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Quebec French

  Tags: Canada | Resources | French
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pitwo
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5918 days ago

103 posts - 121 votes 
Speaks: French*, English

 
 Message 25 of 35
22 December 2008 at 5:30pm | IP Logged 
Hi everyone. As you're all talking about Québec city I feel compelled to join in :)
Although I don't live there anymore (Montréal now, heh), I did for many many years and can assure you you'll get to hear a ton of French. People generally speak English poorly, thanks to the scarcity of English speakers outside of Montréal, and generally we rather like foreigners.

Just to set the record straight: informal spoken Québec French *IS* different from what you'd find in france, altough usually it's possible to make us speak a more "standard" variety of french.. In some regions you can find subtle grammatical differences, mostly the appearance of some sort of "particles" such as the inclusion of nonsensical "la" at the end of sentences, "ma" "ta" "mék" etc. I can see many of you here dismiss that sort of speech as being simply "joual", something unpure that shouldn't be touched at all, but to be honest I rather dislike that sort of reductionism... After all it's not like you **really** need to speak anything else than English on this Earth....

Sorry for the ranting tone; the general impression this thread gave me is 'bleh don't bother'.


PS: you might like to read Michel Tremblay. There's some pretty embarrassing joual in there 8)
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jimbo baby!
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5736 days ago

202 posts - 208 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 26 of 35
22 December 2008 at 10:17pm | IP Logged 
This is Florence Foresti, a French comedienne impersonating Celine Dion's Quebec accent.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRUmmBf8n0
I can't say if she does a good impression of the Quebec accent but the Celine Dion mannerisms are pretty funny. :)
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multilingual
Bilingual Diglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5599 days ago

28 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: French*, English*
Studies: German
Studies: Russian, Portuguese

 
 Message 27 of 35
29 December 2008 at 11:20pm | IP Logged 
Sure, there may be the apparition of those particles. These shouldn't be worried about, it is nothing like Chinese:
they mean nothing and aren't used when talking to a customer or whatever. You are however forgetting an
important fact. There are dialects in France too. No program will tell you how to conjugate the verb "kiffer". This
is reason I encourage (and still do) the original poster to learn standard French. One must not assume that
because tapes for a program are in Parisian French, that the sentences will not be understood.

Also, I thought about a few basic expressions/vocabulary that one may encounter in Québec :
-Avoid "Je vous en prie" try "Il n'y a pas dequoi" or "de rien" informally
-"déjeuner, dîner, souper" and not "petit déjeuner, déjeuner et dîner"
-the words magasin, magasinage and magasiner are used for shop, shoping (the act of it), to shop (the verb)

You will also notice that some syllables are pronounced as "é" by the French and as "è" by the Québécois. You
might get corrected on this even if you are not wrong.

I recently bough a book called Using German: A Guide to Contemporary Usage, it is very interesting because it
provides insight into regional variation of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. So much so, that I think I will
buy the French one (I'm a native speaker of French!). It is intended for the intermediate/advanced crowd though.
You might want to look into Using French: A Guide to Contemporary Usage (already 3rd edition).

If you become advanced in French, you can try watching Les Têtes à Claques. This is pure Québec colloquial
French. You also have the option of subtitles.

Also, when you have time, go watch a few videos on how to swear in Québécois. You shall quite probably hear it
(often?) and it is very different from the French. Heck, they even make t-shirts with "Tabarnak!" written on them.
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MmeFleiss
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 5741 days ago

58 posts - 72 votes 
Speaks: English*, Tagalog
Studies: Japanese, French, Spanish

 
 Message 28 of 35
28 January 2009 at 8:37pm | IP Logged 
Two links I've found specifically on Canadian French that you might find helpful:

1) C'est la vie
2) Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Just click on the green EN button to switch the table of contents to English)

Edited by MmeFleiss on 28 January 2009 at 8:40pm

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dmg
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6770 days ago

555 posts - 605 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Dutch, Esperanto

 
 Message 29 of 35
28 January 2009 at 9:20pm | IP Logged 
MmeFleiss wrote:
Two links I've found specifically on Canadian French that you might find helpful:

1) C'est la vie
2) Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Just click on the green EN button to switch the table of contents to English)


I already listen to the "C'est la vie" podcast, but that second link made me drool. QC French dialogs with transcripts.... Now I just gotta figure out a way to download them all...
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MmeFleiss
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 5741 days ago

58 posts - 72 votes 
Speaks: English*, Tagalog
Studies: Japanese, French, Spanish

 
 Message 30 of 35
13 February 2009 at 12:56pm | IP Logged 
dmg wrote:
MmeFleiss wrote:
Two links I've found specifically on Canadian French that you might find helpful:

1) C'est la vie
2) Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Just click on the green EN button to switch the table of contents to English)


I already listen to the "C'est la vie" podcast, but that second link made me drool. QC French dialogs with transcripts.... Now I just gotta figure out a way to download them all...


I'm glad the second link is working out for you; the website has so many lovely clips for various regional accents. It's a shame that most learners probably will never know about them since the base language is Japanese.

Here's another possible link: http://www.fomny.com/Canada-tv.php They have a ton of channels for other languages as well.
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dmg
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6770 days ago

555 posts - 605 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Dutch, Esperanto

 
 Message 31 of 35
26 February 2009 at 3:07am | IP Logged 
There's a new(ish) blog with a number of youtube videos focusing specifically on Canadian French idioms and pronunciation.

Learn Canadian French.

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Welltravelled
Diglot
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 5621 days ago

46 posts - 72 votes 
Speaks: English*, French

 
 Message 32 of 35
27 February 2009 at 10:55am | IP Logged 
It's funny though. I've heard lots of people discuss the difference but, having spent a couple of months in Montreal, I couldn't help feel that people just made too much out of it.

The mayonnaise on the hamburgers, on the other hand, cannot be overemphasised. I mean, I'm all for culutral difference and all that but come on!


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