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Metropolitan and Quebec French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5616 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 1 of 8 01 January 2011 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was wondering, having never heard this dialect myself, if it really is completely incomprehensible to, let's say, a French person to understand Québécois? As for the grammatical differences, they can't be that big? I mean, only 200 years have passed since their separation.. How big is this difference really? I know there are two standards of French: Métropolitain and Québécois...
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| Nature Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5238 days ago 63 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 3 of 8 02 January 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I live in Montreal. Just like any other language, if you speak with excessive slang and use expressions no one outside your country, or even your town would understand, then of course you'll have a hard time understanding. If you speak it properly, there should be no trouble.
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| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 8 02 January 2011 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I think the differences are (as paranday said) a little bigger than those between British English and American
English are. However, if you think about it, a few Americans can't understand the dialog on some television shows or in everyday speech due to colloquialisms and slang that we aren't familiar with. Of course when speaking with a French Canadian (as a metropolitan speaker), one's conversation partner would most likely not be using colloquialisms that are not universally French. Just like if you were going to speak with a Brit or an Australian, you wouldn't use slang that is used specifically in your town or in your area. Seeing as how Canadian French is exposed to English, there tend to be a lot of loanwords that are considered standard in Canadian French, however not so in Metropolitan French. Usually a French Canadian (educated in FRENCH, NOT English), would be able to manipulate their speech to use more "Metropolitan" words. In other words, yes it would be silly to assume that French speakers from different parts of the globe can't understand each other, just like it would be to assume that English speakers from different parts of the globe can't understand each other. Edit: Note there is a difference between a Quebecois and a French Canadian. The former reside in Quebec, and the latter reside in other provinces. This differentiation can mean differences in speech and magnitude as to the use of English. I'm not educated enough on the subject to discuss the linguistic (and possibly ethnic) differences between a Quebecois and a French Canadian, so it would be worthwhile to read up on the differences in the different possible dialects of Canadian French. Edited by ruskivyetr on 02 January 2011 at 1:19am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5123 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 5 of 8 04 January 2011 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know the feeling! When I first started learning French I was terrified that if I went to Quebec to learn French that nobody outside of Canada would understand me!!!! But obviously that can be observed as not true, if you have tv stations from France and Quebec you'll see that understanding either variety is not difficult in the least. And there are some hilarious reality shows where a team from France and a team from Quebec compete against each other doing improv skits, and they seem to understand each other just fine.
:) Edited by CheeseInsider on 04 January 2011 at 7:41pm 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 6 of 8 04 January 2011 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
200 years? More like 400. If you've never heard the dialect, why not hear it for yourself? For instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3rFKN8cC7s 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| njblue Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5328 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 7 of 8 05 January 2011 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here is a better example of french from Quebec.
This is just an on street interview with a band. Marabu- FrancoFolies de Montréal 2009 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Préposition Diglot Senior Member France aspectualpairs.wordp Joined 5115 days ago 186 posts - 283 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC1 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 8 of 8 05 January 2011 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't see how the fact that they have been separated for such or such amount of time would make a difference. England has a myriad of different accents, yet they're all on the same island. Regarding your actual question, it depends on their accent, the stronger, the more unintelligible it gets. I lived with a girl from Montreal for a couple of year, and when I first met her, I had no idea she was from Québec because she had no accent, except when she was swearing and getting excited. On the other hand, there are people I struggle to understand, and some that I will never understand. The slang is very different, Québécois use vocabulary that is now considered to be archaic in France, such as "joute" for a fight, they swear using church words like "criss" (Christ) "calisse", "ostie", "tabernacle", and there are expression translated directly from English because they don't allow English to be everywhere as France does (a Mac Chicken is a Mac Poulet, and they eat des croquettes instead of nuggets). The film C.R.A.Z.Y was actually subtitled in conventional French because the accent or the slang were too different to be understood easily by French French, and even though I don't think grammatical differences are huge, the vocabulary can be. Of course it all varies according to who you're talking to, and I've never been to Québec, so I can't say I've fully experienced the difference. The series of comic videos called Tête à Claques depicts perfectly a stereotypical Québécois accent (I'm not saying it's right, but I'd say that's how it's perceived by French French), and the French actor Gad Elmaleh has also done a couple of sketch in his shows, and this one shows very neat differences between a mild Québécois accent and a typical French French accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn3SMpByO7g Edited by Préposition on 05 January 2011 at 11:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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