Vermont site on second-hand clothing stores
Vermont’s Seven Days sends a journalist to cover second-hand clothing stores in town – determinedly spelling it Montréal in English, but that’s often a quirk from those who want to feel the city is more exotic than it is.
Chris 09:27 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
I think they’re just trying to be respectful and write it in the native spelling. For them, it’s politically correct.
Kate 09:34 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
That isn’t native. If they wanted to be PC, they should call it Tiohtià:ke.
DeWolf 10:38 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
The same type of person talks about going to Firenze and Praha, which is fine, just a little pretentious.
Kate is right that Montreal is a perfectly legitimate way to write the city’s name. But someone is likely to get called out whether they write Montreal or Montréal, and if they don’t have a full understanding of local history and language politics, I can understand why they would err on the side of the official.
Incidentally, since Kate brought it up, Tiohtià:ke is just one of the Indigenous names for Montreal. I’ve always been amused when people use it as their location in their social media profiles. They are effectively erasing other nations who have had a presence on the island, notably the Anishinaabe. Given that the Mohawk were at war with the Anishinaabe, you could conceivably argue that privileging Tiohtià:ke over Mooniyang are inadvertently playing out an 18th century conflict, choosing the victors over the vanquished.
(Most institutions now refer to Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang in their land acknowledgements, which is a change over a few years ago.)
Kate 10:48 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
I have fond memories of visiting Baile Átha Cliath, myself.
Good point about Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang, DeWolf.
bob 13:08 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
Hochelaga was the only known settlement that existed pre-Ville-Marie. The Mohawk et al. of the time passed through, but did not settle. The inhabitants were St. Lawrence Iroquois – or should that be St. Laurent Iroquois now? They all but disappeared as a distinct group long before Ville Marie was established, and as far as I can tell there is no record of their name.
Meezly 15:38 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
There are quite a few used/vintage clothing stores on the Plateau, but it’s really difficult to find adult consignment clothing stores nowadays. The two places that do consign, they only give you store credit, not cash. What kind of a consignment is that? I don’t want to buy MORE clothes, I want to get rid of them and make some money!
Still, where do these stores acquire their clothes then, if not from the community? Do they scour thrift stores (thus driving thrift prices up?). The only alternative is to sell my clothes online (more return but more work).
DeWolf 16:43 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
@bob I went down a bit of a rabbit hole this morning trying to find information about the Iroquoian peoples who were thoroughly settled in the St Lawrence Valley but who “disappeared” in the 60 years between Cartier and Champlain. Apparently the most likely scenario, according to both French and Indigenous sources, is that they were hit hard by European diseases and the survivors ended up becoming refugees who assimilated into Algonquin nations north of the river.
bob 18:32 on 2024-09-05 Permalink
@DeWolf While the disease narrative may satisfy a need to blame all bad things on Europeans, I think the consensus is that they were driven off by ethnic cleansing on the part of Mohawk and Huron to gain hunting grounds and trade with Europeans. There was, of course, disease, but it seems it was not a major factor in the Montreal area until the 1600’s.
Chris 09:55 on 2024-09-07 Permalink
>That isn’t native.
Not ‘native’ is in Amerindian, but ‘native’ as in ‘native tongue’.
Ian 11:38 on 2024-09-07 Permalink
I’m pretty sure Kate was being tongue-in-cheek, Chris.
I think we need to come up with special diacrtitics in English so we can distinguish between MAWN-tree-all (born here) and mun-tree-ALL (moved here), or CHRA-no (born there) and Tuh-RONNO (much of the ROC).
Yes, yes, I know ROC is a pretty much Quebecer-exclusive term.
MarcG 07:11 on 2024-09-08 Permalink
I think you got your munchie-all pronunciations flipped.
Kate 15:14 on 2024-09-08 Permalink
I think MarcG is correct here.
Joey 18:20 on 2024-09-08 Permalink
In my experience the people who use ROC the most are co-workers from outside Quebec who love to distinguish between Quebec and, well, the rest of Canada.