Prior to this summer, a linguist friend of mine, who I’ll call Jean-Luc, had been peer-pressuring me to visit his hometown of Montreal with him for at least three years. Montreal would be nice, I thought: every other year it’s home to the men’s Rogers Cup in August, and let’s be honest, men’s tennis is much more interesting these days than women’s. Plus I’m not too familiar with Québécois French, although I do speak French and do research on it. But the trip never really worked out, or the peer pressure wasn’t intense enough, until this year. The timing was horrible though: I had just moved to Edmonton, Alberta, and was going to a conference the week after in Las Vegas. And the tickets were ridiculously expensive. Still, I clicked “Purchase now” and justified it by needing to know about the linguistic diversity of this new country I was living in. Besides, in the upcoming semester, I was going to have a unit on languages in Canada in my undergraduate class. “I could practically write it off as a professional expense!” I thought.

Other than that it was a bilingual city, and a supposedly charming one at that, I knew almost nothing about Montreal, and due to starting a new job, I had no time to do my usual pre-trip “research”, which mostly revolves around Wikipedia. And, my French was rusty. Fortunately a French-speaking Québécois couple sat next to me on the plane, and I engaged them in gratuitous conversation for more than two hours. This worked because the woman next to me looked to be about my age and taught English and Spanish in junior high, so she was actually interested in my job. When traveling places, as my friends will attest, I really like to chat up the locals. They were from Trois-Rivières, upstream from Montreal on the way to Quebec City. She talked about the Canadian health insurance system and general monolingualism in Trois-Rivières; I got used to the accent.

I found Montreal, and the Québécois French I heard there, fascinating. Everywhere I went, I got the sense that French Canadians were acutely proud of their history, while more or less managing the equilibrium with English, also spoken in the city. We went to a bookstore, where Québécois authors were displayed prominently throughout the store. I picked up a comic book called Les Québécois by Yoh. I flipped to the page about “Le 1er juillet” (Canada Day, July 1). It showed pictures of people carrying boxes, with moving trucks. “What do Québécois do on Canada Day?” I asked Jean-Luc and his brother. Not having seen the book, they replied in unison, “We move.” “Do you celebrate Canada Day at all?” I asked. “No.” I thought of another holiday that was essential to cultural nation-building  in the U. S.: “What about Thanksgiving?” “We don’t do anything.” “You don’t even have dinner?” “They do that in the rest of Canada” (“the rest of Canada”, “le reste du Canada”, was a saying I heard often on my trip). In the large section on Québécois history and issues, Jean-Luc pointed out the book title of a separatist author: Nègres blancs d’Amérique (White Niggers of America). “See, this is how strong the emotion is for some people,” he said. I was beginning to see why almost half the population voted for a largely independent Quebec in the last referendum (1995).

Jean-Luc gave me an abbreviated history of the French Canadians. In fact, in the beginning of Canadian history, it was totally redundant to say “French Canadian”; all Canadians were French (since Canada wasn’t a country at that time but rather a European colony, Native Americans weren’t viewed as “Canadians”). I heard this same exact statement from a tour guide a day later. French settlers, mostly from Normandy, came to New France up until the British conquest culminating in 1760. At that time, there were approximately 60,000 – 80,000 French Canadians, after which point immigration from France stopped abruptly, and the British essentially pursued a divide-and-conquer policy vis-à-vis the French Canadians. Today, there are about 6,000,000 French speakers in Quebec, the majority of which are descended from the original stock of French Canadians. In fact, there are so few French Canadian last names because of these small numbers of initial settlers. The last name “Tremblay”, the last name of a Québécois colleague of mine and the most common last name in Québec, was brought over by one guy, Pierre Tremblay, who came to Québec in 1657. That means he wasn’t even among the first wave of settlers! The Tremblays must’ve been pretty charming gentlemen. Well, and it apparently helped that they settled in the St. Lawrence Valley. For more info on Québécois family names, check out this paper, “From France to New France: Quebec family names, past and present”, where most of the information here on names comes from.

Language is the most salient cultural division between francophone Canada and “the rest of Canada”. Still few Canadians outside of Quebec speak it natively (although percentages vary by province; there’s a sizable population of Francophones in New Brunswick, for example). Plus, it’s distinct from any other dialect of French. These factors contribute to make Québécois French a highly politicized language with a degree of emotional attachedness I had never seen firsthand before for any other language. The subject was so fascinating, I bought a book on it (again justifying the purchase because I’ll use it in my undergraduate class): Langue et politique au Canada et au Québec: Une synthèse historique by Martin Pâquet and Marcel Martel (whose parents have an interesting sense of humor).

In touring the ruins of Montreal at the Musee Pointe-à-Callière, I learned some more vocabulary specific to Québécois French, like bécosse [f.], a vulgar term for bathroom that my guide said derived from English “backhouse”. I also learned that in olden days, like pre-British settling, a hilarious swear word was fils de prêtre (son of a priest), which of course everybody interpreted to mean bastard. This fits nicely with current Québécois swear words, many of which are religious in nature, and with the deep involvement of the Catholic Church in Québécois culture until the 1960s or so.

Syntax-wise, I’m pretty sure that Québécois French speakers use subject-verb inversion much more often than European Francophones to ask questions. In Montreal, I heard son and mother use inversion at home, as in “Veux-tu du fromage?” (Literally, “Want you some cheese?”). Euros would find this construction overly formal and pretentious; in informal settings they would use “Est-ce que”, as in “Est-ce que tu veux du fromage?” or simple intonation: “Tu veux du fromage?” This and other dialect differences are rarely taught to second-language learners; that’s a shame.

Perhaps highlight of the trip though, in both culinary and linguistic senses, was our visit to La montée de lait, where four of us each ordered excellent four-course meals at very reasonable prices. When we first got the menus, we had several questions, as one should in a fancy-schmancy restaurant. When we finished with the inquisition, Jean-Luc, a bit éméché from our extended aperitif and from the gastronomic prospects, said, “Ce furent nos questions.”

Ce furent? Jean-Luc had just busted out the passé simple.

The passé simple is a moribund-ish tense rarely used in spoken French on either side of the Atlantic. In writing, it’s largely restricted to literary narratives. In spoken French, its use pretty much only for ironic purposes. Jean-Luc was wearing a white t-shirt with a hot pink logo that said “Kill Rock Stars”, and we looked appropriately dirty from our 10-hour day walking and biking around the city.

I mention these details because use of the passé simple, even in ironic contexts, is a major index of high education level: it’s extremely rare, but extremely reliable. It’s so rare, I don’t even know if most Francophones could conjugate the correct forms on the spot. The passé simple can be compared to, say, word play in American English. If done well, you will be admired for it; if done poorly, you will be viewed as pretentious or annoying. I must say I have always found parsimonious use of the passé simple to be incredibly sexy. I have literally only heard or seen it used spontaneously by four people I knew personally: the former head of a language lab I worked at, a former love interest (an énarque), a colleague of mine in France (un X), and now Jean-Luc. All were male, and I think that in each instance, there was a certain amount of linguistic prowess on display. Peacock feathers, if you will. These are not men lacking in self-confidence, but neither are they boastful.

Every culture has indices of social success: a shiny expensive car, a good-looking spouse, the right accent, maybe lots of tattoos. In “Mainstream America”, linguistic prowess isn’t one to the extent that it is in francophone countries (that’s not the case for speakers of African-American English, for whom signifying is traditionally a key component of social success, but that’s a different topic altogether). Oh sure, linguistic prowess matters for something in the U.S., but at the end of the day, we elected both Bushes president. Politics aside, that wouldn’t happen in France, where it would just be weird to mock a politician for having good public speaking skills.  Dominique de Villepin might have his political problems, but the dude has also published books of poetry. Lack of linguistic prowess is not one of them.

If you know of any studies on spoken usage of the passé simple, I’d be happy to hear about them.