|
 |
Learning France and Quebec French | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| The Blaz Senior Member Canada theblazblog.blogspotRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5600 days ago 120 posts - 176 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swahili, French, Sign Language, Esperanto | Message 1 of 33 08 March 2010 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I'm curious if anyone on this forum has learnt Quebec and France French as two distinct
languages and has a capacity in both. I mean, can you switch between the accents and vocabulary sets of both variants? As a Canadian we tend to be taught France French but really Quebecois French is very important in terms of Canadian media, politics, and travel. So for me, ideally, I would like to have both French variants available to me. I feel there isn't specifically a reason why I couldn't keep the dialects separate in my head. I already know some of the pronunciation differences, but I would need to study and practice them in more detail, then learn the vocab and expressions separately. Really this is a long term goal, for now I'm just focusing on standard French vocabulary, but I would love to be functional in Quebecois French without making it exclusive. f 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 33 08 March 2010 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
There's no reason to learn them as two languages - they're not. It's like learning UK and Canadian English as two languages.
Having the accent and local words/phrases for both should be entirely doable; some people manage it with English. Good luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 33 08 March 2010 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That's pretty ironic, I think. I'm not sure how France French could be more useful than Québec French if you live in Canada. If I was an English-Canadian wanting to learn French, I'd concentrate on Québec (or Canadian) French. After all, local French tv and radio SRC programming is pretty much available everywhere. You can usually find local French-language newspapers in most areas. Otherwise, most important French-language newspaper are generally available in librairies or online. I'd think reading French news about national events you know about would be more interesting than reading French news about European events you haven't heard about. Visiting Québec to practice is a much less onerous project and you can find Québécois or local native French speakers almost everywhere. So it begs the question -- why does an English-Canadian want to learn European French? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 33 08 March 2010 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
In Western Canada, Quebec hardly seems closer than Europe or the Pacific Rim countries. To play devil's advocate for a minute, why would I want to learn a regional variant to read news which is written in a different register and variant about things I could read about in my native language, while ignoring the vast majority of the French speaking world, especially in Europe and Africa? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 33 08 March 2010 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
From Western Canada, Québec is half the distance Europe is, but anywho... Perhaps we approach languages differently, but personally, I always want to practice speaking the languages I'm learning. If you live in Canada, most of the French speakers you will encounter will not be from Europe. That being said, there are little to no resources available to teach the parts of spoken Québec French grammar that really differ from Standard French, so without a teacher who knows what he or she is talking about, I'm not sure how I'd undertake this myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tpark Tetraglot Pro Member Canada Joined 7046 days ago 118 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, German, Dutch, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 33 08 March 2010 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I suppose it depends on where you travel. I think the people speaking on the Radio-Canada news broadcasts and talk shows are speaking slowly and clearly enough that the broadcast should be easily understood by most French speakers. There are some things such as comedy shows and interviews with the man on the street that I have trouble understanding. I've been to France more than Quebec, so for me it is more useful to be able to understand European French than Quebecois French.
I speak with a strong English accent, so when I was in Quebec many people switched to English when speaking to me. I noticed that in France they had more of a tendency to stick to French. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 33 08 March 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes - they're both "far". A factor of two hardly matters at that point.
If you live in Western Canada, most of them won't be from Quebec either. My French teachers were native English or Japanese speakers. There was also very strong social pressure not to pick up Quebec influences, to the extent that the English-speaking one told me in no uncertain terms not to listen to French-language radio (this was before internet radio was popular, and so it would have been local).
Via picking up standard French and then immersing yourself as much as possible in Quebec French, I suppose. It's not really an ideal route - learners hardly have access to regional variants at first, unfortunately. Also, some people simply prefer one variant to another. A European friend of mine strongly prefers Quebec French. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5471 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 33 08 March 2010 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Time to poke my nose into this thread...
I totally agree with Arekkusu here and that is in fact what I do - at least in the last year. Even for a Canadian however it is easier to find resources for european French so that is what I started with 3 years ago. I would have difficulty maintaining motivation to learn any language that required a 6+ hour airline flight to attain immersion. I dislike long flights and believe they will become much more expensive in the future anyway. I do however like the idea of a leisurely cruise up the St Laurence river in my sailboat straight through Québec. A large percentage of northern and eastern Ontario is also francophone and the French is essentially the same as Québec - at least to a native anglophone ear. As for why I'd want to learn European French as well, that needs no explanation on this site - travel, culture, literature, history and more. I can learn a "foreign language" and a domestic language together, doubling up on motivation. And that is as close as I want to come to studying more than one language at a time.
This is a shame in my opinion. This is especially true at the Alliance Française where here in Toronto I once heard a teacher tell a student that his girlfriend can be refered to as "ma petite amie" - ya that'll make you fit right in here! Then again the purpose of the Alliance Françasis is to spread the language and culture of France and interestingly there are no AF locations in Québec. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
