… or, as Québec’s language police would say, “on ne nosh pas!”
In a new ruling, the defenders of the French language in Quebec want Arthurs Nosh Bar to remove nosh from the café’s name. That’s because Québec’s latest language law requires all signage to be 75 percent French.
Arthurs Nosh Bar is at best 67% French: Arthurs, with no apostrophe, counts as French. So does bar, a word that’s both French and English. But nosh is Yiddish, not French.
Arthurs, a popular Montréal eatery, insists that nosh is an essential reflection of the restaurant’s Jewish cuisine. But according to the l’Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), the restaurant’s name has at least 8% less French than the law requires. In addition to a cease-and-desist order, the agency has the power to fine Arthurs from $3,000 to $30,000 CAD for a first offense, and up to $90,000 for a third offense (each day may count as a new offence against the official language law).
Hoping to expand the role of French in Québec, in 1977 the province passed la charte de la langue française (the French Language Charter). Sometimes called loi 101, the charter made French the province's sole official language (Canada itself is officially bilingual) and established l’Office québécois de la language française to monitor the use of French and to fine businesses that violate the law.
The main target of the language law is English, and OQLF enforcers have gone after indy Irish pubs as well as large American corporations doing business in the province. Other languages are out as well, as OQLF has targeted Chinese and Italian restaurants, kebab shops, and now a deli, for insufficient French.
In response to Québec’s language law, some big companies changed their names: KFC in Canada became, in Québec, PFK (Poulet Frit Kentucky). And Staples is now Bureau en Gros, ‘office wholesale.’ Others simply moved their headquarters to Ontario, an option that’s not practical for small businesses like Arthurs, with a well-established local clientele.
Nosh, the target of the OQLF complaint, means ‘a bite, or snack.’ When I was growing up in Queens, my friends and I sometimes stopped at the Knish Nosh for a snack on our way home from high school. That was in the early 1960s, and the Knish Nosh is still in business. If you don’t know what a knish is, think of a croissant filled with mashed potato.
Using sign laws to “protect” the majority language and suppress disfavored languages is a common practice with governments around the world. In 1914, at the start of World War I, Germany banned French and English signs, and in 1917, when the U.S. entered the war, many American cities banned public displays of German, the language of the enemy. Turkey’s modernization efforts in the 1920s required Turkish on business signs, to the dismay of the many merchants who preferred French, which seemed more chic. And in the post-Soviet era, all signs in the Slovak Republic must now be in Slovak, not Russian, Czech, German, Hungarian, English, or any other minority or suspect language.
Like Quebec, New York City has a sign law. Passed in 1933, New York’s law requires English on all business signs (General Business Laws, Sec. 9-b, Art. 131). But the Knish Nosh does not violate that law, since nosh has been a normal English word since the late nineteenth century, and knish first appears in English in 1916 (both words, and their cognates, have a long history in Yiddish as well as other languages). But unlike Quebec’s law, there are no penalties for violating the city’s English-only law. So even if the city authorities considered knish and nosh to be foreign words, there’s nothing they could do about it. Which is a good thing considering how many cuisines are currently found in Queens.
As for Arthurs, the owners have lodged a protest, but if the OQLF won’t back down they may have to consider other options, like changing nosh to snack. Snack has been an English word since 1400, but it’s used in French as well to mean either ‘snack’ or ‘snack bar.’ I spent some time in France fifty years ago, and one of my favorite eateries in the provincial city where I lived was Snack Notre Dame – just across from Notre Dame la grande. France has a language law as well, one that preferences French over foreign words. But Snack Notre Dame, which is long gone, clearly passed the language test, and there are plenty of other French eateries with snack in their name. Arthurs Snack Bar would comply with Quebec's French language law while remaining 100% English.
But Arthurs Nosh Bar should not have to change its name. The meaning of nosh, in the context of a Jewish deli, is unmistakable, even to a French speaker. The OQLF language cops can go to Arthurs for a snack while they figure out how to punish the restaurant. Everyone else goes to Arthurs for a nosh, even if they order from the French menu. One caveat though: Arthurs Nosh Bar does not sell knishes -- no potato knishes, no kasha knishes, no knishes of any kind.
