![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Nothing more fun...
Apr. 2nd, 2015 08:22 amSeriously.
I got bereated (by my boss' boss) for speaking English to a restaurant cashier this morning, while getting my breakfast at Tim Horton's.
She asked me why I was speaking to the lady in English.
The only answer I had was basically "I don't know..."
But yes, I know. How about, even though I'm Francophone, I've been living basically the past 10-15 years almost exclusively in English outside of work and with my immediate and extended family? How about the fact that English is spoken almost exclusively in my home, right now, because my fiancé nearly doesn't speak French? How about the fact that this is motherfucking Canada and the whole country has two official languages and that I don't care about the Provincial laws because, to me, Federal laws for the same rights should always have precedence? How about the fact that I'm barely awake yet, and my last interpersonal interaction has been in English, so that's sort of where the switch in my brain is stuck? How about the fact that I think to myself in English about 95% of the time and more?
But yeah, being a Francophone in Quebec means that none of these things are possible, for some people. It is unthinkable that a Francophone might be able to brain in English (I can science in English, too, no problems there!). Being a Francophone in Quebec also has you labeled as weird if you aren't a staunch pro-French Sovereignist/Distinct Society supporter (because some Federalists are a bit of the latter, they like being Canadian, but they like the Distinct Society label) by a lot of people.
I got bereated (by my boss' boss) for speaking English to a restaurant cashier this morning, while getting my breakfast at Tim Horton's.
She asked me why I was speaking to the lady in English.
The only answer I had was basically "I don't know..."
But yes, I know. How about, even though I'm Francophone, I've been living basically the past 10-15 years almost exclusively in English outside of work and with my immediate and extended family? How about the fact that English is spoken almost exclusively in my home, right now, because my fiancé nearly doesn't speak French? How about the fact that this is motherfucking Canada and the whole country has two official languages and that I don't care about the Provincial laws because, to me, Federal laws for the same rights should always have precedence? How about the fact that I'm barely awake yet, and my last interpersonal interaction has been in English, so that's sort of where the switch in my brain is stuck? How about the fact that I think to myself in English about 95% of the time and more?
But yeah, being a Francophone in Quebec means that none of these things are possible, for some people. It is unthinkable that a Francophone might be able to brain in English (I can science in English, too, no problems there!). Being a Francophone in Quebec also has you labeled as weird if you aren't a staunch pro-French Sovereignist/Distinct Society supporter (because some Federalists are a bit of the latter, they like being Canadian, but they like the Distinct Society label) by a lot of people.
