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Step up your game, France
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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Stop signs in France say “STOP” but in Quebec they say “ARRÊT”
They also translate "parking" as "stationnement" and "weekend" as "fin de semaine" while the French just lamely use the English words
I like to dunk on Quebec as much as the next guy but that's actually based.
Fin de semaine in France means end of the work week (Thursday Friday) whereas fin de semaine in Quebec means weekend.
That's because France is part of the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals
The Vienna Convention allows you to use either STOP or your native version. Likewise, you can either use a red octagonal sign, or a red upside-down triangle inside a red circle. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildtafel_der_Stoppschilder (that list only seems to exist in German Wikipedia)
What? I thought the point of the octagon was so you can also tell its a stop sign from the other side and always know who has priority. Yet some countries say, nah circle is good. Speed limit? Circle. Stop? Circle.
I think it has spilled into the rest of Canada too. I just spent a week in Alberta and every little thing that said "stop" also said "arrêt". But the only obvious French speakers I encountered were either tourists or government officials being intentionally accommodating.
On a more serious note I think Canadian bilingualism might exaggerate this effect. Every sign and product package is printed in both languages so in a way or makes sense to spell things out in full English and full French. i.e. It would be kinda weird to print English alongside some kind of nonstandard Franglish.
Packaging having both languages on it is a federal level legal requirement, since we are bilingual. However, the stop signs are more a regional thing. If there is a francophone population in the area, and you're not in Quebec, you might see both on a sign. In my home province, we have the dual language signs wherever the French speaking population is large enough to warrant it, but everywhere else has English only.
Yes that was my understanding. That's precisely why I shared my experience in Alberta, where I did not expect any substantial francophone population. Maybe that assumption was just wrong?
In general, I'd say you're right that Alberta wouldn't have a large population of francophones. But, especially in anglophone provinces, French speakers tend to live in French communities.
Like in my province, you could carve out ~80% of the land and have about 97% English speakers to 3% French speakers. But the remaining 20% is nearly 90% French speakers.
In Eastern Ontario you'll see these signs along the highway that spell some safety message. They'll have sometimes 2 or 3 in a row to fully tell you the thing in english. Then you'll get the same signs again explaining it in french.
I kind of liked how they handle it in Ottawa with the highway signs having the English and French above and below street names on highways, wherever it made sense. I didn’t remember seeing that in Toronto on that trip, but I was in Toronto at the start of this week and noticed a lot of signs like that, at least on the 400 highways. I found that a little surprising given Toronto’s distance from Quebec, but I guess with the sheer population size of Toronto and its role as a transportation hub it makes sense.
Ontario has a large francophone community, around 650 000, mostly in the East and North.
And you can tell where someone is from in Quebec with how they pronounce "ARRÊT"
I’ll have to ask my wife if she can do that