NEWS C'est la guerre? • (From Jacques Neher, 'Ad Firms Meet • (Compiled in Paris from dispatches: 'Bill to French 101', International Herald Tribune, 19 Outlaw Some Uses of English Nears Approval June 94) in French Legislature', International Herald PARIS - Cheeseburgers will have to be Tribune, 6 May 94) renamed in fast-food restaurants around the THE NATIONAL Assembly on Thursday country under the bill sponsored by Culture approved a bill intended to protect the French Minister Jacques Toubon. language, introducing fines for the public use "Hamburger is French, but cheeseburger of English when a French word is available. isn't French and can't be used," said Yves The measure, which imposes fines of up to Marek, an adviser to Mr Toubon and author of 20,000 francs ($3,500), was backed by the the bill. "With this law, we're not trying to governing coalition of the Union for French protect the French language, but rather pro- Democracy and the Rally for the Republic. tect consumers. They should be able to under- Socialist and Communist legislators abstained. stand what they are buying." The bill, introduced by Culture Minister No matter its intent, the law is likely to cre- Jacques Toubon, now returns to the Senate for ate more work and boost costs for foreign a second vote. It is virtually certain of final companies attempting to sell their goods and passage. services in France. Marketers say it would dic- In the Assembly debate Wednesday, Didier tate a "French exception" for global or pan- Mathus, a Socialist, denounced the measure as European ad campaigns tied to English words "unenforceable" and charged that it gave the and expressions. French language an image of being "narrow The only other country where marketers and defensive" ... face similar restrictions is Canada, where the The bill says a dictionary of 3,500 terms and French-speaking province of Quebec has also technical expressions published on March 15 clamped down on commercial use of English. will be the bible for France's language police. Even though "cheeseburger" survived intact, The dictionary outlaws such English words as the company was prompted to replace its airbag, walkman, crash, scoop and software, Happy Meal with "Joyeux Festin" and Chicken and provides French equivalents. McNuggets with "McCroquettes."

Unilingual Signs in Quebec and the United Nations Human Rights Committee (From the Annual Report for 1993 of the the status of the French language in Quebec or Commissioner of Official Languages, March that it is proportionate to that legislative pur- 1994, Ottawa) pose." In other words, though such defence THE REQUIREMENT of unilingual public sig- and enhancement were valid government nage under Quebec's Charter of the French objectives, the Court felt that the means cho- Language was found to be contrary to the sen to achieve them were disproportionate: guarantee of freedom of expression in the "Thus, whereas requiring the predominant dis- Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by play of the French language, even its marked the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988. In the predominance, would be proportional to the opinion of the Supreme Court, "... it has not goal of promoting and maintaining a French been demonstrated that the prohibition of the Sdsage linguistique' in Quebec and therefore use of any language other than French in ss. 58 justified under the ... Canadian Charter, and 69 of the Charter of the French Language is requiring the exclusive use of French has not necessary to the defence and enhancement of been so justified."

40 English Today 40, Vol. 10, No. 4 (October 1994). Copyright © 1994 Cambridge University Press Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 26 Sep 2021 at 08:53:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078400007884