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Materials for Quebec French non-existent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5832 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 49 25 April 2012 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are separate resources for European Spanish/Latin American Spanish, European Portuguese/Brazilian Portuguese, British English/American English, and to a lesser extent there's even material available for Swiss German as opposed to Standard German and Felmish as opposed to Standard Dutch (Netherlands).
However, as far as I'm aware there are almost zero resources available for Quebec French. Almost all French materials teach Standard French with a Parisian accent as if its the only standard worth knowing and all the other varities are inferior and must be stamped out. In fact, even in Canada I understand that French is taugh using materials aimed at Standard French. Would you say the lack of resources for Quebec French is just another symptom of the bullying, arrogant, snobby attitude that the French have to other dialects of French that are not Parisian? Edited by COF on 25 April 2012 at 4:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 49 25 April 2012 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I put a fair bit of thought into this, so allow me to share my opinion.
I actually started creating a series of lessons covering the main grammar of QF. I took all the main points and planned to cover them in 10 lessons. I did 2 and a half, then I got busy, but I plan to finish them one day. I shared those lessons with a few people who were also complaining they couldn't find any material. I considered for a while whether the course should be aimed at beginners or not, and realized it would be too impractical to do so. I concluded that such lessons could only be geared towards intermediate or advanced students because everyday spoken QF is actually a mixture of grammar and vocabulary that is purely QF, and standard French. In other words, if you were to teach QF from scratch, you'd have to teach both QF and standard French in parallel. Now there's a tough course to design. Because we all learn standard French in school, I think it'd be fair to say that most QF speakers are bidialectal. As for the snobby attitude, I have to say that I used to teach French in Montréal and most of the other teachers had some kind of purist idea of what the language should be, and were very little concerned with teaching what the language actually is. Most had actually put very little thought into it because they usually had a background in literature -- which is of course entirely useless for teaching anything other than a really advanced literature class. So it's not impossible the limitations on teaching QF are self-imposed. Edited by Arekkusu on 25 April 2012 at 5:34pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Quinn Senior Member United States Joined 6324 days ago 134 posts - 186 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 49 26 April 2012 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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In a market economy anyone who believes they can make a buck by selling a course in Québécois is free to do so. I don't see how the L'Académie Française could stop them from servicing this potentially lucrative niche.
I think it's more likely that the major vendors of foreign language materials don't believe there's sufficient demand to justify the expense. And I feel compelled to point out that your comment about the "bullying, arrogant, snobby attitude" of the French is quite a generalization. If someone made a similar comment about Americans I'd feel a bit insulted. Wouldn't you? 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 49 27 April 2012 at 2:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Quebec French resources, yes there are few available for anglophones outside Canada. The population disparity between Quebec, only 5.9 million French-speaking people (wikipedia), and the rest of the Francophone world may explain somewhat the dearth of available materials. A similar, though not nearly the same, level of disparity exists for materials for Iberian Portuguese vs. Brazilian Portuguese and Standard German vs Swiss German. It's a numbers game and always will be.
Nevertheless, I do think if some company wanted to make some money, they could probably sell quite a few Quebec focused learning materials. One possibility is to hire a Quebec based French skype tutor. I've seen a few available on italki. Another possibility is to simply expose yourself to all Quebec based media- films, television, radio, books, newspapers and music. For most east coast Americans, Montreal is not that expensive to get to for a visit and possible language immersion classes. You could always learn standard French first to intermediate level and then learn the differences for Quebec French and focus on it to get to the next level, when you'll be more able to use native materials. For Spanish and Portuguese speakers there is an online school of Quebec French costing $75 per module- L'école de Français Québécois What a shame they don't have an English based option. The course is designed for Latin American immigrants (so-called "allophones") to Quebec in order to help them with the language and pass the competency test. I agree with @Quinn. Generalizations, which often include value judgments, are almost always a dangerous, slippery slope here. For this reason, I don't like threads such as "the worst", "the best", etc. It's usually wise to avoid value judgments whenever discussing cultures, accents, dialects or languages. None are "worse" or "better" than others. They just are. Diversity is beautiful. Remember, we are a very international forum here. Edited by iguanamon on 27 April 2012 at 2:31am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 5 of 49 27 April 2012 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
I agree as well, but I have lately come to the conclusion that there are some here who don't accidentally fall victim to this slippery slope, but instead are keen to go sledding full speed down that slope intentionally. It is a matter of morbid interest sometimes watching how keen some posters (3 in particular lately) are to work in, ad naseum, rants against a particular country/ethnic group or individual, no matter how strained the context. Edited by Spanky on 27 April 2012 at 4:30am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 49 27 April 2012 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are fewer materials than for latin american Spanish or brazilian Portuguese but
they are not entirely non-existent. Assimil has published something for Quebec French. It is not a full with ease course, it's some pocket version, not sure whether it is a course or a phrasebook. And there are some online resources, for exemple http://offqc.com/faq/ which is a site about quebec French and the faq page lists some other resources as well (such as tv- shows, online radios etc) but the author confirms that there is no good quality course as far as he/she knows. Thanks, iguanamon, for the link. There surely must be some "official" resources since immigrants have to pass tests of quebec French. And thanks, Arekkusu, the idea looks really nice. If you get further with it, I'd love to see the course. It is a shame that so little is being taught about this variant of the language. Funny thing is that the students of higher levels are expected to tell apart various kinds of French (French, Belgian, Quebecois usually. sadly noone takes African variants seriously) but neither the course nor the teachers tell them how exactly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 49 27 April 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
It's a phrasebook, and it's not worth a penny. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| onurdolar Diglot Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4653 days ago 98 posts - 147 votes Speaks: Turkish*, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 8 of 49 27 April 2012 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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The reason behind teaching standard french rather then quebec dialect might as well be
the need of identity. I mean what differs Quebec people from other North Americans is their french heritage and language; so being french is very important to them no? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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