Bergevin brings humour to a tough job
Some thoughts from Le Devoir’s Jean Dion on what Marc Bergevin brings to a tough job with the Habs – but I’m mostly amused by the first comment: “Cet individu a certainement de très grandes qualités pour ce sport mais au niveau du français cela fait un peu “Joe the plumber”. Le CH gagne mais on ne peut en dire autant pour la représentation et l’amélioration du français pour le Québec populaire.”
Can’t win.
Josh 16:08 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
I am a bit confused as to what Dion is saying. Is he suggesting that Bergevin’s French is of a working-class variety? Or that it betrays a more general lack of intelligence on Bergevin’s part?
If it’s the former, then Dion is being a classist jerk, and if it’s the latter… well, how could the Canadians be “winning” by hiring a dunce?
Josh 16:09 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Er, Canadiens. Forgive me that one.
Kate 16:15 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
It’s a comment, not Jean Dion, saying that Bergevin’s French is low-class and isn’t going to do anything for proper French usage among the people of Quebec.
Josh 16:18 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Huh. Okay then. I thought the complaint about Cunneyworth was that he couldn’t communicate with the fans in French. I thought that was the issue. I didn’t realize that the issue went any deeper than that.
Kate 19:05 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
Have you ever lived in Quebec, Josh? There’s a complicated relationship between class and spoken language here that I don’t think is duplicated in English in the rest of North America, although something like it may operate in England. Different people would have different expectations of a person doing the Habs GM job. Some people would be offended if Bergevin sounded too Radio-Canada and snooty, whereas the commenter thought he sounded too casual – hence my comment that you can’t win.
qatzelok 21:16 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
@ Kate: “Can’t win.”
Who are you talking about here? The subtext is that you are talking about Anglo Money, trying to keep Francophone schmoes happy. This is slightly colonial – like when Monty Burns shrugs.
Kate 23:29 on 2012/05/03 Permalink
No, I wasn’t talking about Anglo money, I was talking about the impossibility in Quebec of pitching the specific class implications of your accent in French in such a way to keep everybody happy, if you’re in a mission-critical job like GM of the Habs. For once, anglos and money don’t come into it.
Faiz Imam 03:20 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
“Have you ever lived in Quebec, Josh?”
I’m a fluent trilingual Anglo who’s lived his whole life here and I have no clue what relationship there is between accent and class.
Though I do grasp the difference between “parisiene” and “quebecoi”, any further granularity just boils down to “french”
Ian 04:58 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
You either haven’t been paying attention or you’re remarkably innocent, then. There is a reason you don’t see many doctors and lawyers with accents from any of the Southwest bouroughs, much as you would not expect to see an English banker with a Cockney accent. Working class, innit.
Blork 10:09 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
That’s not to say working class people (either in England or in Quebec) don’t become doctors, lawyers, and bankers. But in becoming a doctor, lawyer, or banker, most of those people will lose their working class accent.
Jack 10:10 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
Faiz are you kidding? Listen to the Radio Canada TV announcers, the only place French speakers talk like that is in Outremont salons.Kate you are dead right when it comes to language in Quebec you can not win.
JaneyB 10:12 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
The class issue around French language usage in Quebec is incessant. I’m an Anglo transplant and that’s clearly one of the raging undercurrents here. Whenever you hear discussions in the French-language media here about ‘the state of the French language’, it’s mostly about class. A lot of the defensiveness of Quebecois around English I think is caused by rawness from internal debates between the about the ‘quality of Quebec French’ eg: pride of patrimony versus the view of Quebec a second-rate France full of working-class linguistic improvisers that needs to be re-educated to international standards. Imagine growing up hearing Quebec Franco elites and English-Canada criticizing the way you do things, the way you speak etc…if that doesn’t feed Quebec nationalism, I don’t know what would. I never saw this when I lived in English-Canada but now that I’m here, wow, I totally see the problem.
Kate 10:15 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
Yep. Another angle with Bergevin is that although he was born in Montreal, he spent his hockey career playing for U.S. teams then working for the Chicago Blackhawks, so chances are he hasn’t actually spoken a lot of French in his working life – that too will have affected his speaking style.
Josh 11:15 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
@Faiz: The relationship between class and the way one speaks is something that exists all over the world. Not strictly a Quebec thing.
But I did live there for a decade, yeah.
dwgs 14:57 on 2012/05/04 Permalink
M. Bergevin is a Ville Emard kid and he speaks like one. Speaking as a father of two hockey playing kids I can say I don’t hear too much Outremont French in the arenas.
Kevin 10:07 on 2012/05/05 Permalink
All problems in Quebec could be solved if Quebec’s education system recognized two dialects of French and taught classes in both ;)