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<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Arial">There's a new post on the <a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage"><font color="#0021e7" style="color: #0021e7"><u>Web of Language</u></font></a>:</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; min-height: 16px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; min-height: 16px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Quebec language police order Irish pub to get rid of English </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Last week Québec’s language police ordered a popular Montréal watering hole to get rid of its English signs, and the outraged pub owner took his case to the media. Now the dispute has been settled, and both sides can sit down to a friendly glass of Guinness (or a pichet de rouge, if they prefer).</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">The pub’s owner has agreed to translate everything on his menus, and he’ll greet customers in French if they look like francophones. In turn, the pub can keep its English-language cultural paraphernalia. The authorities maintain that they had never asked for a name change to McKibbin’s Pub Irlandais, and they insist that cultural signs are allowed in any language, so long as the proprietors get approval from the linguistic authorities before displaying them.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">L’Office québecois de la langue française had given McKibbin’s Irish Pub thirty days to replace its English signs with ones in French, or face fines of up to $1,500 a day for each infraction. Québec’s tongue troopers claimed they were responding to an anonymous complaint about too much English at the bar. The OQLF gets about 3,500 such complaints each year. In 2007 it fined 53 businesses for disrespecting French (one store, Best Buy, was fined ten times for a total of $5,000), while in 2006, when English apparently ran rampant in the city, over 100 fines were assessed.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">... If McKibbin’s was a truly Irish pub, the owners would have leapt at the chance to throw out anything English and replace their signs and menus with Gaelic. Instead, they embraced English as a sign of their Irishness.</div></span></font></div></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">read the rest on <a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage"><font color="#0021e7" style="color: #0021e7"><u>The Web of Language</u></font></a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#0021e7" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #0021e7"><a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage"><u>www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage</u><u></u></a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; min-height: 16px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Arial; min-height: 16px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Dennis Baron</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Professor of English and Linguistics</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Department of English<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">University of Illinois<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">608 S. Wright St.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Urbana, IL 61801 </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">office: 217-244-0568</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">fax: 217-333-4321</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Arial; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#0021e7" style="font: 12.0px Arial; color: #0021e7"><a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron">www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">read the Web of Language:</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="3" color="#0021e7" style="font: 12.0px Arial; color: #0021e7"><a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage">www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage</a></font></div> </body></html>