1 Adventure

Your Parrot Better Speak French or Else

Wanted to share this story before I head to bed. Just came back from a week trip to Chicago for the Search Engine Strategies Conference there. For those that don't know I work as a professional search engine marketer, and really do love it. I was reporting on the event as press with another buddy of mine. It was a good conference, if you are interested in reading some of my reports and articles please visit here, my handle is Phoenix.

The Non-French Speaking Parrot

I am pretty fond of stories people tell when they travel. Skip the small talk and tell me how the world works in your area. I met a guy in the hotel bar the first night that was from Ottawa up in Canada. He managed all the marketing for his particular company. Here is the story he told me about living in French Canadia.

In Quebec City, a place predominately French Canadian place, and very proud of the fact too. There is a "secret" or organized group of enforcement officers that maintain the level of french speaking people in the city. Basically they want to make sure that french is the main language, and ensure that business are using french in signs, in speaking, and in the general business districts of the area. Well there was a pet shop located near the city centre that sells a wide variety of animals and supplies for whatever you might need. He told me he visited there often to get dog food and take a peak at the critters everynow and then. He said that this particular shop had a parrot that spoke english, it said such things as "Hello" and "Beautiful". Well the french speaking enforcement police went into this pet shop to see if they were up to snuff in their french speaking bilingual support. Including the signs and various other things they had. Cause forbid they speak anything else! Well they noticed the parrot that had lived in the shop was speaking english. This would not fly in Canada, and something had to be done. The police told the owner that he had 2 weeks to teach the parrot french or else. The shop owner was quite a bit shocked and conceded that he would have to teach the parrot a bit french. Yet the problem with teaching a parrot french is that it can be incredibly hard and not something that happens overnight. These birds repeat words they have heard over a good amount of time. Well the shop owner tried and tried to get the parrot to speak french. I think they tried to teach it "bonjour" or something like that. After 2 weeks no luck. Well the french muppets came back to the shop to check on the progress. The bird uttered "Hello" in english to them. They freaked, and instantly took the bird, and told the shop owner they would be hearing from him. He came back the next day and gave the shop owner a fine of over $200 for the infraction, and said they had killed the parrot as it was violating city laws. The whole goal of the enforcement police is to make sure that at least 75% of the citizen and signs speak and are in french. Pretty weird huh. So they killed the poor parrot and fined the shop owner because the bird would not speak french. Pretty crazy in my opinion, where else will they kill your parrot because it will not speak french!?