Montreal Part I

A t-shirt in a souvenir shop summed up Canadians concisely: A Canadian, the t-shirt said, is an unarmed American with health insurance. I’d add a bilingual, unarmed American with health insurance. There you have it: oh, Canada.

But in all seriousness, Montreal is a refreshing slice of North America that’s quite different from the US, albeit by aura. It’s quirky, cultured, diverse, and boasts a distinct personnalité that Vermont, for instance, doesn’t have. Montreal’s native citizens speak Quebecois (read: country-sounding) French to each other, but switch to normal (read: American-sounding) English at the blink of an eye.

The charm isn’t limited to faux-France, though. The city is swarmed with myriad immigrant communities that range from Portuguese to Lebanese. The various sub-groups speak their own languages, too. The result is an interesting potpourri of European immigration with a slice of Latin American paprika, North American coolness, French haute-couture, normal English and uber-protected Quebecois – I mean, French.

In a country where immigrants are obligated to go to school in French but natives with English-speaking parents can continue learning in English, it’s no wonder there is linguistic confusion among the general populace. Schools function in different languages. Some universities are English-speaking, some French-speaking. Interviews for jobs are unpredictable, our hosts told us. Always come to an interview saying bonjour, they said, but you could very well carry on in English. (Only one of them works in French.) Yet if you don’t know French, you can’t survive here. You’re not really a Quebecois!

It’s counterintuitive, given that when going to a store in Montreal one encounters the following scenario over and over, without any problems:

Clerk: Bonjour! Bla bla bla en français ooh la la.
Me: Hi. Can I also have that gum over there?
Clerk (in normal, boring English): That’ll be seven dollars and ninety-five cents. Paper or plastic?

Not even a snooty French accent! Oh, those able Canadians!

Speaking of dollars and cents: yet another area where Canadians are better than us. Everyone is well aware that with the falling dollar it no longer makes any sense for us to go to Europe anymore (or is it another conspiracy of the Europeans against us? I didn’t vote for Bush, people). We are, however, at a record time in history. During our trip not only was the Canadian dollar equal to ours, but it had, in fact, surpassed it. So, seven dollars and ninety-five cents was more like $8.01. Blasphemy!

Still, in a revolutionary step for North American international relations and despite our floundering currency, four of us Russian-Americans went to Montreal to visit friend Maksim and his Russian-Canadian posse. (Okay, Canadian/American aside from everyone’s latently repressed Russianness.) Our impression of our Canadian hosts, nonetheless, was fantabulous!

Masha, Bella, Alena, and I stayed in Maksim’s downtown studio apartment, which he had kindly vacated for our arrival. Each day, we had a different chauffeur-guide, consisting of Serge or Alex, and later supplemented by Edy and Maia. The itinerary was cultural (Le Biodome), scenic (climbing to see all the lovely 360-degree views of the city), and, of course, a gastronomical tour of Montreal’s immigrant communities (food included Greek, Russian, Chilean, Portuguese, Hungarian, Jewish, and even, dare I say, American breakfast). In fact, the gastrointestinal tour was so great and diverse, I was left wondering if real Canadians have any food of their own! With the plethora of cutesy European cafes and old-world-meets-new-world vibe, they probably don’t even need any.

During our three days in Canada, I feel as though I gained a deeper understanding of linguistics just by studying our group interaction. Had Noam Chomsky been among us, he'd cite us a focal group for illustrating the formation of a Ruslish? Engrus? mixed language. In America, my friends and I speak to each other in an inconspicuous alteration of Russian and English, depending on mood, subject matter, or sentence. I was surprised to observe that our Canadian counterparts speak in similar mixtures... only of Russian, English, and French added to the mix. They nixed the French for us, but I think any outside observer would be thoroughly entertained (or shocked) by the following phrases uttered.

-Подгони faster the машина please guys.
-А когда нас pick-up-нут?
-Are we going to a Лебанонский ресторан? [не Ливанский]
...and so on and so forth. My attempts to speak one or the other, not both at the same time, went unmimicked.

Multilingual conversation is all fine and dandy, now that the world is as globalized as it is. Still, our communication was notably impressionistic. Ruslish begs for at least some standardization. A dictionary, maybe? Phrasebook? Thesaurus? We should all have just learned Esperanto when we had the chance.

The language thing kept coming up, too, when it was revealed that Maia teaches English and French to immigrants up to three times her age (21) for a job. I asked her (in English) what language she thinks in: Russian, French, or English. Depends on the conversation, she said. What language does she dream in? All three. I thought I was a fine balancing act with two, but trilingualism is totally natural for these guys. Which language does she know best? Hard to say. English and French about the same.

TO BE CONTINUED...