If you go shopping in downtown Montréal, or if you want to buy a coffee at Second Cup or a burger at McDonald’s, there is a very good chance that the first word out of the mouth of the employee who greets you will be be «bonjour», the second “hi”. This construction, bonjour/hi, is possibly unique to Montréal, although ai wouldn’t rule out that it gets used in Sherbrooke or the North Outaouais as well, and maybe even in some francophone parts of Ontario.
As of the last time we heard from them, the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) doesn’t like it when cashiers, bank tellers, receptionists, wait staff, or people trying to sell electronics for commission at Future Shop use bonjour/hi to greet customers/potential sources of revenue/unpleasant people that the wage system obligates them to interact with. The OQLF would prefer a simple bonjour, thank you very much.
In the spring of 2012, the Office released a series of studies that included the claim that the use of bonjour/hi had increased by 1300% in the period of time between 2010 and 2012. Louise Marchand, who was president of the OQLF from 2010 until her scandal-driven resignation in 2013, said around the time of the report’s release that «ce n’est pas une infraction à la Charte [de la langue française], mais ça peut contribuer au sentiment que Montréal s’anglicise.» And that would be a problem.
At some point, ai’d like to write a longer post about this phenomenon called “the anglicization of Montréal”, whether it’s actually happening or not, and what it actually matters to anything. But that can wait. For now, ai would like to direct most of my vitriol to those good Canadian citizens that have rushed to bonjour/hi’s defense. For these people, bonjour/hi is “that familiar and uniquely Montréal greeting” that stands as a true testament to everything that Canada is supposed to be.
As for me, ai hate bonjour/hi. Let me name the reasons.
#1. It isn’t a single salutation, but two. It’s like saying hello/good day or bonjour/salut. That might be fine in some cases, but as a constant go-to? And this isn’t even very similar to a common greeting like “hey, what’s up?”, either. It’s not a salutation followed by a friendly and perhaps irrelevant question. It is just two greetings. There is no need for this.
#2. The word «bonjour», by itself, simple means “good day”. First of all, ai just think this sounds silly, and secondly, it sounds British to me. It always has, ever since ai started learning this language in Grade Three. If there were five defining characteristics of what it means to be Québécois, being opposed to all things Britannic would be among them – so this has always struck me as a bit strange, even if ai realize that it obviously isn’t a translation of the British greeting. Perhaps it’s less that it sounds British specifically, and more that it sounds European generally. In any case, ai don’t like it, whether by itself or as part of a bonjour/hi.
#3. The only person who would ever say bonjour/hi to me is someone who wants to sell me something, or someone who works for someone who wants to sell me something. It reeks of artificiality. This is not some innocent collision of two languages. Bonjour/hi is borne of an intentional effort to appease both Québécois nationalists and anglo chauvinists who are so fucking stuffy about being spoken to in the right language that they might just take their loonies and toonies to another bread-and-tomato-sauce establishment if you fuck up the greeting. Sadly, such people actually exist, and they are obviously annoying as all fuck, but the point is that bonjour/hi only exists to get money out of people – and thus it is totally inappropriate except when you have to deal with pricks. No one says bonjour/hi at a fucking house party! No one says bonjour/hi when they’re meeting their neighbours for the first time!
#4. There is a significantly better greeting available in French, a word that can be used in English as well: «salut». When there is this greeting available, which is so musical and nice, why would anyone ever use the shitty other one?
Ai am going to stress this last one again. When ai go to the small fruiterie near my house, the cashier usually says salut to me, whether it’s the cashier that likes to make small talk with me in French, the one who likes to make small talk in English (sometimes), or one of the cashiers who has never expressed interest in talking to me. If there’s any greeting that the self-proclaimed champions of Montréal English should be stoked on, it’s salut.
There is a possibility that someday, perhaps someday soon, ai will be forced to get a job at a Tim Hortons or some other shithole, and it is quite possible that my boss will thereafter inform me that ai must greet every coffee drinker and donut eater with a fucking bonjour/hi. At that point, as much as ai hate the likes of Louise Marchand, Mario Beaulieu, and other anglophobes, ai will be tempted to call up the OQLF or the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste or someone, and then ask them to picket my store until ai can say salut like ai want to.