The Simpson clan lives in

The Simpson clan lives in two parallel francophone universes. Where American Homer visits the Kwik-E-Mart, French Homère goes to the supermarché and Quebec Homère shops at the dépanneur du coin. Where American Homer describes his shrewish sisters-in-law as the "gruesome twosome," French Homère labels them les sorcières Siamoises (the Siamese witches), in Quebec, they're called deux airs de boeuf (the two grouches). In France, the only two Simpsons characters who were not assigned standard French accents are both dark-skinned: Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the immigrant Kwik-E-Mart clerk, and Homer's black co-worker, Carl. Though Apu hails, according to plot, from India, he has been given a quasi-Arabic accent by the French. "A lot of corner shops are owned by people from North Africa or Lebanon. There is even a slur in French, 'On va chez l'Arabe,' meaning, 'We're going to the corner shop.'" As for Carl, his voice has been pidginized - though not in any easily identifiable way. The darker-hued pair gets special treatment in Quebec as well, but there, Apu's accent sounds more like Haitian Creole spoken à la Québécoise. And Carl's voice, hardly what one might call ebonical in the English original, becomes "the Québécois stereotype of the black immigrant 'nèg.'"