Dial 1 for service in French....Dial 9 to destroy us.

Quebec language activists target English in government phone messages

MONTREAL - The English option on automated government telephone menus has become a hot-button issue for some French-language groups in the province.
Language activists are decrying the fact that callers to many Quebec government offices are told to "press nine" for English before instructions are delivered in French.

Famed satirist Jonathan Swift must be smiling from on high. In Gulliver's Travels he imagined a war between the diminutive but very nationalistic Lilliputians and the equally tiny and daft Blefuscudians over interpretation of scripture. In this case whether to break an egg at the large or small end. This seems as noble a cause as WWII when compared with some of the incredibly petty language disputes that go on in the province of Quebec. We've had the Office de la Langue Francais decree that a bagel should be called a beigne juif (Jewish donut!!) and a hamburger a hambourgeois. All immigrants have been channeled into the French school system, 99% of all English signage expunged from public view (including the dreaded apostrophe!!) etc. etc. and now this latest cause celebre.

Yes there were wrongs that had to be righted but there is a fine line between vigilance and idiocy. This phone deal falls into the latter category.

If you call some government offices you are greeted in French and then offered to be served in English by pressing 9. As one patriot on the news said yesterday "this treats the French like 2nd class citizens!!" Honestly now, is the French language in Canada in such great peril that it's worth sinking that low??

As an English Montrealer I've had to live with seeing my stake in this place whittled away to almost nothing despite learning to speak French, marrying a French Canadian woman, voluntarily sending all 3 of my kids to French school, and eating my salads after the main course. No detail is too small to be overlooked by the local nationalist zealots lest in doing so the whole culture should come crashing to the ground. That's why the phone issue is so interesting.

Someone in some government committee had to decide at some point in our history what number should be pressed for service in English.

#1 is a total non-starter...there'd be rioting in the streets.

#2 is a little obvious in its reference to 2nd class citizenhood

#3-8 are too random and would make little if any statement

#9 is an easily defendable, well camouflaged insult that should concievably belittle any Anglophone.

#0 is way too insulting and possibly illegal given the new hate crime legislation.

Seperatists are passionate no doubt but not enough to wage an actual war of independence or place non-Francophones in internment camps. Instead they pracitice passive-agressive disenfranchisement in the hopes of getting enough of us to move so they can win their referendum on nationhood. The phone gambit has been put forth, now they play the waiting game........