‘Bonjour-Hi’ picking up traction in Quebec

QUEBEC • Bonjour-Hi is alive and well in Montreal.

despite a 2018 National Assembly motion urging the city’s shopkeepers to drop the “Hi” and warmly greet their clients with just a “Bonjour,” new statistics reveal that Bonjour-Hi is still in widespread use — even thriving.

In fact, Montrealers, especially younger residents, don’t really see what the fuss was about. The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) reports that 46 per cent of them express “indifference” over which language they are greeted in.

That may be because, in the case of francophones, the majority (96 per cent) say they are served in French after getting past the initial pleasantries.

The new data is contained in the April 2019 update on the status of French in Quebec released by the office Friday.

“does it still exist today? I can’t say for sure because we don’t have statistics for today in 2019, but clearly we need to do more sensitization,” office president Ginette Galarneau told reporters.

“It’s a reality,” added Julie Létourneau, director of communications at the office.

The findings have left the office somewhat puzzled because the study reveals 90 per cent of francophones would prefer to be greeted in French but don’t want the fuss of having to demand it in their daily activities.

The report thus shows Bonjour-Hi has not lost traction. According to the report, Montreal merchants’ use of French-only greetings to clients has actually dropped — from 84 per cent to 75 per cent between 2010 and 2017.

On the other hand, the level of greetings in English only went up from 12 per cent to 17 per cent (mostly in West Island stores) while the compromise bilingual Bonjour-Hi solution used in many downtown shops grew from four per cent to eight per cent in the same time frame.

More recent data, contained in the 1,000 pages of studies released Friday, reveal that in 2018 more than half of clients, 59 per cent, say they were greeted at least once in the bilingual manner in the past six months.

All this is still happening despite politicians at the National Assembly indulging in some social engineering in 2018 by adopting the Parti Québécois sponsored motion against Bonjour-Hi.