So here's some background: last year my peer Elizabeth told me that she went to the Cornell linguistics colloquium for undergraduate students and presented a paper she had done. I was impressed. She told me there was one at McGill, too; alas, we had both missed the abstract deadline. I resolved to submit my paper for 2008, which I did in February, and which was accepted to present at the poster session of the 2nd annual McGill Canadian Conference for Linguistic Undergraduates (McCCLU). So, having found a relatively cheap flight via studentuniverse, I confirmed my participation and booked the flight to Montreal (Montréal).
This was the first time I had been to Canada since... well, since before passports were required to cross the border. 1998, in fact, was when my family and I drove up to Québec City for a summer road trip -- my first time out of the country. I remember that we were confused because there were two signs announcing our arrival in Canada, spaced out by about ten feet, so we didn't actually know when we had arrived in Canada. We took pictures at both signs. By the way, I think "road trip" should be one word, but spell check disagrees. I also think "spell check" should be one word, but spell check disagrees. I shall bring this up in Morphology class on Monday to delay talking any further about ergative case marking in the Hanis Coo language.
As you know, I hope, Québec is what we would call a social oddity in that it has an dominant language different from that of its country. French, that is. This led to many difficult situations wherein I had no clue which language to use, and also to quite a bit of linguistic tongue-twisting. It is not uncommon to answer someone's French question in English, or to have someone say things to you in both languages. I talked to one woman in the train station on my way back to the airport, and it went something like this:
Alison: Pardon, vous attendez l'Aérobus?
Lady: Sorry? The, ah...?
Alison: Oh, the Aerobus. For the airport.
Lady: Ah, non. Vous allez où?
Alison: A Washington.
Lady: Vous y demeurez?
Alison: J'y étudie.
Lady: Oh. Ben, si vous demandez à the information bureau...
Alison: J'ai... I already asked. He said Door 17, I just don't know what time it's coming.
Lady: Oh okay.
Alison: *smiles blankly, then two minutes later finds an excuse to change seats because of awkward silence*
I didn't really meet any Canadians, to be honest. Every student I met at McGill was an American. Surprisingly, McGill is located a stone's throw from downtown. I walked out of the front gates and all of a sudden I was surrounded by tall buildings. The campus is very charming, as is the city, from the few walks I took around the area. Everything was covered in snow, however -- SNOW. In LATE MARCH. And not just a dusting, but it was piled up several feet along the sidewalks. Temperatures were also hovering just below freezing during my visit there. Crazy French fur-traders.
Anyway, I am resolved to return to Québec and do more of a tour around than my brief foray into Montréal, however pleasant it was. Who's with me?
2 comments:
I find the prospect of a roadtrip stimulating. I want to hear more about the paper presentation. How did that go, what was it like? Yours with great affection and admiration, Eleanor
Okay congratulations on the presentation first of all!
I have experienced the linguistic craziness. Here in Austria everyone speaks English as a second language. Unfortunately people here speak kind of quietly, and so when I say "wie bitte?" (excuse me, in German) they assume I am an idiot, even though I just spoke to them in German a second ago, and they repeat in English. It's annoying.
Also my professor for Iraq history lapses into English all the time when she can't find the right expression in German... even though she is a native German speaker as far as I can tell. Weird.
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