Montreal through new eyes

My dear friends, I think my time in Montreal is coming to an end.  I came here because I thought I was going to have a large social life. Every time I visited Montreal, I would be staying at a friend's and they would have friends over so I naturally thought that it was very easy to make friends here. Instead, for most of the time I've been here, I've just studied, then went back home. Studied, then went back home.

It's true, I could've tried harder.

As I was walking down the street today, I looked up and thought, "Where else (other than New York) would you see Hipsters walking next to Hassidic Jews? What other place has, right next to this neighbourhood, a mix of Greek, Pakistani, West African neighbourhood next to Little Italy? Someone from Colombia in my French class said that he loves Montréal because of the cultural diversity. "What about Toronto?" I asked, thinking about the city that claims that over 50% of its inhabitants are born outside of Canada. "Too Chinese," he repsonded. "How about Vancouver?" "No, too Chinese." As someone who is Chinese, I felt offended, and yet I understood what he meant.

French in Québec, Cantonese in Hong Kong

Of course these are very different situations, but I'm trying to reflect on and find out my identity vis-à-vis languages.

While I'm grumbling about not having good enough French to work anywhere in Montreal even though I have been studying French in school for way too long (which is actually part of the problem), I might as well reflect on this.

It's true that my writing still sucks in French, but I have a feeling it's sometimes difficult for Francophones to write as well, since the rules are so multiple and rigid. In any case, I automatically come out as a foreigner when I speak, and I speak mostly the way I would write, so it sounds funny anyway.

Anyway, I'm rambling. What I wanted to say is that I go to a "Francisation" school for adult immigrants to make them learn French so that we can participate in Francophone Quebec society. One of my teachers there said, "Montréal est une ville francophone. Quand on habite ici, il faut qu'on parle français." I totally agree with her. Coming to anywhere in Québec and not speaking French is like going into someone's home and rubbing mud on the floors and kicking the dog. Just don't do that, because it's expected of you not to. What I do disagree with is the harsh language policies from the provincial government, the governing of all-French signage and the 'language police' and just bizarro things from OLFQ, and of course these tensions between the English and French languages contribute to the debate on separatism, even though there are Anglophone separatists. So I'm going to try to compare and analyze the status of Québec French to that of Hong Kong Cantonese in order to get into the heads of people trying to protect a language I don't see going away any time soon.

So here is my take:

• there are tensions in both territories over issues, and both Québec French and Hong Kong Cantonese have peculiar statuses as they are situated in a context in which the rest of the country does not speak their language! sort of. there are Francophone communities in Anglo Canada and I'm sure there are Cantonese communities in the rest of China
• neither language is going to disappear non-officially, any time soon, in their respective territories
• Cantonese, though, was never an official language of Hong Kong. When it was growing, English was the official language, and after the handover, it's been Mandarin. Sort of. I can still speak to government officials in Hong Kong in Cantonese
• educational tensions abound!
• if an English-speaking Canadian, knowing that in Québec people speak French but also the younger generations know English, goes to Québec, often they'll be confused as to why people don't want them to speak English (actually, this is really different for Montréal) JUST AS if a Mandarin-speaking mainlander, knowing that in Hong Kong they speak Cantonese but the younger generations know Mandarin, goes to Hong Kong, often they'll be confused as to why people don't want them to speak Mandarin - of course there is a difference for each individual but for these two example people, I see a parallel situation here
• The federal government is bilingual, so this would be very unlikely to ever occur, but hypothetically, if the federal government in Canada suddenly said that all official government business in Québec must be conducted in English, including state TV stations and so on, there would of course be an uproar. Well, it's happened in Guangdong, a province in China where they speak Cantonese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Anti-Cantonese_regulations

The point of all this quipping is that I feel like I'm in a weird place. I don't identify exactly as 'anglophone' in Québec because then that's basically saying my mother tongue is English, which it is but isn't. I think and dream in English, but I learned it all in school and I still don't know how to pronounce some things after 22 years of usage because I never heard my parents say it, or they've pronounced it incorrectly themselves. Anyway, sure, I'd say English is my stronger language compared to French. So I come to Québec and try to learn the French language. And then they speak English to me. I almost dare to say it's the same feeling as if I were a Mainlander trying to learn Cantonese in Hong Kong and people spoke English to me. Except in Hong Kong, I only know Cantonese, the de facto language, but if everyone is being educated in Mandarin, then somehow I'd feel as if the population would lose its Hong Kong or Cantonese culture and identity.

So me being in Hong Kong as a Cantonese speaker (let's just forget the whole English thing, because I don't really speak English in Hong Kong anyway) is like if I knew only how to speak French in Québec. Except not, because I can't even write. And if I did know how to write Chinese, I would have an easier time accessing the more federally more powerful language. But in any case, if I grew up in Hong Kong speaking only Cantonese, and then because of a bilingualism-trilingualism policy after handover, Mainlanders started coming in and taking jobs I couldn't get and speaking in a language at parties that I don't understand and going to schools I couldn't get into and doing business with people I can't do business with because I don't know Mandarin, yeah, I'd be pissed off and I would want to have laws to protect Cantonese. Just a point to all the haters - This is all hypothetical, okay? It's mostly what philosophers call a 'thought experiment'.

And so this exercise has been futile because there are many differences between the situation of Québec French and Hong Kong Cantonese. If someone wants to straighten it out for me, be my guest!

Français encore, cette fois à Montréal

Ça fait un-ans-et-demi que j'ai pas écrit à ce blogue. J'écris en français parce que je veux dois pratiquer l'écriture en français, et j'écris sur le blogue "Travels" parce que malgré que Montréal, Québec et au Canada, je me sens que je suis en voyage, parce que j'ai pas toujours un job permanent, j'ai pas beaucoup des amis, et je ne sais pas quand je vais partir ou settle down....

Alors, maintenant je vais parler de comment apprendre français à Montréal quand on n'a pas des amis francophones proche, ni un travail de milieu francophone, ni même pas des études en français.

Mais avant, je vais vous décrire ma situation:

1. J'ai étudié français pendant 8 ans, dans l'école primaire et l'école secondaire à Toronto. Après ces études, je ne pouvais que parler et j'avais beaucoup de difficulté en comprendre des gens.
2. J'ai déménagé à Ottawa pour étudier à l'Université d'Ottawa. Get this: la ville n'était pas trop bilingue, mais l'Université était tellement bilingue. J'ai même essayé d'obtenir un work-study job à l'université et j'en ai pas obtenu parce que je n'étais pas parfaitement bilingue. A sign of things to come. Pendant ces années, mon français a amelioré grâce à l'exposure aux étudiants bilingue, l'environnement foument bilingue, et mes visitations à Gatineau, le partie francophone de la municipale Ottawa-Gatineau. Oh, et j'ai joigné le club d'immersion de français de l'université. J'ai visité Québec pendant le Carnaval et Montréal grâce à ce club.
3. J'ai habité pendant un ans en Islande. J'ai fait des amis de France, de Montréal et de franco-canton de Suisse là-bas. Je m'ai forcée de parler en français avec eux, et j'ai même habité avec des colocataires qui tous parler français pendant un mois. C'est là où j'ai appris la plus français.
4. Après quelques années, j'ai déménagé à Montréal. Une petite chose: mon chum, qui est Islandais et qui peut parler en islandaise, danois, allemagne et anglais, il sais rien de français. Et ça fait un ans et demi qu'il est ici et il parle rien encore.

Donc, je me suis maintenant reculée au carré numéro un. J'apprends des cours de français et les condiscipiles sont amusants, les profs sont gentils, mais les cours sont tellement plats parce que c'est tout grammaire (voir point 1.) à rien de parler, de communication orale.

J'ai lu ça ce matin: http://offqc.com/2013/05/29/the-montreal-is-a-bad-place-to-learn-french-myth-debunked-620/ et il a dit: Montréal is a good way to learn French, just make one strong bond with a francophone. And also he said in another post to don't care about what you sound like, don't attend classes.

Joignez-moi sur mon adventure sur l'integration au culture Francophone à Montréal!

How do you call this?

My parents and I were going for dim sum with some of my relatives on a Sunday morning. The restaurant is located on the fifth level of a large mall. On Sunday mornings, because there's no other malls around, and because it is the transit transfer destination of the light rail, the buses, and other modes of transport, there's already lots of lots of people there (to use the Chinese expression mountains and seas of people). The design of the mall makes it so that you have to walk the mall, sort of like the Rideau Centre in Ottawa: the elevators are hidden, the escalators are not adjacent to each other but are on the opposite ends.

I get to the fourth floor to go up to the restaurant and I smell McDonald's breakfast before I see it. Not only am I hungry, I realize, I want a McMuffin. But even though I speak Cantonese, when I don't know how to read Chinese and when I don't know the names of the food in Chinese, all I can do to order something is to describe it.
Me: I want an Egg and Cheese McMuffin.
Cashier: What?
Me: An Egg and Cheese McMuffin. (upon seeing a picture of a sausage mcmuffin on the board) That! Number 10 except without the sausage!
Cashier: So you want a Sausage McMuffin without the Sausage?
Me: Yes, I guess, an Egg McMuffin.
Cashier: A Sausage McMuffin withou the Sausage it is.

I'm Still in Hong Kong

I haven't written much about Hong Kong I've noticed, but what is there to say other than it is more humid and densely populated than anywhere else I've ever been? Did you know that Hong Kong's income gap is greater than that of the Cote d'Ivoire's? Did you know that There was one time that I was taking a yoga class at night around the time that it started to rain heavily and also around the time that it started getting dark and all the lights started turning on. I was looking out the window and saw a flash, then another flash in the sky. I thought it must be raining pretty hard outside and that it was lightning I saw, but no, they are the flash of big-light billboards from across the street. Hong Kong is so heavily light-polluted that I once looked up to see orange and orange clouds all across the sky.