I’m 20 years old.
I live on the South Shore of Montreal.
Yes, my vocabulary contains chills, downs and insane.
It is also filled with words in French. It is basically filled with French words.
I speak French.
My use of Anglicisms has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to communicate in French, and it has nothing to do with the decline of French, as the recent CAQ ad suggests.
This advertisement shows us that for the government, it is not English that is bothersome, it is the language of young people that is bothersome. He doesn’t like the way we talk. Our government thinks that we are not able to say a sentence without an Anglicism.
No young person is going to watch this ad and think about their use of English. None. Other than finding the ad funny, I don’t see what the ad is supposed to provoke as thought.
Why has the government decided to target youth vocabulary in such a cartoonish way? Why didn’t he value French instead? Why didn’t he talk about culture? How important is French in North America?
How can we hope to give young people the desire to promote French with this kind of discourse?
Nevertheless, this debate leads me to pose a key question to the government: when are you going to have the courage to invest massively in culture?
Because language is a culture war.
Who will capture the attention of young people? Quebec or Netflix?
Will you have the courage to subsidize our artists? Artists who really speak to young people… At the same time, your method is rather to constantly shout that young people listen to too much content in English without ever making an effort to change anything.
Despite everything, French is alive. We will continue to think in French. We’re going to love each other in French. We will focus on our language. We will redefine our culture. We will continue to use anglicisms.
We will keep our language alive. That’s what we, the young people, are going to do.
Watch us.
