Geez its fascinating to see well-meaning Yanks get their knickers in a knot about a non-event of 30 years ago.

If there is a Canadian accent, Nixon sure didn't have one. The notion that he could speak a language he didn't know with an accent he didn't have is just plain silly. I think his "top linguist" was an idiot. But a lousy accent was the least of his crimes.

What, you're not all Yanks? Wey-ell, fry ma grits.

It's a well-worn political ritual for anglo politicians, expecially from the west, to come to Quebec and try to speak French. Nixon wasn't the first, the last or the worst. What a lot of Quebecois REALLY wouldn't like is being told they speak with a Canadian accent. Yer Quebecois (kebbekwa) are very nationalistic--as in Quebec nationalists--especially in linguistic matters. There are well-known distinctions between Quebec French and Parisian French, but it's a special little cultural spat between Quebec and France which doesn't involve the rest of Canada.

The typical reaction of bilingual Quebeckers to an anglo addressing them in deficient French is to appreciate the effort, and switch immediately to English for mutual convenience.

Myself, I have this problem, my French accent isn't too bad, but my vocabulary is very limited. So sometimes I make a monosyllabic comment at a Montreal bus station wicket or somewhere, and receive a rapid and voluble reply en francais that causes me to demonstrate my idiot shrug and "je regret que je ne comprends pas". So I usually prefer to finish my conversations with my francophone compatriots with a "merci bien" or other parting words which don't require me to understand anything else.

And yes, we have completely internalized using the terms "anglophone" and "francophone", generally a reference to one's first language, to avoid that tricky business about "Canadian", a term which for us has no linguistic implications whatsoever but says a lot about your politics.

Willie-O
Canadian, anglo, Ontarian