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MONTREAL — There’s little doubt about what greeting customers will hear when they enter Dave Plant’s soon-to-be opened Cafe Bonjour/Hi, even as the Quebec government looks for ways to ban the popular bilingual greeting.

Plant, 32, chose the name about a month and a half ago, after an employee of his other restaurant jokingly suggested he name his new cafe after the phrase that has become an unlikely lightning rod in the debate over linguistic rights in the province.

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“It’s a touch controversial, it’s bilingual — and we’re going to be in a bilingual neighbourhood, so that’s important — and I just thought it was kind of funny,” he said in a phone interview.

The distinctive hybrid greeting has been widely adopted by retail workers in Montreal in an effort to welcome a diverse clientele. But it has also become a source of controversy among those who fear the gradual erosion of the French language.