First, here is a Radio-Canada (French CBC) article in French, followed by its translation:
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1705455/epicene-montreal-suprematie-masculin-feminin-francais
And here is a quick translation:
For those who do not know Ms. Valérie Plante, she always seems to follow the latest fashions of the UN. For instance, its new recommendations/rules for languages, supposedly meant to make our world more “inclusive” and more equal, etc. Earlier, she offered the key of Montreal to Greta Thunberg. She is also a globalist in her mindset, just like our PM. However, we can give her the credit of having been wiser than him at the very beginning of the pandemic. Indeed, she understood faster the dangerous times ahead. In addition to collaborating with Mr. Legault, she did not hesitate to send her own public health staff to the airport when our PM was stubbornly still reluctant to close the borders (just like the Liberal government of Nova Scotia).
Of course, Ms. Plante is the mayor of a large and populated metropolis, which logically has a different geo-ethno-socio-health reality/needs than the rest of the more semi-rural parts of the province. We all know that. However, she is also too much into her globalist mindset that she seems to “forget” sometimes that Montreal is still part of Québec. Specifically, she completely forgot about Bill 101 (French being the official language of her province).
To give you a meaningful example, she delivered her first speech as a Mayor… in English. No single word in French (her mother tongue!). As a Francophile (+ phone), it is shocking for Bambi. Imagine how this must have offended Québeckers. To justify this political mistake after the fact, she reported not realizing which language came out of her mouth.
Bambi can partly understand the above (if true). She herself speaks four languages (likely all badly!). When she is either jet-lagged or too sleepy, she finds herself speaking the wrong language with the wrong person. However, Bambi is not a Mayor. Thus, her mistake does not affect populations… just her spouse or close ones who may laugh at her ?.
To come back to globalization as a political agenda or ideology, there is a limit to it: It is called self-knowledge or self-respect. Knowing one’s root and identity (or chore part of all the identities that shape us to make us whom we are) makes us better prepared to reach out to other civilizations and humans (our brothers and sisters from the global village).
How ironic that it is the same Ms. Plante who “forgot” to speak in French in her first official talk as a Mayor is the politician who “intends to have a regulation adopted to train elected officials and employees in “gender-neutral (or epicene) communication”, as quickly as possible”.
One must keep in mind here the following: Each language is unique. Each language has its beauty.
Contrary to the English language, French is more defined in terms of its grammatical rules (gender, etc.) that have been around for centuries. For instance, in addition to words specific to this language, grammatically speaking, the masculine includes the feminine.
Another example is the charming German language, which includes the masculine, feminine, and neutral (grammatically speaking). This has nothing to do with any new fashion.
We can even think of the beautiful Arabic language, which has a beautiful term, “El Insan”, which is neither a male nor a female (likely both). Perhaps “human kind” (or would that be “peoplekind”?) would be the closest.
To come back to Ms. Plante’s regulations, she intends to spend public money, in difficult economic times, on the immediate training of Montreal public servants. Is this really the top priority now?
Is Ms. Plante a bit too “illuminated” or is she just flirting with a certain minority of the electorate who are so much into political correctness? The UN lately came up with such language, as reported above. How odd to see an international organization so much into political correctness, even in the middle of a pandemic.
As a conclusion to this post, Bambi would like to echo the comment of one reader, Ms. Marianne Longfield:
“I love the French language. Thus, it saddens me to see our wonderful language abused like that by people who invent a convoluted “political correctness”, that is sometimes unreadable, sometimes inaudible, depending on whether we read or listen to their speech. Their message becomes incomprehensible because they keep adding so many useless words or deleting useful words. We reach the end of the sentence by wondering “what exactly did they say?” [“J’adore la langue française, et ça me désole de voir notre merveilleuse langue ainsi malmenée par des gens qui inventent un “politiquement correct” alambiqué et tantôt illisible, tantôt inaudible, selon qu’on lit ou qu’on écoute leur discours, lequel, à force d’ajouter autant de mots inutiles ou de supprimer des mots utiles, en vient à rendre le message incompréhensible. On arrive en bout de phrase en se demandant “ils ont dit quoi, au juste?”].
