Every month I am overcome by the huge and baffling variety of “feminine hygiene products”, a strange name for menstrual wear of all kinds. What does femininity have to do with getting your period? Personally, I am far less likely to strap on a frock and act the demure shrinking violet at that time of the month than any other. Unless the definition of feminine changed while I was sleeping and it now means something akin to “emotionally raging & cramp infested, possibly tactless to the point of cruelty”, I really don’t see what traditional big-haired femininity has to do with the monthly flow of blood twixt our legs.
But this wasn’t the particular linguistic phenomenon that caught my attention last time I confronted the wall of pads in my local grocery store. In fact, it wasn’t until I had already run the comparative-shopping gauntlet and arrived home that I even noticed it.
Every child in Canada from coast to coast to coast has the opportunity of learning not one but two official languages. The opportunity to actually converse in the two official languages varies with your mileage away from the Bill 101 hotspots rooted in Eastern Canada, but ever and always the back of a shampoo bottle or cereal box will avail some kind of linguistic opportunity. In places where the other official language has never been uttered, it still universally spackles the sides of commercial goods. Whether it will ever be useful to carry on a discussion about proper hair care in the other language or not is debatable, but these small acts of translation are the glue that keep our country assembled, that make us curious and delighted about our cultural and linguistic diversity.
In the States, bilingualism has grown out of necessity rather than legislation. English is the unofficial language of the USA, which means that all their legal documents are written in English. In some states such as New Mexico, laws are written in both English and Spanish, and both languages are found on most goods in stores these days. In fact, driving across the border from western Canada where English predominates into the western States, Spanish is immediately apparent in storefront signage. The United States of America’s unofficial language is indisputably Spanish. Of course, this is more or less apparent depending where in the country you are. The further south you go, the more Spanish there is, and ditto the further west. And, of course, this causes varying degrees of joy and consternation depending on who you talk to.
What, though, was Spanish doing up here in Canada? French, unlike its Latinate cousin, is rarely found in the USA. Imports and foods are an exception, as is New Orleans, but other than that, French is rare in the States. This is evident from the pronunciation of various city names which were once French in origin but now have been thoroughly Americanized into some original unrecognizability.
But there it was on the package: overnight • de nuit • nocturnas. Ah, nocturnas, I thought, that’s pretty. Napkins • serviettes • toallas… Toallas?! Ok, that’s not so pretty. Well, compared to the good old anglo-saxon “napkins” it still sounds good. But “toallas”
So how did this Spanish get on my pads? I was pretty sure that the American packaging wouldn’t contain a word of French. Why does the Canadian one have Spanish? Is this our unofficial third language? to be continued…
Aside: because Canada has two official languages that are both official languages because there is no way we want to designate one as being more official than the other because by so doing we incur either the Separatist wrath of Quebec or the alienation of Western provinces, Newfoundland and all other Anglo strongholds, does that mean that a third language like Spanish would be a first unofficial language, or a third unofficial language, or would it vary from place to place depending on whatever linguistic reality was present, because in many places there is another indigenous language in use that is far more relevant to daily living than Spanish, although the presence of Spanish on household goods could be seen in a providential light by some sectors of the population as being a perfect opportunity to brush up a little before fleeing the Canadian winter in favor of a place where knowing the Spanish equivalent for “towel” and “shampoo” could really come in handy.
