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A new publicity campaign promoting the use of French in all aspects of daily life says that it’s everyone’s job to protect the language, and it also suggests that a good way to start protection is to stop saying “Hi.”
A 30-second television ad is part of $2.5-million multimedia publicity campaign by the Legault government and begins with the narrator telling the audience, “Ça (it) begins with one word,” and then offers images of a taxi driver and a store clerk saying “Bonjour” before the narrator adds “C’est ça (That’s it), just ‘bonjour’.”
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The ad’s opening is a not-so-subtle reference to the Bonjour/Hi controversy that saw the bilingual greeting linked by language activists and provincial politicians to the perceived decline of the French in Quebec and saw a motion in 2017 calling for an end to its use unanimously adopted in the National Assembly .
But if the video’s opening addresses a source of language tensions, the rest of its content is more upbeat, simply detailing the venues where French is spoken or heard — in language classes, movie theatres, on social media. And the ad winds up with the message that it is up to everyone in Quebec — workers, store customers and commuters — to use that language.
Premier François Legault posted the ad on his X account, saying Quebec is the “only francophone state in North America. It is through our language that we express our identity and out culture. I will never cease defending it. Here in Quebec, it happens in French.
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