/nuz baɪts/—
/mɔʁso də nuvɛl/ Edition

Not a wire news service but still more reliable than most newspapers.

Québécois maintain anglais may pertain to one domain, but disdain remains germane

Our older readers may recall back in 1990¹ when the Académie française instituted a series of controversial spelling reforms. Many French speakers abhorred rectifiée spellings such as ognon and cèleri, which ruined a perfectly good mirepoix. The conservatives running SpecGram at the time penned the disapproving editorial “From soupe to nuts!”,² and the Municipal Journal of Language Devolution released a special issue with the cover “Rectified, My ***”.³

Purists turned to the Office québécois de la langue française in la belle province as the sole remaining defenders of la belle langue. While the French French have been partying every week-end, or since 1990—mon Dieu!—every weekend, the OQLF’s semaine of protecting Québécois French has traditionally had no fin.⁴ Traditionalists’ hopes were dashed in 2017 when the OQLF declared that it was kosher to order un grilled-cheese⁵ and wash it down with un cocktail.

In a contentious debate at an emergency meeting of l’Organization internationale de la Francophonie, delegates ended up agreeing that an American-style fast-food lunch could be ordered in English, but only if done so with a thick accent to express culinary disdain. There was unanimous agreement that haute cuisine, such as magret de canard or a properly made bœuf bourguignon⁶, must be ordered in French. At press time, delegates were still divided on whether to refer to the evening meal as le dîner or le souper.

¹ Honestly, only our younger readers can recall 1990.

² We’ll digitize the issue the next time the laptop industry creates a high-performance machine with a built-in 5¼-inch floppy drive.

³ Modesty prevented the publisher from printing the title without censorship. Knowing editor Grumby Kerr Mudgin, it had something to do with a common Latin root.

⁴ Nor any fun. They were shocked—shocked!—to find pasta in an Italian restaurant.

⁵ Though not with viande fumée, of course.

⁶ Which the delegates also agreed must use fine Burgundy wine, not some California plonk.

	Letters to the Editor
	Linguimericks—Book ४८
	SpecGram Vol CLXXXI, No 1 Contents