The reaction in Quebec hardly qualified as “hysteria.” It is summer, after all. And most of the nationalist politicians who might have sought to make hay from Mr. Saad’s remarks are, mercifully, at the beach or somewhere else far from the madding crowd of the National Assembly.called
Mr. Saad’s comments an example of “glottophobia” or “prejudices or discrimination based on language or dialect.” Despite Mr. Saad’s claim that “the auditory signature of Quebec French … is unattractive, ” Mr. Compton pointed to scientific studies showing there to be no objective basis for deeming one accent nicer than another.
Rather, according to Mr. Compton, such “subjective notions have more to do with our perceptions of the people who speak these languages than with the languages themselves.”Besides, I am not sure just which Québécois accent Mr. Saad was referring to in the first place. As in France, where accents vary widely based on region, Quebeckers in le Saguenay or la Gaspésie do not speak in quite the same way as those in other parts of the province.
One thing is certain, the Québécois accent is not easy to imitate. Countless French actors have tried and failed. The opposite is not true. Dozens of Québécois artists have led successful careers in French theatre and film. One theory for why that is so is that Quebec French uses a wider variety of sounds, and the vocal cords of Quebeckers develop accordingly, enabling them to adapt their accent more easily than their French cousins.