Road signs in Northern Quebec use English and Inuktitut, but not French

    by vit-kievit

    41 Comments

    1. Canadian_Invader on

      The Quebec language police have been trying to stop them. But they keep getting lost in the wilderness getting there. Lol.

    2. That’s Cree, not Inuktitut. Which makes sense if the photo was taken in Eastmain: Eastmain is a Cree village on James Bay.

    3. vincenzodelavegas on

      In France the stop sign says STOP on it. So technically it is French and also a shit load of other countries. This post explains it better: https://www.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/s/qISyJXm1QM

      Edit: Yes, it’s arrêt in Quebec. The OP’s point isn’t that it isn’t written the right way across Quebec/Canada, but that it isn’t written in French. “Stop” is French. It’s used as a word in everyday French.

    4. ThisIsPaulDaily on

      French speaking people are smart enough to understand what a red octagonal sign means. 

    5. Their language has both candy canes and candy cane with a dot in it.

      ![gif](giphy|u99fFT1YBzyco)

    6. mcgillthrowaway22 on

      Actually this legally counts as French + Inuktitut, not English. The OQLF considers both “Arrêt” and “Stop” to be acceptable french-language signage; though there’s no obvious preference for the former, the latter can be found in some areas (such as in Westmount, an enclave of Montréal). The only rule is that a sign cannot display *both* words: from my experience, the only stop signs in Québec that have both “Arrêt” and “Stop” on them are those in areas administered by the federal government (like at the airport).

    7. You should see Welsh road signs, every single one is in both English and Welsh.
      And many Welsh people don’t speak Welsh anymore 😂

      Sometimes I like to imagine that the Welsh is actually secret messages taking the piss out of England and not actually a translation 😂😂

    8. westcoastwillie23 on

      I spent some time working around radisson a few years back, my limited experience was that the Cree people I met really weren’t big fans of French.

    9. Inuktitut syllabics are borrowed from Cree Language, it is important that Inuit and Cree along with their languages are distinct, James Bay and Northern Quebec are indeed in one Land Claims Agreement but both are unique to their own. The stop sign is in Cree from Eastmain Cree community in Quebec, not Inuktitut.

    10. Over_Variation8700 on

      What’s crazy is the stop signs read Arrêt or both Arrêt and Stop in Quebec but in France it’s all Stop

    11. ManWhoSoldTheWorld01 on

      Maybe there is a special exemption, or just lack of interest in enforcement but in Quebec “Stop” alone is acceptable or “Arrêt” alone.

      It’s illegal to have “Stop” and “Arrêt” on the same sign, regardless of order, because it implies translation, regardless of the actual demographics of the area.

      Although in English areas you will often see “Stop” signs, which as I said, are acceptable.

      You also see these kinds of bilingual signs in other reserves throughout Canada.

    12. That must be a political decision. Who on the world wouldn’t understand the octagonal stop sign? It’s everywhere “stop”, in almost all nations.

    13. Short_Cranberry7562 on

      I worked on a remote project south east of James bay, and the indigenous people on the project all spoke English, barely French. My coworker told me it’s a legacy of missionaries in remote communities deliberately attempting to prevent indigenous integration by teaching English in QC and French in ON communities.
      I don’t know how much of that is BS, but it rings anecdotally true with my experiences in northern Ontario and other northern communities.

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