In three weeks, I am heading off to France, where I will be teaching for the spring semester. So I’m getting ready to say “Bonjour” to just about everyone I meet. I speak French fluently, but to brush up, I’ve been listening to Madame Bovary and A la Recherche du Temps Perdu on audiobook. (A recommendation: They are both much funnier and sadder in the original language.) All this anticipation made me sensitive to a headline that popped into view a few days ago — not from France, but from the Canadian province of Quebec, which is possibly even more language-obsessed than its mother country across the pond.
I’m not sure when bonjour-hi began as a greeting in Quebec. A 2012 study of almost 400 businesses in downtown Montreal, though, disclosed that the greeting was being used in 13 percent of businesses, as opposed to only 1 percent in 2010, so the popularity of the greeting was on a rapid rise. (They also found 13 percent greeting customers in English only.) Already, then, the Office Québécois de la langue française saw the greeting as a potential “irritant.”
And now? Two weeks ago, the National Assembly of Quebec voted unanimously to ask merchants to greet their customers with bonjour only. In other words, not only Francophones but also Anglophone members of that governing body voted to purify the ways shops say “hello.” It was seen as a victory for the more accommodating Premier Philippe Couillard that the word irritant was removed from the language of the motion — but despite spinning it as “inviting people to say bonjour,” the legislators are apparently feeling the heat.
All this comes out of a trend that should be no surprise, given the predominance of English not only in North America but around the globe. Recent census data show that bilingualism is increasingly common in Quebec, especially in Montreal. This isn’t all bad news for French purists; apparently Anglophones are increasing their use of French just as Francophones are increasing their use of English, at least in the workplace. But it does suggest that bonjour-hi isn’t so much a gimmick as a natural outgrowth of a society where the languages increasingly mix and mingle.
On the eve of my residence in a Francophone country, I find myself reflecting not just on this political squabble, but on my own reaction to a greeting like bonjour-hi. First, its being a political football at all stems from the fact that retail establishments in Quebec, as in France, greet their customers and anticipate a greeting in return. Years ago, I taught a summer writing seminar in a small “book village” in the south of France, a place I recommended to several other writers’ groups. One year, I was back in the village and chatting with the proprietor of the local épicerie. “Those people you sent here,” she told me, “were so rude. We would say ‘bonjour’ to them, and they wouldn’t even answer!” I explained to her that the custom in America was to enter shops silently in order to browse undisturbed, and to speak to shop clerks only when you wanted to buy something. This mollified her not at all, but the exchange prompted me thereafter to encourage any neophyte travelers with me to be sure to return the bonjour, without fear that they will be hounded to purchase. It’s a tiny bit of diplomacy we can all practice.
Second, I notice that bonjour-hi, beside putting the French first (which, in Quebec, should be no surprise), matches a standard French greeting with a casual English one. When retailers do greet us, in English, it’s usually with “Good morning,” “How are you?” or “Hello.” Hi works as a response; it might also be the greeting if you already know the shopkeeper well. But not only would those standard greetings make a bilingual version impossibly clumsy; they also seem more, well, bilingual. Bonjour-hi feels like French with an English nod, as it were.
Finally, thinking of the customer’s experience (for which I don’t find a study on this point), I suspect bonjour-hi accomplishes its purpose. Yes, I have heard Americans, greeted with bonjour in a Francophone country, respond, “Hello.” I think it’s weird. Bonjour is not that hard to say, and it’s easy enough to follow with a request for English if you actually intend to continue the conversation. But for the most part, bonjour invites a French response, and hi an English one. Bonjour-hi allows the respondent to answer in either language. Perhaps that’s exactly what the language gatekeepers in Quebec are afraid of. After all, they have already lost the battle on grilled cheese, cocktail, drag queen, and pasta. On hi, they want — and will probably fail — to hold the line.