Quebec French

Encyclopedia : Q : QU : QUE : Quebec French

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Quebec French (French: le québécois / le français québécois / le français du Québec), and less often "Québécois French", is the dominant and most prevalent regional dialect or variety of the French language found in Canada.

The majority of those who speak Quebec French live in the Province of Québec. However, this dialect is also used, both in its formal and informal varieties, by sizeable francophone minorities in bordering areas of Ontario and New Brunswick as well as by small French-speaking communities in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire in the United States.

Quebec French is often referred to as "Canadian French" by those unaware of the existence of Acadian French (another regional dialect of French in Canada) or by those unfamiliar with Québec's standing as the French-language stronghold of North America.

Contents

Naming and (mis)understandings

Same yet \" Not simply slang or an archaic dialect, Quebec French is identical to all other regional varieties of French in two basic respects. First, all regional standard varieties of French use the same orthography and grammar. Second, as with any regional variety, Quebec French shows a range of internal variation according to register and other social factors. For example, the standard French both of Quebec and of Europe use identical spellings and verb conjugations. Yet, at the same time, Quebec French and, say, Metropolitan French have their own regionalisms, pronunciations and sets of sociolects or slangs (Joual in east-end Montréal; Verlan, Javanais, Louchebem, etc. in Paris.
Also, Quebec French is often confused with franglais (or Frenglish), the common name for three distinct language phenomena that occur in Québec, in Canada, and in other places where French and English co-exist. First, "franglais" can mean an interlanguage resulting from mixing English with French and vice versa; this practice is common among second-language learners and some other non-native speakers of French or English. Next, the two terms can refer to English and French code-switching, which is practiced by bilinguals. Lastly, the term "franglais" may designate the (un)intentional use of anglicisms or gallicisms, a practice both scorned and lauded in all varieties of French and English.

History

Main article: History of Quebec French

Quebec French is not Old French – a much earlier ancestor that spanned 1000 to 1300 CE and, in many ways, resembled Latin. The origins of Quebec French actually lie in the 17th and 18th century regional varieties of early Modern French, also known as Classical French, and of other Oïl languages (Norman, Picard, etc.) that French colonists brought to New France. Quebec French devolved from this language base and was shaped by the following influences (arranged according to historical period):

New France

Unlike in continental France during the 17th and 18th centuries, French in New France became fairly unified (see Barbeau's book below). It also began to borrow words, especially place names such as "", "Canada" and "Hochelaga", from Amerindian languages due to contacts with First Nations peoples.

British Regime

With the onset of the British Regime in 1760, Quebec French became isolated from European French. This period started with efforts to gain and success in guaranteeing French settlers cum British subjects rights to French law, the Roman Catholic faith, and the French language. Such early yet difficult success was followed by a socio-cultural retreat, if not repression, that would later help preserve French in Canada.

Latter half of the 19th century

After Canadian Confederation, Québec started to become industrialized and thus experienced increased contact with English speakers. Québec business, especially with the rest of Canada and with the United States, was conducted in English. Also, communications to and within the Canadian federal government were conducted almost exclusively in English. This period included as well a sharp rise in the number of English-speaking immigrants from what are now the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. This was particularly noticeable in Montréal, the face of which grew majoritarily English-speaking. As a cumulative result, Quebec French began to borrow massively from both American and Canadian English to fill lexical gaps in the fields of government, law, manufacturing, business and trade.

WWI to 1959

As of World War I the majority of Québec's population lived in urban areas. Also, from WWI to the death of Maurice Duplessis in 1959, Québec experienced massive modernization. It is during this period that French-language radio and television broadcasting, albeit with a façade of European pronunciation, began in Canada. While Quebec French borrowed many English-language brand names during this time, Québec's first modern terminological efforts bore a French lexicon for (ice) hockey, the national sport of Canada. Following WWII, Québec began to receive large waves of allophone immigrants who would acquire French or English, but most commonly the latter.

1959 to 1982

From the Quiet Revolution to the passing of Bill 101, Quebec French saw a period of validation in its varieties associated with the working class while the percentage of literate and university educated francophones grew. Laws concerning the status of French were passed both on the federal and provincial levels. The Office québécois de la langue française was established to play an essential role of support in language planning.

1982 to present

The post-Bill 101 period is marked by an explosion in information and communications technologies in the 1980's and 1990's and Québec's increased use of English on both North American and global scales. Nonetheless, in Québec the rate of assimilation towards English was virtually eliminated. This period is also the beginning of sizeable exports of Quebec-French cultural products and Quebec-French terminology work particularly in technical fields.

Social perception and language policy

Standardization

Although Quebec French constitutes a coherent and standard system, it has no objective norm since the very organization mandated to establish it, the Office québécois de la langue française, believes that objectively standardizing the dialect would lead to reduced interintelligibility with other French communities around the world, linguistically isolating Quebecers and possibly causing the extinction of the French language in the Americas.

This governmental institution has nonetheless published many dictionaries and terminological guidelines since the 1960s, effectively allowing many Québécismes (French words local to Quebec) that either describe specifically North American realities or have been in use before the Conquest. It also creates new, morphologically well-formed words to describe technological evolutions to which the Académie française, the equivalent body governing French language in France, is extremely slow to react. An example is the word courriel, the Quebec French term for e-mail, which is now widely used in France.

The resulting effect, other historical factors helping, is a negative perception of Quebec French traits by some of the Quebecers themselves, coupled with a desire to improve their language by conforming it to the Metropolitan French norm. This explains why most of the differences between Quebec French and Metropolitan French documented in this article are marked as "informal" or "colloquial". Those differences that are unmarked are most likely so just because they go unnoticed by most speakers.

Interintelligibility with other dialects

Interintelligibility of formally and informally spoken Quebec French with Metropolitan French is a matter of heated debates between linguists. If a comparison can be made, the differences between both dialects are probably larger than those between American and British English, but not as large as those between standard German and Swiss German. This being said, it is important for monolingual English speakers especially, to understand that in many other European languages there exist veritable dialects. Francophone Canadians abroad have to modify their accent somewhat in order to be easily understood, but very few francophone Canadians are unable to communicate readily with European Francophones. European pronunciation is not at all difficult for Canadians to understand; only differences in vocabulary present any problems.

Television programmes and films from Quebec often must be subtitled for international audiences, which some Quebecers perceive as offensive, although they themselves sometimes can hardly understand European French pronunciation and slang. Recent increases in reciprocal exposure are slowly improving interintelligibility though, and slang expressions have even been crossing the ocean in both directions.

In general, European French speakers have no problems understanding newscasts or other moderately formal speech. However, they may have great difficulty understanding for example a sitcom dialogue. This is due more to idioms, slang, and vocabulary than to accent or pronunciation. European French users will also have difficulty with colloquial speech of Quebecers, for sitcom dialogue reflects everyday speech. However, when speaking to a European French speaker, a French speaker from Quebec is capable of shifting to a slightly more formal, "international" type of speech.

Quebec's culture has only recently been discovered in Europe, especially since the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille), and the difference in dialects and culture is large enough that Quebec French speakers overwhelmingly prefer their own home-grown television dramas or sitcoms to shows from Europe. The number of such TV shows from France shown on Quebec television is about the same as the number of British TV shows on American television: outside of obscure cable channels, essentially none at all.

Quebec French was once stigmatized, among Quebecers themselves as well as among Continental French and foreigners, as a low-class dialect, sometimes due to its use of anglicisms, sometimes simply due to its differences from "standard" European French. Also due to the fact that in Quebecois French, swear words are taken from the Church, whereas in Metropolitan French, the words are more harmless; ex:Quebecois will say câlisse ('chalice') where the French would say merde ('shit'). This aversion to a church that governed the settlers for too long is also a reason why Quebecois French is seen as lower class. Until 1968, it was unheard of for Quebec French vocabulary to be used in plays in the theatre. In that year the huge success of Michel Tremblay's play Les Belles-Sœurs proved to be a turning point. Today, francophones in Quebec have much more freedom to choose a "register" in speaking, and TV characters speak "real" everyday language rather than "normative" French. In Europe, Quebec French has been rediscovered as a charming variety of French that is sometimes difficult to understand: vous entendre parler, c'est comme écouter une chanson ('hearing you speak is like hearing a song').

Regional variation

In the informal registers of Quebec French, regional variation lies in pronunciation and lexis (vocabulary). The regions most commonly associated with such variation are Montréal (esp. the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve Borough), the Beauce region, the Gaspé Peninsula, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, and Québec City. It should be noted, however, that residing or having been raised in a region does not indicate how a speaker of Quebec French will sound. There are many social and individual variables that influence a person’s speech. Nonetheless, one can say that with the rise in mass media, communications, higher education levels plus increased travel and relocation among the population, instances of regional variation are on the decline.

See Quebec French pronunciation and Quebec French lexicon for examples and further information.

Linguistic structure

Phonology

Systematic, i.e. in all unmonitored speech:
/œ̃/ and /ɑ/ as phonemes distinct from /ɛ̃/ and from /a/ respectively
[ɪ], [ʏ], [ʊ] are laxed allophones of /i/, /y/, /u/ in closed syllables
Under certain conditions, long vowels in final (stressed) syllables
Drop of schwa /ə/
Observable in some but not all unmonitored speech:
Variants for /ɛ̃/ are tensed into [e ̃] or [ĩ] whereas [ɑ̃] is fronted into [ã]
Diphthongs as variants to long vowels
[we] (written as "oé") as a variant of [wa] and in contrast to [wɑ]

Systematic:
/t/ and /d/ affricated to [ts] and [dz] before /i/, /y/, /u/ and their allophones [ɪ], [ʏ], [ʊ]
Drop of liquids /l/ and (written as "l" and "r") in unstressed position with schwa or unstressed intervocalic position
Observable in some but not all unmonitored speech:
Trilled "r" - [r] (a disappearing phenomenon restricted to speakers over 30 yrs. old originally from areas west of Trois-Rivières)
For detailed information on other topics in phonology in Quebec French, such as prosody, see Quebec French pronunciation.
For phonological comparisons of Quebec French, Belgian French, Meridional French, and Metropolitain French, see French phonology.

Overall, Quebec French syntax differs very little from the syntax of other regional dialects of French. In French-speaking Canada, however, the characteristic differences of Quebec French syntax are not considered standard despite their high-frequency in everyday, relaxed speech.

What follow are examples of the most common distinctive constructions in Quebec French syntax. For comparison, a standard French used throughout la Francophonie (including Quebec and francophone Canada) is given in paretheses with the corresponding English translation given afterwards in italics. Note that some of the following constuctions can also be found in other regional dialects of French such as Acadian French and dialects in Western France.

Embedded questions using interrogative pronouns instead of relative pronouns:

Je comprends qu'est-ce que tu veux dire. (Je comprends ce que tu veux dire.) I understand what you mean.

Relative clauses using "que" as an all-purpose relative pronoun:

J'ai trouvé le document que j'ai besoin. (J'ai trouvé le document dont j'ai besoin.) I found / I've found the document I need.

C'est la femme que je sors avec. (C'est la femme avec qui je sors.) She's the woman I'm going out with.

Particle "-tu" used to ask "yes/no" questions or to form tag questions. In this last use, "-tu" functions in the same way as "n'est-ce pas":

C'est-tu prêt? (Est-ce prêt? / C'est prêt? / Est-ce que c'est prêt?) Is it ready?

On a-tu bien mangé? (On a bien mangé, n'est-ce pas?) We ate well, didn't we?

Both affirmative and negative imperatives; may bear a velours, i.e. a non-standard liaison in /z/ to avoid vowel hiatus:

Donne-moi-z-en ! ( Donne-m'en! ) Give me some!

Donne-moi-z-en pas ! ( (Ne) m'en donne pas! ) Don't give me any!

Pronouns

Specific examples for the following characteristics can be found in the article on Quebec French syntax.

Also common to the rest of la Francophonie, there is a shift from nous to on in all registers. In post-Quiet Revolution Quebec, the use of informal tu has become widespread in many situations that normally call for semantically singular vous. While some schools are trying to re-introduce this use of vous, which is absent from most youths' speech, the shift from nous to on goes relatively unnoticed.

As in the rest of la Francophonie, -L- drops in il, ils, lui, les, le/la; celui; etc. in informal registers and rapid speech. In Quebec French only, elle becomes [a] and less often [ɛ] written a or e in eye dialect. Note that the loss of -L- in elle was not always limited to Quebec French since it also occurred in parts of France up to the early 20th century, as documented in Jean Giono's novel Colline (1928). See more about the loss of -L- in the article on Quebec French pronunciation.

In informal registers, the subject pronouns tu/ils can be heard instead of on or a subject of a 3rd person pronomial verb (erroneously taught by the name "reflexive verb"). Attributed to general you/they used in all English registers and regions, this is one of the very few possible influences of English on Quebec French aside from vocabulary. This use is sometimes found in the formal registers esp. in spontaneous radio and television interviews. Note that there are some surface-structure or possible topic shifts; the basic meaning, however, is identical.

-autres In informal registers, the stress/tonic pronouns for the plural subject pronouns have the suffix –autres, pronounced /o:t/ and written –aut’ in eye dialect. Nous-autres, vous-autres, and eux-autres are comparable to the Spanish forms nos(otros/as) and vos(otros/as), yet the usage and meanings are different. Note that elle-autres does not exist; see “Absence of elles” below.

With the preposition chez, the pronouns nous/vous/eux replace moi/toi/lui-elle, respectively. Note that chez elles does not exist (in the informal registers); see “Absence of elles” below.

Absence of elles - Elles does not exist in the informal registers; it is replaced with the subject pronoun ils and the stress/tonic pronoun eux(-autres). This all-purpose ils/eux often can be quite common in the formal registers esp. in spontaneous radio or television interviews. Note that ils for elles is at times uttered by women when speaking about other women, even in a feminist context. This phenomenon is in stark contrast to the wide-spread and virtually automatic use of feminized titles / occupations, e.g. des écrivaines, professeures et ministres québécoises, across all registers in Quebec French. See article on Quebec French lexicon for more details.

In their syntax and morphology, Quebec French verbs differ very little from the verbs of other regional dialects of French, both formal and informal. The characteristics of Quebec French verbs are restricted mainly to:

Verbal periphrasis

J'étais pour te dire. (J'allais te dire. / J'étais sur le point de te dire.) I was going/about to tell you.

Avoir su, j'aurais... (Si j'avais su, j'aurais...) Had I known, I would have...

J'étais après travailler quand ils sont arrivés. (J'avais travaillé depuis un certain temps quand ils sont arrivés.) I'd been working when they came.

M'as le faire. (Je vais le faire. / Je le ferai.); akin to "ahma" /ɑmə/ in Southern American English - I'm a do it. (I'm going to do it.)

Regularization

1. In the present indicative, the forms of aller (to go) are regularized as /vɑ/ in all singular persons: je vas, tu vas, il/elle va. Note that in 17th century French, what is today's international standard /vɛ/ in je vais was considered substandard while je vas was the prestige form.

2. In the present subjunctive of aller, the root is regularized as all- /al/ for all persons. Examples: que j'alle, que tu alles, qu'ils allent, etc. The majority of French verbs, regardless of dialect or standardization, display the same regularization. They therefore use the same root for both the imperfect and the present subjunctive: que je finisse vs. je finissais.

3. In the present indicative of haïr (to hate) in the singular is /a.i/ (with a hiatus between vowels only) and is written j'haïs, tu haïs, il/elle haït. In Metropolitan French and in standard Quebec French in the media, the form is pronounced /.ɛ/, in which the hiatus precedes the vowel, and is written as je hais, tu hais, il/elle hait.

Differentiation

1. In the present indicative of both formal and informal Quebec French, (s')asseoir (to sit/seat) only uses the vowel /wa/ in stressed roots and /e/ in unstressed roots: je m'assois, tu t'assois, il s'assoit, ils s'assoient but nous nous asseyons, vous vous asseyez. In Metropolitain French, stressed /wa/ and /je/ are in free variation as are unstressed /wa/ and /e/. Note that in informal Quebec French, (s')asseoir is often said as (s')assire.

2. Quebec French has retained the /ɛ/ ending for je/tu/il-elle/ils in the imperfect (the ending is written as -ais, -ait, -aient). In most other dialects, the ending is pronounced, instead, as a neutralized sound between /e/ and /ɛ/.

3. Informal ils jousent (they play) is often heard for ils jouent and is most likely due to an old anology with ils cousent (they sew).

Vocabulary (lexis)

See Quebec French lexicon for more examples and further explanation.

The distinctive features of the Quebec French lexis are:

lexical items formerly common to both France and New France and that are today unique only to Quebec French; (This includes expressions and word forms that have the same form elsewhere in La Francophonie, yet have a different denotation or connotation.)
borrowings from Amerindian languages, esp. place names;
les sacres - Quebec French profanity (see separate article);
many loanwords, calques and other borrowings from English in the 19th and 20th centuries, whether such borrowings are considered standard French or not;
starting in the latter half of the 20th century, an enormous store of French neologisms (coinages) and re-introduced words via terminological work by professionals, translators, and the OLF; some of this terminology is "exported" to the rest of la Francophonie;
feminized job titles and gender-inclusive language;
morphological processes that have been more productive:

1. suffixes: -eux/euse, -age, -able, and -oune

2. reduplication (as in the international French word guéguerre): bibite, cacanne, etc.

3. reduplication plus -oune: chouchoune, doudoune, foufounes, gougounes, moumoune, nounoune, poupoune, toutoune.

Linguistic relatives and neighbors

Regional varieties of French

*Acadian French - spoken mainly in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada

*Cajun French - spoken in Louisiana, USA

*Metropolitan French - spoken mainly in Metropolitan France

Chiac - (Fr. + English) spoken in New Brunswick, Canada

Michif - (Fr. + Cree + Ojibwe + English) spoken in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada

Haitian Creole - (Fr. + West African languages) spoken in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora

Antillean Creole - (same origins as Haitian Creole) spoken in Dominica, St. Lucia, and the DOMs of Martinique and Guadeloupe

Louisiana Creole - (same origins as Haitian Creole*) spoken in Louisiana, USA

References

: research on the early development of French in New France.
: a comprehensive reference dictionary defining Québécois French usage for speakers of European French
: a detailed analysis of some grammatical differences between France and Quebec French.
: Analysis of some particularities of pronunciations in regard to the Quebec and European norms and language registers.
Léandre Bergeron, The Québécois Dictionary (Toronto, James Lorimer & Co, 1982)
[History of the French Language in Quebec]
[History of French in Quebec]
[Trésor de la langue française au Québec]
[Grand dictionnaire terminologique] (Office québécois de la langue française)
[The Alternative Québécois Dictionary]

Dialects of the French Language
Europe (France) Metropolitan French, Meridional French (Belgium) Belgian French • (Switzerland) Swiss French • (Italy) Aostan French • (Channel Islands) Jersey Legal French North America (Canada) Quebec French • Acadian French • (US) Cajun French Africa African French (Maghreb) Asia Cambodian French • Vietnamese French Oceania New Caledonian French

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