How different in Quebec French from that of France

Factual Questions
21

I was going to say what Hypnogogic Jerk said, although from the anglo perspective, obviously. Written French is pretty much uniform; it’s accents, particularly the vowels, and some vocabulary that’s the difference, just like in English. I think that there’s too much made of “being taught Parisian French” - no, we’re taught formal French, and it’s not until you live in a francophone environment, or have a lot of dealings with francophones, that you learn more informal French. But that’s similar to English - the English courses I took in school were formal, “correct” English - slangs and idioms were pretty much ignored.

What accent you pick up as an anglo in western Canada learning French will depend a lot on your teachers: my three main teachers were an anglo who loved teaching French; a fransaskois; and an Acadian. Then I’ve studied in Nova Scotia and Quebec City, and worked in Ottawa; I’ve been told my accent is a bit of a mish-mash. (I once joined some co-workers at a bar after a hard day at work and said “Ouf! Ch’suis icitte.” One of my friends, who spoke very formal French at the best of times, just looked pained and asked my where on earth I’d picked that up. “Chez les acadiens” I replied and she continued to look pained. :slight_smile: ) I never had much trouble expressing myself and being understood. The difficulty in understanding francophones depended on how quickly and how idiomatically they spoke. But, I think that would be the case if I had gone to France as well with my high school/university French - the first time you’re immersed in another language, it’s quite different from the classroom.

The pronunciation of “i” is a real marker of Quebec French, in my experience and as others have commented, especially around Quebec City. I once had trouble ordering some stamps (“timbres”) at a post office in Quebec City, and realised I wasn’t using the local pronunciation, so really broadened the “i”, to “tambres”. I repeated it a couple of times and finally the clerk said, in a tone of enlightenment, “Ah! Tu veux des taaambres!” I got my stamps and and left thinking, “Really? in a post office it’s so hard to figure out my accent to mean stamps?” My personal experience is that French around Quebec city is much more nasal than in some other areas.

As for court, AK84’s question from the OP, it’s going to depend on the context. If you’re watching the Supreme Court feed on the web, it’s very formal, of course, but that’s true for English as well. Go to a trial court, and well, it’s a trial court and you’ll get a lot more idiomatic expressions.

There was a murder trial here a while ago where the accused was charged with beating a guy to death. One of the witnesses said, in a thick Montreal accent: “Oui, je l’ai vu frappe le mort avec un choque.” (“I saw him hit the dead guy with a choque.”) The judge, a fransaskois, didn’t understand the last word, and said: "Avec un choque? c’est quoi, un choque? (“With a choque? What’s a choque?”) The witness replied “Un choque-absorbeur” (“A shock absorber”), and made a hitting gesture like with a baseball bat. :eek:

I’ve been told I speak a fairly formal French, but that’s because my main exposure and learning has been in academic and court settings; I’ve never worked retail or other settings where the French is more informal. Francophones from the east tend to be surprised at my level of French, because they often view western Canada as hostile to French. (Not saying they’re wrong; but that’s a political debate, not a linguistic one. :wink: ) It means I get treated with a welcoming attitude.

After one court appearance where the counsel were all from Quebec, except me and one other lawyer from Saskatchewan, they were so impressed that they took me out to lunch, just to find out how this anglo could handle French in court. (The other Sask lawyer, an anglo who had relied on the interpretive server at the hearing, was invited but he stayed behind, saying if he came it would force the Quebec lawyers to speak English out of politeness, and after a court hearing you just wanted to relax, which I thought was perceptive of him.)

22

John McWhorter’s latest podcast includes a segment about one of the stranger (from France French perspective) aspects of Quebecois French: the use of “tu” to mean “this is a question,” rather than “you.”

23

ETA: McWhorter analyzes a clip from the Flintstones, mentioned by popomomo cocoyoyo upthread.

24

Oops, I used the phrase “France French.” Make that “Metropolitan French” (sorry, Hypnagogic Jerk).

25

France French does exist (although it may raise the question, which variety of France French). What I object to is calling formal French “France French”, no matter whether it is or isn’t. I think I’ve even once read (maybe it was even on the SDMB!) somebody claim that the newsreaders on Radio-Canada and the former premier of Quebec Jean Charest speak “France French”, which they definitely don’t.

Interestingly, it seems like YouTuber Paul from LangFocus has just published a video on the differences between France and Quebec French. I like LangFocus (and even support him on Patreon), but the thread on the Quebec Reddit suggests that his video (which I haven’t watched yet) also falls into the trap of comparing formal and normative France French with very vernacular Quebec French (they apparently even have the speaker swear), which is an unfair comparison because it compares two registers that definitely wouldn’t be used in the same context.

26

Interesting – thanks.

27

A good proportion of my students have come from French immersion schools in Western Canada. While many of them do speak very good French, I think that for the most part they’re not at a level where their having learned an “European” or a “Canadian” French makes a difference. They’re able to follow a class taught in French with native francophones, and they are conversational to some extent, but I wouldn’t really call most of them truly bilingual. If they travel to a French-speaking country (any country), they shouldn’t have trouble with everyday transactions, but I guess they wouldn’t find it easy (at first) to follow informal conversations between native speakers. But within a few weeks they’d probably adapt.

Interestingly, next year I’ll be teaching in English… in Quebec City.

28

That’s interesting, because maybe I’m misunderstanding what sounds you’re referring to, but to me “tambres” would describe a rather French pronunciation of this word, which it is true is rather different from how it’d be pronounced in Quebec. Now we’re close to the limits of my knowledge of the IPA, so what I’m about to say may not be perfectly accurate (I get it from French phonology on Wikipedia), but this phoneme which is the French nasal vowel /ɛ̃/ tends to be realized as [ẽ] in Quebec, while shifts towards [ɔ̃] in some dialects of France.

Edit: I realized I didn’t actually write what the phonetic transcription of “timbres” is. It should be /tɛ̃bʁ/ if we’re using a normative transcription. “Tambres” looks like it should be pronounced /tɑ̃bʁ/.

29

It’s analogous to British English vs Australian. Quebecers even have “maudits Français” as a common expression which is similar to “bloody Pommies”.

Like Australian English has Broad Australian Accent and Straya, the accent and vocabulary can become more non-standard as a function of context, class, emotional state and intoxication. A middle-aged, drunk angry blue-collar Australian stumbling out of a pub probably speaks in a way that’s analogous to a middle-aged, drunk, angry blue-collar Quebecer stumbling out of a taverne.

And French people can recognize Quebecers with their frequent use of “fac là”.

That Normandie accent really is quite close. Perhaps the Viking ancestry can explain all the cursing.

30

Uhm…

  1. what foreigners learn in school may or may not be Academic Spanish. There are people who learn Argentinian or Mexican.
  2. I’m not even sure what you mean by “street”, but Mexican Spanish consists of several perfectly fine dialects, some of which are more “high class” than others.
  3. Academic Spanish and Castillian Spanish (which again has variants) are close but not quite the same. The main difference is some pronoun usages which are considered incorrect for any other dialect; depending on variant there are other differences in vocabulary and, around the edges of Old Castille, in pronunciation. It would be extremely unusual for a foreigner to learn actual Castillian dialect in class.
31

ETA, phone wanted me to buy insurance: Some European dialects are further from both Castillian and Academic Spanish than the majority of Mexican dialects.

32

Journalist and announcer René Lecavalier received many accolades for helping develop a Quebec French sports vocabulary, starting in the 1950s. Before his time, most sports terms used in Quebec French came from English, while today, largely thanks to him, we have access to a complete French terminology, especially for American sports like hockey and baseball. (It should be noted that this vocabulary is completely unknown in France, which is why it can be very jarring for a Quebecer to hear French people talk about hockey – or worse, to watch an American movie about baseball that’s been dubbed in France.)

I think The Flintstones was one of the very first television shows to get a localized Quebec dub. (The voice actors – some of which were fairly well-known at the time – even get shown with their picture in the credits.) I haven’t watched The Flintstones in a long time, but from what I remember the language they used was working-class but very understandable. Today, many American movies are dubbed in French in Quebec, but in a strange “international” French that avoids characteristic features from any national dialect. I used to watch dubbed movies when I was younger, but today I feel the result sounds strange (and it’s just too weird to see Tom Hanks on the screen when his voice is clearly Bernard Fortin’s! ;)).

Many posters have mentioned the term joual. I must say I have no idea what joual is supposed to refer to. Some people use it to refer to any form of colloquial Quebec French (such as when people say that Michel Tremblay revolutionized Quebec theatre with plays in joual, which at the time caused a scandal; I’d rather say his plays feature characters speaking a working-class early 1970s Montreal dialect and register), or even to any colloquial expression that’s used in Quebec even if it’s not specifically from Quebec. I’m not sure someone’s manner of speech should be called joual unless they actually realize “cheval” as [ʒwal], which would be extremely rare today.

33

Glad to see a fellow Lexicon Valley follower!

34

Decades ago, I was on a tour of Europe and some of our fellow tourists were two women from Montreal. In Nice, my family got into a dispute at a restaurant, and we asked the Quebecois women to help us out via their French. They steadfastly refused, saying the Nice-ians were unlikely to understand a word they were saying.

35

I ad a young friend from Guadeloupe, who went to college in Quebec. She got a job as a docent at a museum close to her school, and she said that just when she got to the point that people stopped correcting her Guadeloupan (sp?) accent to Quecbecoise, she was confronted by an elderly Parisienne tourist who corrected nearly every word she said. She found speaking English in with Virginians to be restful.

36

Not for nothing are Quebecois vacationing in Mexico knows as “Los Tabernacos”.

37

Hypnagogic Jerk, I seem to recall, when the Montreal Expos started play in 1969, that there was some discussion about how to label the various baseball positions in French. I also recall (hopefully correctly) that the pitcher became le lanceur, and the batter became le frappeur, but I’ve always been curious: what about the other positions? Shortstop, and first baseman, and outfielder, and so on?

38

What about the cursing against the Church objects?? Tabernak, Chalice, etc… is that a thing in Parisan French?

39

[ul]
[li]Shortstop: arrêt-court (which seems to be a literal translation of the English term)[/li][li]First baseman: joueur de premier but. Bases are called buts in French, while home plate is known as le marbre. Similarly, le joueur de deuxième but and le joueur de troisième but.[/li][li]Outfielder: voltigeur (an interesting name; I believe the literal meaning of un voltigeur is a sort of infantry soldier). We have a voltigeur de gauche, a voltigeur de centre and a voltigeur de droite.[/li][li]Catcher: receveur[/li][li]Designated hitter: frappeur désigné. I think I’ve also heard frappeur de choix but I don’t know if that was a quirk of a particular commentator.[/li][li]Pinch hitter: frappeur suppléant. Similarly, pinch runner is coureur suppléant.[/li][li]Relief pitcher: lanceur de relève or releveur[/li][li]Starting pitcher: lanceur partant[/li][li]Manager: gérant[/li][/ul]

That’s about what I can think of in terms of baseball positions. But you have a (Quebec/Canadian) French term for every possible baseball concept. Most of the time it’s a fairly faithful translation of the English term (for example, a walk is formally known as a base on balls, so un but sur balles in French), but some are a little different (a homerun, for example, is un coup de circuit or simply un circuit).

40

I once worked in an office that had a call center for the company’s Canadian customers. The French-speaking employees, who were mostly from France, said that what struck them most about speaking to Canadian Francophones was that they said “Bonjour!” at the end of the call too, not just the beginning.

Also when I was studying French in college in upstate NY one of my professors told me I spoke it with a Quebec accent. Something about my Rs, I think. I always just thought I couldn’t do a French R :smiley: