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A Québec Borrowing from English:

Le mitin ‘a protestant church’

 

Today I share a recent email:

“My French-Canadian grand-mother referred to Protestant churches in a funny way.  I’m going to have to spell the word the way it sounded to me, since I’m unfamiliar with this term.

She called a Protestant church “le mittin”.  The word sounded almost like the English word ‘mitten’ (like you wear in the winter to keep your hands warm), only with a clear “i” sound in the second syllable (an English sounding ‘i’ [like in pin], not the European-French pronunciation of ‘i’).  She says that the word is not so common today, but was in the past (she’s 91 years old this year).  She says also that the word is a Québécois corruption of the English term “meeting house”, since only a Catholic would go to “church”... Protestants went to the “meeting house” for Sunday services.
Would you be able to confirm this?
Thank you.
Alex Drainville

 

Dear Mr. Drainville –

Votre grand-mère a raison! Many early Protestant sects that came to North America, including Methodists and Baptists once called their churches “meeting houses.” Consider this quotation from 1636 CE in The New Plymouth Colony Record: “There to build a meeting howse and towne.”

“I went to meeting” was one way of saying “I went to church this Sunday.”

So meeting could stand in for church, and did so for many Protestant denominations all across Canada. Members of The Society of Friends (Quakers) who came up to Canada in numbers as United Empire Loyalists, also called their places of worship: meeting houses.

interior of an early 19th-century Quaker meetinghouse

Referred to collectively in the Québec French plural as les mittins, a Protestant house of worship or the service itself was called un mittin quite early in Quebec history. Meeting and meetinghouse were particularly English terms, brought to Canada early by British immigrants who were Dissenters or Methodists or who had attended Nonconformist Chapels in England.

A note in American Speech states that “around the turn of the nineteenth century, Baptists...and others began dropping the term meetinghouse and replacing it with church.” But the term was current for Henry Thoreau still in 1865 when he published Cape Cod and wrote: “The meeting-house windows being open, my meditations were interrupted by the noise of a preacher.”

 

Mitin also a Spanish Word

Mitin is in current Spanish as a borrowing from the English word ‘meeting.’ El mitin refers to a popular political gathering. In Spanish it does not refer to a religious building or service, but rather to the gathering of a crowd to hear a political speaker. Mitin appears to be a more recent, 20th-century borrowing into modern Spanish from English. Says one Spanish authority: “la palabra mítin se utiliza casi exclusivamente en el contexto de activismo político.” The word also may refer to a rabble-rousing speech at a political rally. One of the modern Spanish phrases for rally is indeed mitin popular.

Now I'd like to bring this meeting to a close with a reminder that we are always interested in Quebecisms, both old and new.

2008 © William Gordon Casselman

 

 

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