Rich and Strange

English really is a perfectly Canadian language, an Anglo-Saxon base sea-changed by time and multicultural forces into something rich and strange. Howard Richler documents this fact amply in his new book Strange Bedfellows: The Private Lives of Words. He looks at the often anfractuous paths a bevy of words have taken to their present English senses—and many of them, just like many Canadians past and present, started their journeys somewhere else altogether.

Even more fitting for Canada, that “somewhere” was very often French. As Richler says, “truth be known, there are more English words that derive from French than from the original Anglo-Saxon word stock.” Writing from the heart of two solitudes-land, Richler concludes, “It is time to admit that our beloved mother tongue is essentially poorly pronounced French.”

As witness the title of his book. How can French be strange to us when strange has come from French...