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A Quebecois author is threatening to burn his entire French language oeuvre if the province continues to lighten its stance on bilingualism. Sounds perfectly logical. And by “logical” I mean “marginally insane”. I sympathize with the passion here, and understand the publicity stunt, but think the whole situation smacks mildly of saying you’re going to stop violence against you by killing yourself. What happens when the world shrugs and says, “Go ahead…”?
Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, the author of some 70 works of fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry, is giving the province two months to correct what he considers its errant linguistic ways, or the books will burn.
Beaulieu, 62, started making good on his symbolic ultimatum earlier this week by tossing a copy of his most recent novel,La Grande Tribu (The Big Tribe), into the wood stove at his remote cottage northeast of Quebec City.
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February 28th, 2008 at 8:24 am
After fifteen years in Quebec, this kind of thing is suddenly starting to hit me pretty hard.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:09 am
You know how crotchety 70 year olds can get. This seem the equivalent of holding his breath until Mommy gives him back his sippy cup. Or, more likely, a ploy to get publicity for the new wood-stove feeding novel. I’ve lived in la belle province my whole life, and am truly sick of such antics.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:10 am
after fifteen years in ontario, I’m starting to miss it. Don’t let the nuts get you down. Everybody has nuts in every language. Take some solace that the nuts in your province are concerned about their culture, whereas here culture = bank balance.
have a bagel. I miss them.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:20 am
“I want to conserve, preserve, defend and improve the language into which I was born, the language my ancestors gave me.”
But if it *requires* conservation, preservation, protection, and improvement is that not admitting that, as a predominant language, it cannot survive on its own (”assaults” by “anglicized elites” aside)?
February 28th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Michel, I will have a bagel for you. Is sesame okay? Then I will get back to my ongoing school-mandated mission of teaching my children that it’s not okay to make mistakes in their spoken French…ever.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Sesame is my favourite, thanks. The day someone can email me a croissant from Montreal is the day I finally admit the internet is useful.
And, to matt:
“But if it *requires* conservation, preservation, protection, and improvement is that not admitting that, as a predominant language, it cannot survive on its own (”assaults” by “anglicized elites” aside)?”
so what? we try to save the whales too, don’t we? This is like saying literature deserves to die because reading is in decline.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
michel: Is French being hunted down, whale-like? In the context of VLB’s complaint is it truly a question of extinction? Why should the teaching of English be framed in terms of a violent assault?
February 28th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Perhaps to keep this discussion really interesting, we should switch the language to French, and see how we all do.
February 28th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
je suis en accord avec mme. maurios, qui dis que l’anglais sera plus en plus necessaire pour tous, mais je demande a Matt, why is it that when someone in quebec wants to preserve french, someone in English canada gets upset?
I am not a supporter of VLB or his views: I am sympathetic to the preservation of my heritage. Hunted down? Not by policy perhaps, but threatened with extinction? Yes.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Michel,
I think the point is that French in Quebec is currently protected by an entire state apparatus that declares its primacy in all official matters. If that is not enough, if the mere informal presence of any contending language is dangerous, then what exactly is a language – an official linguistic currency, or a living system of communication?
I understand the power imbalance of English North America vs French North America, but language is too viral to have its survival pegged to some state-mandated gold standard.
(Just to be clear, I think people who live in Quebec and can’t, or won’t, speak any French to be pretty absurd.)
(And I’m going to let the English Canada=bank balance comment slide – there are things I miss about Montreal, but haughty dismissals of “bloke” culture is not one of them.)
February 28th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Chus completement en accord aves les efforts de preservation linguistique en Quebec. Mais je deteste le departement provinciel de revenu et impots!
February 28th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
By protecting Quebec residents from the dangers of the English language the provincial government is putting them at a disadvantage. Why wouldn’t you want to learn two languages if you could? I’m bilingual but certainly don’t consider myself francophone so why would Beaulieu consider himself anglophone because he can speak English. If he’s going to burn all his books does that mean he’s going to burn his house down and all his clothes because he bought them with the money he made from those books? Better burn down his publishing house too while he’s at it.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
The other point to make is that where you have a clash of two or more languages, you get some new mutant hybrid, patois, one that is often much more dynamic and agile than the sum of its parts.
(In English, we call this “the English language.”)
Official languages are dead languages.