. Francophones are often heard, in English, saying, “Me, I’m going into town, me.” Anglos are quite amused, until it’s their turn to learn the reflexive in French.

Particularly in the Montreal area, the universal word for a convenience store is “dépanneur”, a Quebec language invention, literally meaning a place where you fix being out of something. And applying to the government for a “subvention” (a grant or subsidy) is well understood by both communities. Both communities use these words in everyday speech.

But it isn’t always as simple as it seems. There are words in both languages that are identical in form, but very different in meaning. Perhaps the most famous is “deceive”. To anglos, the word means to trick, to francos it means to disappoint. One of my favourite recollections is of a hockey player, being interviewed after a losing game, saying how deceived he was by the loss, while his puzzled anglo interviewer looked on in consternation. Such expressions are known linguistically as “faux amis”, or false friends.

These phenomena go on in all bilingual communities, and are a key ingredient of language formation. This is exactly how English developed as an amalgam, over millennia, of Celtic, Latin, Germanic, and French speakers living together, resulting in a language which at the same time seems very simple, yet very complex.

I’d love to hear what’s going on in your hometown!