How difficult is it for a Parisian to understand a Montreal-ian? Are there fundamental differences in the languages (compare to Latin American Spanish vs. Castillian Spanish, which has a HUGE difference in verb conjugation), or is it mostly a matter of accents and regionalisms (like American English vs. Queen’s English)?
Mostly accent, some vocabulary as well. But France French and Canadian French – at least the principal varieties of each – are completely mutually intelligible without any problem.
What are the HUGE differences in verb conjugation?
Hmmm… I can assure you that many French have a hard time with Canadian accents. Of course, the inverse is not true, Canadians have absolutely no problem understanding the various European accents. However, it’s true that most French people who spend enough time in Canada eventually get used to the accent. As a data point, though, my cousins, who have spent most of their adult lives in Canada, still have difficulty with some of the faster-talking comedians.
As far as vocabulary is concerned, there are a number of differences that sometimes hinder mutual understanding. The most typical example is the name of the meals: in France, déjeuner is taken around noon, whereas in Canada, it’s the first meal of the day. Again, in this case, Canadians tend to be much more familiar with French usage than the other way around.
It’s important to note, however, that these differences disappear in the written word. There are no spelling difference like there is in English. Francophones in Canada use Larousse and Robert dictionaries and look up Grevisse when they have doubts about grammar, just like the French do. The differences between written Canadian French and European French tends to be one of usage. Canadians, when writing, will tend to avoid English words as much as possible, whereas French writers often sprinkle them liberally. A Canadian would write: Je laisse ma voiture au stationement quand je vais magaziner la fin de semaine. In France, the following is more likely: Je laisse ma voiture au parking quand je vais faire du shopping le weekend. (“I leave my car at the parking when I go shopping on weekends.”) There is also the issue of feminine forms of certain positions that were traditionally only held by men. Should you say: Mme la ministre or Mme le ministre? Canadians are adamant about using the first form, whereas after much debate the second form was chosen in France.
The only significant probem is the accent. Occasionnally, the interview of a Quebecois will be subtitled in France, for instance, but generally, the accent isn’t stong enough to be a serious issue.
There are some differences in vocabulary too (for instance a quebecois will go to a depanneur when his fridge is empty, a frenchman when he has an issue with his car), but no more than between british and american english.
By the way, I’m not aware of any difference in conjugations between Latin american spanish and Castillan. There are differences regarding their use (for instance the person you use when adressing a group, or wheher to use the perfecto simple rather than the perfecto compuesto), but AFAIK (I migt be mistaken of course) the conjugations themselves are the same.
One assumes this is born of separatism - having anglophone culture lorded over them all those years instead of idealizing it from afar?
And do Canadians use the English words in speech, or if not, why just in writing?
I went to Montreal with two friends of mine, one whose family is french and speaks fluent french, the other of whom was an exchange student from france. Both found the canadian accent to be difficult to understand and extremely “nasal”, in their description. To imitate Canadian french, they’d hold their noses and speak very quickly, slurring their words. I barely speak french, so I couldn’t tell the difference!
Although, I remember cousins of mine visiting from England, and their conception of American English was “high-pitched and nasal” as well. So perhaps the difference between France-French and Canadian-French is similar to English-English and American-English?
Actually, I think they pretend to have trouble with French accents they consider nonstandard (African, North American, maybe some European accents as well). Though I’ve never been to France, so every French person I’ve known, I’ve known here. They didn’t have any trouble with the accent; maybe it’d be different if I went there.
Comedians from where?
I’m aware of one spelling difference between Quebec French and France French. (I’m concentrating on Quebec French because it is my dialect and it is the main North American French dialect; but others do exist, notably Acadian French.) Unless I’m mistaken, “gay”, in the sense of “homosexual”, is usually spelled “gay” in France and “gai” in Quebec. I think this has the effect that “gai” may still be used in the sense of “happy” in France, while it won’t be in Quebec.
This said, you’re right that the spelling is basically the same, one reason for this probably being that Quebec’s Office de la langue française, the organization in charge of standardizing Quebec French, hasn’t tried to make these standards different from those of other dialects of French.
When writing? I guess that’s possible, although I’m sure some words of English origin are accepted as correct in Quebec French as well, except that none are coming to my mind right now. Of course, when speaking, Canadians and French people probably use as many English terms, just not the same ones.
Nitpick: stationnement has two n’s, and magasiner is spelled with an ‘s’.
I’m surprised clairobscur didn’t respond to this, because I’ve just had this discussion with him (starting with [post=9607048]this post[/post]), and it appears that the feminized version of these titles has been used in France since the last 15 years at least.
I’ll just finish by saying that a good number of French-speaking North Americans, even in Quebec, seem to have some sort of inferiority complex regarding the language they speak and write. We tend to consider European accents as more “intellectual” than Canadian accents, and someone using a lot of complicated words, especially with an affected accent, may be said to speak “français de France”. For many decades our intellectuals have been pounding into our heads that we speak an inferior language contamined with English – which may be part of the reason why few words of English origin are part of our formal, written language. Today the common wisdom is that our young people – my age, basically – don’t know how to write; I don’t know if that’s also true in France. All of this is probably because until a few decades ago, we were in fact a mostly colonized and backward people, and our sense of shame over this got attached to the language we speak. I’m surprised that so many Quebecers still don’t recognize the validity of our language, though; clearly we’re still not as confident as we should be. But here we’re almost getting political.
This is very true. I learned French in Ontario, which may not be the best place to learn it. But my teachers were all people who had studied at the Sorbonne, or who had studied elsewhere in France. When I went to France, I had no problems speaking or being understood–it was actually kind of fun to be able to join in the conversation in cafes and such. When I am in the province of Quebec, however, I have been laughed at because of the France French that comes out of my obviously native-English-speaking mouth. That’s a sad thing and so I’ve given up trying to speak French in Quebec. I stick with English, and even though I shouldn’t, when the need has arisen, I’ve passed myself off as an American once or twice. Quebecers don’t expect Americans to speak French, so they are willing to cut them (and me, posing as an American, usually claiming to be from Chicago, which matches my native English accent) a little slack, and seem more willing to speak English.
I am getting some practice with the Canadian French, however. A local friend is a Francophone from Northern Ontario, and his wife is from Montreal. Between the two of them and me, we speak French when we can. I am trying, and learning–and they are most helpful. With any luck, the next time I find myself in Montreal, I will be able to communicate in French in such a way that I won’t be laughed at.
Parisians might have to do a double take on reading their first stop sign in Quebec City. The signs are likely to read “Arret” instead of “Stop”
Canadians use a lot of English words in day-to-day speech. You could have your car fixed by a unilingual mechanic and still understand almost everything he said even if you didn’t know a word of French.
The reason why Canadians and French have very different outlooks of anglicism is indeed historical. French Canadians would have come into contact with English at work. Until the 1960s or so, it was a fact that most upper management was English and most factory workers were French. You’d learn some English to be able to communicate with your boss or foreman. By contrast, the minority of French Canadians who managed their way into higher social circles, who were more educated, or in the clergy could have the luxury of not having to use English in day-to-day life. As a result, dialects and anglicisms became associated with menial labour and low social status. European accents and usage (sometimes called “chastised speech”) became associated with the wealthy and the intellectual.
In France, the situation was completely different. A factory worker would be the least likely to come into contact with English. It was the upper class that first started peppering their language with English expressions. When British-French relations became better and foreign travel became easier, using English words was a way to signal that you were well-travelled and cosmopolitan. There is a funny scene at the beginning of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, where as a kid he can’t understand what his uncle’s snobbish girlfriend is saying because she keeps on using English words.
You hear the line about French pretending to not understand people with different accents but I think it’s largely unfounded. In some cases, it’s true some people might not make the effort to listen more closely. In practice, it’s mostly vocabulary that acts as a stumbling block, though. Canadian tourists in Paris will try to avoid words they know are dialect, but eventually they’ll get caught asking a waiter if they have a table d’hôte. Note, that these situations are minor issues but they can be surprising for those involved.
My cousins, even after over 15 years in Montréal still have difficulty following a lot of what radio morning show people say (a net gain I would say) and confess to understanding “about 30%” of what François Pérusse sings in some of his songs. (Snack bar Chez Raymond being they worst offender. As a matter of fact, I’m curious how much Dopers who are used to European French can understand in this song.)
Beware of what a former teacher of mine called the “Montreal dance”. An anglophone starts speaking in French to a francophone, who switches to English when he spots an accents. The anglophone continues in French, eventually the francophone switches back to French, the anglo to English and back and forth. I can assure you that when francophones switch to English they do it because they think they’re doing you a favour. However, many anglo-Canadians from outside Québec take it as an insult unfortunately. If you’re in Québec and someone answers in English when you’re speaking French, just keep on speaking French, and only switch to English if you feel like it, or if there’s something you genuinely don’t know how to say in French.
Well, being a Parisian myself, I can tell you I have a hard time understanding Quebec French sometimes.
The accent is a problem, of course. As has been said before, it is very nasal, and the intonations and rythms of sentences differ also, but after a few days you get used to it. I must say however that it’s the vocabulary that’s hardest for me - and being a fluent English speaker, it’s not what bits they’ve borrowed from their English speaking neighbours that are problematic. It’s the French bits, oddly enough.
You see, in a sense Canadian French is “truer” French than French French. They use a lot of what we French would call antiquated or very old turns of phrase, idioms and expressions we don’t use at all anymore, and probably haven’t since the early 1900’s. The other side of that coin is that both Frenchs have evolved separately from that common basis, most importantly the slang. And, as is usual in languages, yesterday’s slang becomes today’s regular words…
To summarize, we can certainly communicate, but the divide is much deeper than I feel the one between UK and US English is.
The foremost example that springs to my mind : in both Frenchs, a car is formally called “une voiture”. However, we mostly call them by their slang words. In Canadian French, they say “un char”. In French French, “un char” means either a tank (as in the fighting vehicule) or a chariot, the kind Charlton Heston raced in Ben Hur. Conversely, the French will call them either “une caisse” (a crate) or “une bagnole” (a type of calash), both of which I doubt a Canadian French would understand as “a car”. Incomprehension ensues… It’s like the whole fag thing, only over 30% of the words.
It boils down to this : when I’m told what a Canadian French “weird word” means, it totally makes sense most of the time, I can grok the etymology. But if I’m not told what it means, damned if I know what they’re talking about if I can’t figure it out from context. And as much as I love the aforementionned François Pérusse, many of his soundbytes are totally lost on me :smack:.
No, they (we) don’t pretend. I’ve only known personnaly two Quebecois, and I could understand them pretty well. Actually, one of them had an accent barely noticeable (although it was the one living in Quebec).
However, I have two kinds of experience showing me that a quebecois can be hard to understand for a french person like me :
-TV programms. As I said, sometimes a quebecois speech will get subtitles, and often for good reason. It would be hard for me to understand him without the subtitles.
-Voice chat on internet. When I began to use the internet, France was way behind any other western country regarding internet use. At the time I was frequently to be found in the french speaking rooms of yahoo. And despite the difference of population, there was roughly as many quebecois as french people hanging out there. The majority I could understand easily, but there was a minorty with a very strong accent I had a hard time understanding. I remember that I even tried to figure out if thoses were coming from a particular part of Quebec (IOW if this could be a “sub-accent”). I don’t remember what my conclusion was, if any.
As for the accent of other french spakers you mention :
-North americans :The only other french speakers in north America are Cajuns. I only ever heard cajun on TV. Suffice to say that the last time I heard one of them speaking (subtitled), it took me a significant time. to even notice that he was speaking…err…“french” (I just had switched channels and didn’t know what the documentary was about).
-Africans (more specifically sub-saharan africans) : most of the time, they’re fairly easy to understand. But sometimes it’s difficult, and it’s not simply due to his accent but also to the fact that a west-african speaking in french is 1) in fact speaking a second language 2) Likely to have a low level of education, hence likeky not to have as good a command of the french language as a frenchman or quebecois. Regarding the accent alone, I would argue that a west-african accent is easier to undersand than a quebecois accent, on the overall (maybe it’s due to me having more exposure to the former, I don’t know). North Africans are usually very easy to understand, but they might have had a more extensive formal training in french at school.
-Europeans : that would Belgians and Swiss. I never had any trouble understanding them.
-French : same as above. Even though, very exceptionnally, there might be someone with such a strong accent that it might become a slight issue. The more likely example would be an Alsatian, but many of them are raised with their German dialect as first language, which might explain it.
I often wondered if a quebecois accent sounded for french people like an anglo-canadian accent sounded for british ears, but I dont think there’s a way to figure this out.
While I agree with the incomprehension, you’re unlikely to find French Canadian who doesn’t understand bagnole. The number of French slang words that are lost Québécois is low enough that they can be understood from context. Like I wrote above the problem is mostly unidirectional.
You often hear that Canadian French is archaic. In a way, there’s some truth in there because there are indeed expressions that are now archaic in France that are still used in Canada. However, it’s important to remember that until fairly recently there was a very large variety of dialects spoken in France. Modern spoken French is largely the result of fairly aggressive normalization efforts around the 19th century or so. French settlers to Canada came mostly from the same regions and modern Canadian French evolved from the dialects spoken there. These were not the same dialects from which modern standard French evolved.
And speaking of comedy, I think the Têtes à claques deserve a mention in this thread. It’s a web-based humor site that is hugely popular in Canada. What surprised a lot of people (me included) is that despite the very thick dialect used in the videos, they’ve become very popular in France also.
Related question- how do Canadian and French versions of French differ from Haitian and African versions?
I might have chosen the wrong word when I said “conjugation.” I’m not sure what word I should be using. But at any rate: when I learned Spanish in high school, I learned that Castillian Spanish utilizes the 2nd person plural, whereas Latin American Spanish largely (maybe exclusively) does not. Therefore, it makes a HUGE difference when addressing a group of people.
We were taught that, though we were learning Castillian Spanish, we wouldn’t be learning the 2nd person plural verb forms, since we were most likely to use our Spanish with Latin Americans.
The African version of french is just plain french. On the other hand, Haitian is a creole , making it very different from standard french.
So Frenchmen find African French very similar to their own, much more so than Quebec French?
As an example, I picked the “saying of the day” on an Haitian site which displays both the french and Haitian creole version :
French :“Le même bâton qui a battu le chien noir battra aussi le chien blanc”
Haitian creole : “Baton ki bat chen nwa a se li menm k ap bat chen blan an”
(english : the staff that hit the black dog will also hit the white dog")
Note that the pronounciation is closer than it seems when you read it in written form. But the structure of the sentence is different enough to make it inintelligible for a french speaker. I would have figured out the 5 first words, but probably nothing beyond that.