CBC News - Montreal - Niqab gets 2nd Quebec student expelled

CBC News - Montreal - Niqab gets 2nd Quebec student expelled

We like the CBC, we do. We do not, however, like how comments on stories so frequently breakdown as follows:

1. Relevant comment.
2. Tangential comment.
3. Racist screed.
4. Racist screed and with added typos for fibre.
5. Ridiculous leftest counter claims.
6.+ More of the same.

This is an important, significant story for all modern liberal democracies. But there's a snag you see, it is not a simple thing, one minor on/off switch and the problem is solved or dissolved. There are really important issues (plural) here: religious freedom, secularism, women's right, individual choice and autonomy, provincial rights, states/federal rights... Not to mention that the law in question has merely been proposed. Why was this woman expelled? What will come of this?

Peut-être

So I posted the following video elsewhere--You know for the LOLz-- after having been introduced to the English version and feeling Canadian, Québécois enough to warrant posting la version française. Comme ça:



Which elicited the comment from an American poster: La version [sic] Quebecoise [sic], peut-etre? Which seems thematic of my experience with Americans regarding Québec French: there always seems to be the implication that Québec French is somehow inauthentic. Flawed. Less correct. Now language legitimacy, purity and correctness are complex, spiky, issues particularly among the French (there are two formal language academies, which frequently disagree). Which leads me to the following question:

Mes chers amis américains, s'il vous plaît quelqu'un pourrait expliquer le problème que vous avez avec le Québec français? SRSLY. Quel est l'intérêt? What's up with that, yo?

It seems to me, whenever I am in the US or speaking French with my American colleagues, friends and acquaintances, this issue is brought up. Sometimes in jest. Sometimes sincerely. One even argued for the position because "they don't even use the liason phonetique in Québec." I of course objected strenuously because that is demonstrably untrue.

Is this just the vanity of American intellectuals, aping Parisienne arrogance?

With regards to the video itself, it purports to be from "The Republic of Bacon" ("La République du Bacon"), which apparently has two official languages, neither of which makes sense to have a regional designation, other than the already present ambiguity of French and English being both adjectives for ethnicity/nationality and language.