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Mont Royal
Jul. 12th, 2006 07:37 pmSpent the entire day on a plane, which sucked but was bearable. The first flight was packed with not a single open seat, the second flight was half-full but the plane was hot. In any case, I've arrived in Montreal for 2 days of meetings with game developers. This will be the first time for me 'on the road' with the new team since the reorg, so it should prove to be interesting but fraught with potential political entanglements.
I won't get a chance to see much of the city until Saturday, but so far my impression of Montreal is a very European city that is aggressively bilingual. Actually, that's only in the airport. Most of the signage downtown is only in French, most of the channels on TV are only in French, and this is the heart of the province that adopted French as it's official language back in the 60s. I think we should force any Congressman that is pushing for an "English as the official language of the US" bill to live in Montreal for a year. I don't speak a single word of French, but the bilingual signage means I can learn it while the French-only stuff leaves me illiterate.
Apparently the name "Montreal" is believed to be based on a mis-translation by Italians of the original French explorer's naming of the island "Mont Royal".![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rubylou would probably love the city because it was North America's premiere "Roman Catholic" city for two centuries, with the architecture and other "Catholic bling" to prove it. Of course, the French didn't really discover it since there were already Iroquois living here, but as the lacked a flag they didn't count by Colonial rules.
I won't get a chance to see much of the city until Saturday, but so far my impression of Montreal is a very European city that is aggressively bilingual. Actually, that's only in the airport. Most of the signage downtown is only in French, most of the channels on TV are only in French, and this is the heart of the province that adopted French as it's official language back in the 60s. I think we should force any Congressman that is pushing for an "English as the official language of the US" bill to live in Montreal for a year. I don't speak a single word of French, but the bilingual signage means I can learn it while the French-only stuff leaves me illiterate.
Apparently the name "Montreal" is believed to be based on a mis-translation by Italians of the original French explorer's naming of the island "Mont Royal".
rubylou would probably love the city because it was North America's premiere "Roman Catholic" city for two centuries, with the architecture and other "Catholic bling" to prove it. Of course, the French didn't really discover it since there were already Iroquois living here, but as the lacked a flag they didn't count by Colonial rules.
