Do you mean that vos/vosotros crap that’s mostly only used in Spain?
Not exactly. I said that the western African accent might be easier for me to understand (assuming the african person speaks a fluent french). There also going to be less differences in vocabulary, since fench has been introduced more recently in Africa.
But generally speaking, the three versions are, for the most part, identical. I have zero trouble, for instance reading a canadian website, even if I can notice a “funny word” here and there.
Yes, for instance. And it seems it was also what the poster I was responding to was thinking about. It doesn’t make for a huge difference between both versions of spanish, IMO.
If I’m not mistaken (I haven’t had much contact with Quebec french), there’s two french dialects in Canada–Quebec and Acadian (East Coast). I was taught ‘proper’ french in school, but the Acadian dialect has a difference in vocabulary if nothing else*. I know my mother has a specifically Acadian dictionary. It’s not as commonly heard, perhaps, but it’s there.
*Acadians talking to each other tend to use a mix of both french and english–the former is usually the native tongue but most are fluent in both languages. Rather than the ‘pure language’ stuff in Quebec, they’ll use whatever word comes to mind first. Stuff like “Je vais caller Yvette por finder out ci elle veut go shopping avec nous” is not uncommon at all.
The other thing not to be forgotten is that there’s quite a wide range of accents present in Quebec, ranging from the easily comprehensible, to the incomprehensible. Not to mention that there are variants like joual that’ll throw all other non-Quebec French speakers for a loop. I’m not a native speaker of French, but my ability to understand people in Quebec varies tremendously, depending on their social class (roughly speaking) and where they’re from. The range really goes between 0% and 100%.
Haitian creole, while we’re on the subject, is totally incomprehensible to me as a spoken language. I might get the odd word here are there, but that’s it. (And I actually hear it a fair amount, since there are a lot of creole speakers around here.) But as a written language, I can often puzzle it out. The orthographic divorce from standard French pretty striking, but if you approach things phonetically, you’ll understand a lot more. For example, if you saw the phrase “peyi eta zini,” you might be a little bit buffaloed – until you realize it’s the phonetic equivalent of pays Etats-Unis – U.S.A., in other words.
Does anyone know what the French spoken in St.Pierre-et-Miquelon sounds like - France-French, Quebecois French, or Cajun French? Given their location (just south of Newfoundland) I would assume it’s closer to Cajun or Quebecois rather than France-French.
You can hear a lot of that in Quebec, too, especially in the younger generation. My friends and I speak in a mix of French and English (Frenglish, I suppose) and it probably sounds strange to most people! But yes, “proper” French in Quebec is very nitpicky and militantly protected by the OLF. And every time I’ve heard an Acadian speck French, my first thought is that it’s an anglophone trying to speak French, but after a few seconds it registers.
I find that I have a hard time with France French, depending on where the person is from and how fast he’s speaking. I knew an exchange student from Lyon, and it took me a while before I stopped needing to ask her to slow down or clarify. It was more an issue of cadence and emphasis, and also the use of different expressions, that was the issue. I understood the meaning of all the words, but sometimes they were pronounced “wrong”, or I couldn’t quite get the context. Side note: my favorite moment with her was after she’d been here six months, it was the middle of January and a bazillion degrees below zero, and she looked at me and said “Il fait frette en tabarnac!” (“It’s cold as hell”, loosely translated).
Excellent explanation. What disappoints me, though, is that even 40 years after the Quiet Revolution, we still seem to have this inferiority complex regarding our language. I think the demonstration has been done that English Canadians, and the French, really don’t have anything on us in terms of language, culture, know-how, etc., and authors such as Michel Tremblay have done a good job of taking our language out of the kitchen and the construction field, but we still seem ashamed of the way we speak and write, and outsiders pick on that. I think I’ve read on this very board – or else it was SomethingAwful – an American say that when you’ve studied European French, Canadian French sounds pretty dreadful. Well, it only does so if you define it to be so. I remember we had the same discussion regarding the Southern accent in the US. Southerners sound uneducated, but that’s only because their accent has been defined as an uneducated, redneck accent, because of prejudice.
So, what should I say if I want a table d’hôte in France? Spécial du jour, or something else, or do restaurants in France just rarely offer such things?
My mention of African dialects was because I’ve seen more than once people speaking with Sub-Saharan African accents on French TV, and their speech was often subtitled even when I didn’t have much trouble understanding them. I guess I’m wrong, but to me it’s close to saying “see: these negroes can’t even speak French right.” The fact that Canadian accents will also often be subtitled on French TV says the same thing to me. We know the French, just like the Americans, are sometimes peculiar about language and have a high opinion of their rightful place in the world, as the fathers of the Francophonie and not mere colonials.
I mean, I speak with a Quebec accent (Western Quebec, to be more precise), but I don’t think I’d have any trouble being understood by people in France, even without trying to affect a Parisian accent. I could take on a thick stereotypical canayen accent and make myself much less understandable, but it’d be just as much of an affectation. And French people can also make themselves much less understandable by peppering their speech with their own slang words (even though we do know many of them through cultural exposure; as jovan said I know what a bagnole is even though I wouldn’t use the term myself). But my point is, I’m quite certain that I can go to France, speak my language, and understand the people and be understood, even if it means we avoid words specific to our region. Therefore, France French and Canadian French are mutually intelligible.
I know that when speaking with an anglophone who has trouble with French, I tend to naturally switch to English. It’s only recently that I learned that many of them think it’s an insulting comment on the quality of their French. It’s just being helpful, people. But if I’m talking with someone who’s living in Quebec, I try to do so in French (unless they really don’t know enough to hold a conversation), because if you live in Quebec, you should know or learn French anyway.
Alternatively, Spoons may have been laughed at because, as you and I have already said, a French accent in the mouth of someone who isn’t French is often seen in Quebec as affected and snobbish. If someone speaks with a French accent some may feel the need to take them down a peg. That’s unfortunate, but it’s the result of years of being told our language is inferior to the French’s.
Kobal2, thanks for your input. I’m just not sure the vocabulary differences are as prevalent as you say.
Do you have examples of TV programs from Quebec being shown in France? If they’re sitcoms like La P’tite Vie, part of the humour is in fact the characters’ stereotypical working-class dialect. Sure, that may be difficult for others to understand.
Erm, Cajuns are Louisiana Acadians. Acadians (living in the Maritime provinces of Canada, and a small number in Quebec) have a distinct dialect of French, which I usually find quite understandable (except in its most informal varieties), and Cajuns, in my experience, have an accent that’s descended from Acadian French but which can be harder to understand for me. Zachary Richard’s songs lyrics use a pronounciation that’s very different from mine, but I’m still able to understand them most of the time.
There are also a fair number of francophones in other Canadian provinces (such as Ontario) and New England (notably in Maine). To my ears the Franco-Ontarian accent is noticeably distinct from a Quebec accent; I don’t know if Europeans would recognize the difference.
The official language of Haiti is Haitian Creole, which isn’t French. But Haitians also often speak a dialect of French. I don’t remember having too much trouble with it.
I don’t know, but I should point out that I have a friend (francophone, from Quebec) who has no trouble understanding Americans and Brits speaking English, but has trouble with English Canadians speaking English. I’m not sure why.
The OQLF’s duty is to establish standards for the formal varieties of the Quebec French dialect (or at least make usage suggestions). They also observe the situation of the French language in Quebec. In what way is this nitpicky and militant? I don’t want publications from the Government of Quebec using all kinds of conflicting usage forms.
I’m all for protecting French, and for maintaining a set of standards for official publications. It’s when they go in with metaphorical guns blazing, telling a Montreal pub to remove its antique Guinness posters because they’re not in French, that I wonder what they’re thinking. But this isn’t a political thread, so I’ll drop it, sorry.
Perhaps not in practice, but academically losing an entire person from a verb conjugation is a pretty big deal.
No. There aren’t much in the way of TV programms from Quebec being shown in France. I’m more refering to interviews, news reports or documentaries.
Yes, I was refering to them.
Me neither, but to say the truth the only Haitians I interacted with were taxi drivers, and could have been in France for a long time, for all I know. I wouldn’t know if it would be so easy if I were to visit Haiti. I assumed that the “french” the poster I was reponding to was refering to was in fact creole, because I would suspect that in an english speaking country, Haitians would be more likely to use creole (probably their native language) than french.
And both french and creole are official languages in Haiti, AFAIK.
I’m one of these – my grandparents were from the Gaspé (on Québec’s Atlantic coast), but moved to northern Ontario when my father was very young. I grew up speaking both english and french, and went to school in both (at different times). I’ve recently moved to Europe, and started working for an agency with a lot of francophones and with English and French as working languages.
My experience:
Quebec: I can detect variety in Quebecois accents, but usually understand them with little difficulty, except the extreme, middle-of-nowhere-in-the-big-forest ones. I’ve usually been just as well understood, though I’m sometimes taken for an anglophone.
France: I can understand most of them with no difficulty, but some confusions over vocabulary (I had never even heard bagnole before, but am completely familiar with char, even if I tend to say auto or voiture myself). There are a few French-from-France people that I have difficulty understanding without paying close attention. I suspect it’s regional, but I haven’t figured out which regions it might be.
I have frequently been told by some French colleagues that I use outdated words – souliers (for shoes) and plume for pen come to mind (they’d expect chaussures and stylo, both of which I would understand, and the latter which I’d often use myself). They don’t seem to detect a difference between my franco-Ontario-but-grandma’s-from-Quebec accent, and the general Quebec one. In fact, the first thing a new French colleague says to me is often “Oh, you have the real Canadian accent!” (Le vrai accent canadien!) More than a few have told me that it’s cute or pleasant, though about three times now I’ve had “very charming, but I have trouble understanding you.”
Belgium, Switerland: Zero problems. The Belgians, in particular, are really easy to interact with. The same seems to be true for non-France Europeans understanding me. The one difference in vocabulary: counting. Ninety-seven is nonante-sept instead of quatre-vingt-dix-sept.
English Canada: Anglophones from southern Ontario or the western provinces seem to learn France French. This, pronounced with a Toronto or Regina anglo accent is understandable, but starkly noticeable. 
They often have trouble with me unless I slow down and enunciate carefully.
And what follows is kind of IMHO territory, but:
Silliest inter-dialect experience: Landing at Paris and ordering a sandwich in the terminal before catching my TGV. The woman behind the counter hears my order, then crouches, holds up her index finger an inch above her thumb and talks all cutesy like she’s addressing a puppy or a child with a lollipop wearing a sailor suit: “Tu parles français… un petit peu?”
Most irritating inter-dialect experience: Switching from a french-language school, in northern Ontario, after ten years, to an english-language school, in northern Ontario. I was now required to take at least one course in French to show I’d studied it, as qualification for my diploma. This was, naturally, an introductory course (hello, le passé composé), and I had a decidedly anglophone teacher working out of an American (IIRC) textbook. I spent the whole semester getting red x’s on my papers for saying things like fin de semaine and hambourgeois. The guy was insistent that I was just wrong, and I eventually learned to just look out the window and doodle in my agenda.
(Then there was the quebecois instructor who insisted I refer to the seat of the international court as “la Haye”, in English. But that’s another story.)
This idea that the French ‘really do understand Canadians’ and are just being dicks seems to be pretty well entrenched, but as a couple of franco-français have already pointed out in this thread, the reason for the subtitles is much simpler. The French do actually have a hard time understanding Canadians.
I think the problem is mostly down to accent. The differences of vocabulary and syntax can usually be worked out intuitively - especially if you speak some English as well as French. OTOH it takes some exposure to an accent before you can get used to it, and living in France you don’t get a whole lot of exposure to Canadians. The average USAtian would probably find it similarly difficult to understand a Scot from Aberdeen at first.
As for Haitian Creole - I would say that it’s not intelligible with French. Last time I was faced with this we ended up communicating in rough Spanish instead.
And if I might add a somewhat un-GQ-ish aside, I think the hostility towards the French that I see from the Canadians on SDMB is unfortunate. I’ve been living in France for about 20 years now, and believe me, I’m familiar with the faults of the French. But one thing I haven’t seen is any contempt for Canadians.
I have to take exception to this. Take a look at any French Montreal newspaper and the average article or opinion piece will be littered with English words.
Looking at today’s La Presse, I see the following
It may be slightly different in academia, but average, run of the mill written French will incorporate English inasmuch as average, run of the mill spoken French in Quebec/Montreal will incorporate English. C’est obvious.
Bozos.
(Yes, it’s a reference.)
How different is Cajun French? If a Parisian and a Québécois were stuck with Boudreaux and his dog Phideaux, could all three have a conversation in French?
These kinds of questions depend to a large extent on whether the people are trying to be understood, or just speaking as they normally do.
But let me add that I have found the Cajun English accent/dialect to be one of the most difficult American accents for me to understand.
OK, how about this: How slowly would they all have to be speaking and how much of their vocabulary would be off-limits? I’m guessing the Cajun would be reduced to a very slow and simple style trying to talk to the Parisian, but is there a more useful connection between the Cajun and Canadian dialects? (Cajun came from the Canadian region originally, and ended up in Louisiana after Le Grand Dérangement. (Any relationship to English words living or dead is purely co-incidental.))
I need to track down an exact reference for this, but basically, anyone who speaks language/dialect X tends to describe language/dialect Y as “nasal.” English sounds nasal to many native French-speakers, French sounds nasal to English-speakers, and both groups think Vietnamese is spoken somewhere above the sinuses.
What is probably going on is that we don’t notice nasality when it occurs in places where our own language variety uses it, but it stands out when it’s somewhere else. The glottal stop in English provides a good analogy – if you start a sentence with a word with an initial vowel sound, you tend to start with the throat closed off a bit (try saying “Apples are my favorite fruit” and pay attention to your larynx). English-speakers don’t even notice they’re doing that. An English-speaker listening to Arabic does notice the glottal stops, because they’re in places where the English-speaker doesn’t anticipate them. People find a groundhog in the living room much more memorable than one in the yard.