How do you define a language?

7:14 PM, Dec. 15, 2012  |  Comments
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I have a First Amendment poster in my office. I have it there to remind me how fortunate we are to live in a country that values free speech.

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble; and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

I am occasionally reminded of the far-reaching beauty of this amendment because of my interest in Canada.

I spent most of my formative years in northern New York about 60 miles or 100 kilometers from Montreal.

Before cable TV, half of the TV stations we could watch came from Canada. Even after cable we got two stations in French with a basic subscription.

Montreal was our big city. It is where we went for major cultural events. If you were cool, you listened to CHOM FM.

Even though I took three years of French in high school, my fluency in the language was limited to baseball terms. Circuit means home-run!

My inability to speak French never hindered me in Montreal. It's easy enough to figure out road signs. Pont means bridge. And, most people you encounter are bilingual enough to figure out what you need.

Most people think that Canada is a lot like the United States. There are, however, some startling differences.

There are language laws in Quebec that are hard to wrap your head around when you have grown up taking the First Amendment for granted.

Signs are a good example. French is the official language and signs and posters must be in French. So, if you own a business - even if all your customers speak English or Mandarin or Swahili - the sign on your business must be in French. You can have other languages on your sign, but French must be the predominant language.

We have local laws that tell people how big their signs can be or how they can be attached to their buildings, but can you imagine telling someone what language you must have on your sign?

Remember our First Amendment doesn't say anything about language. It just says the government can't curtail your right to speak freely - in any language.

Considering the global culture we find ourselves in these days, who's to say when one language starts and another begins.

I recall an American friend of French Canadian heritage complaining about Spanish speakers. "If they live in this country, they should speak English," she said.

"What do you call you grandmother," I asked.

"Memere," she replied. It was close enough to English for her.

When you start telling people what language they can use you start to get into tricky territory.

There is a city councilman in Montreal who is concerned that there are not enough bilingual dogs in the city.

He wants to pass a bylaw that requires dogs using city dog parks be able to answer commands in both French and English.

In a radio interview I listened to, he said the dog parks were chaotic with no one knowing how to address any of the hounds in the park.

The first thing that struck me is that I would have no problem with my dog in Montreal. Desi is multilingual. He can ignore me in a many different languages.

The only command he consistently follows is, "stare at me and cock your head to one side." I am not sure how to say that in French, but I am sure if did, he would obey.

At The Marion Star, we like the First Amendment because it mentions us. We owe our jobs to the fact that the government has set up a guarantee that they will not interfere with our work.

Telling people what words they can use to express themselves seems like a particularly futile exercise that can easily become comical, n'est-ce pas?

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