French is spoken in France and parts of north America. Most people are very emotional about their native language so they feel every deviation of it is just wrong.
The most common and seemingly natural view is that France French is “right” and oversea French is not but honestly it’s arbitrary. OP turned it around and so I did too, eventhough I myself live in a non French European country. Well, we all hate our neighbors and the enemy is my enemy is my friend I guess.
That’s a false fact. And it’s apparent, since there are dozens of accents in the US as well as umin the UK and there were dozens in the UK 200 years ago. They all developed in their own direction, being sometimes isolated sometimes cross-pollinating with other accents, but none staid the same.
I’ve been believing this for a very long time but I’ve seen a video made by a French Canadian that proved me wrong
As a matter of fact, when first immigrants arrived in Nova Scotia, most of the French people weren’t even speaking French, but regional dialects.
What happened is that immigrants had to spend long periods of time in big ports of France before taking the boat to the new World and this is how they learned to speak French.
But English was the language mainly used for trades, and local French speakers included a lot of English words in their daily dictionary (which were then exported to France)
Then England took control of Canada and tried to eradicate the French spoken there because they thought it was impure and perverted.
French speakers were pissed, and began to protect the language with tough anti-English rules
I’m responding to “tried to eradicate the French spoken there”. When they took over, I’m pretty sure they agreed to the French language and Catholicism from the very beginning. They didn’t try to eradicate it. Protection didn’t come from failed eradication attempts, protection was agreed to from the start.
Language, religion, and laws. This is why Quebec is predominantly French, doesn’t use British common law like America and the rest of Canada, and was predominantly catholic at a time when a lot of places required you to follow the king’s (or queen’s) religion.
And why a Catholic school board exists in the entire country. We’re far past the point it should be allowed to exist, but afaik it’s in the constitution and hard to get rid of.
French-Canadian from Quebec here: the same way an American will use a french word mid sentence to add a certain je-ne-sais-quoi…
But they tend to go way overboard with them, ending with bastardized, barely comprehensible french. And they dare correct us when we use the proper french terms instead of the ones they abuse.
I was watching a video on YouTube today where the person was demonstrating some things and kept going “voila”, but everytime he said it, he didn’t really pronounce the v, so it sounded more like moilah. One step away from moolah (slang for money).
It was bizarre.
I just couldn’t not hear it. I completely forget what the video was about.
Depends on where in Ontario we’re talking about … everything south of Orillia is basically the United States, between Orillia and North Bay is like the Ozarks, between North Bay and Thunder Bay is equal parts socialist and capitalist, and the entire France sized north is the chaotic frontier (I know because I’m indigenous and this is where my family is from).
Ontario isn’t one mentality and every election cycle, there is more and more of a need to break up the regions because the south doesn’t represent the north and the north is constantly in conflict with the south.
Yeah in Sask I’ve encountered two french speaking people (first language Quebecers)in the last decade. Both spoke English.
Both commented on how people’s expressions turn negative when they hear the accent. Which I can understand as it sounds very gutteral and unpleasant to the ear to me as well.
Plenty in Manitoba but they’ll also speak English. St Boniface is an entire neighborhood in Winnipeg where French is primary, including the arret signs. There’s a number of towns around the province where it’s the primary language as well. Bilingual of course but French is the usual spoken language.
It is kinda interesting you can see the way it spreads around water. English with the Atlantic Ocean to the East, French with the Mississippi & Ohio rivers, and Spanish with the Gulf of Mexico and eventually hitting the Colorado River
I once encountered a theory that North American english was potentially closer to historical english because it was less influenced by neighboring countries. I doubt that, now. But it’s an interesting idea.
Then there’s the people who say Shakespeare makes much more sense, flows better, and better play on words when spoken with an older UK accent (or Irish?), so nothing like North American.
(Lots of search results but no easy blurb to read on what it was. But I recall hearing some and it was nothing like North American accent.)
Québec French is a lot of things, but I wouldn’t call it formal. Heck, one of the core formal things about French (vouvoiement) barely gets used here in Canada, compared to France/Belgium/Switzerland where it’s omnipresent.
Regarding the traditional aspects, I’d say it preserves a certain tradition, but it’s also full of innovations. It’s far from medieval! I wouldn’t say French-speakers in Quebec speak like kings and queens of the 1700s.
It is very different to European or African French, that’s for sure!
As a yank who lived in the UK (East Sussex) for several years, I can share the sentiments of my mates there that they believe we Americans still speak a more traditional version of the language than they do now. Specifically pronunciation of words.
For example, Americans have retained the pronunciation of the final “r” in words like “father” and “mother,” while the UK has dropped it. Americans have maintained the “flat a” sound of cat in words like “path” and “class” whereas the UK has mostly replaced that sound with the “broad a” of “father.”
It’s not an exact science, but the rate of change in the language there has gone beyond the 18th century version we Americans still speak today and thus, it can be said American English, at least pronunciation, is more traditional.
On the class/path a: it depends where you are in the UK. In the north, it tends to be the flat a, in the south it tends to be the broad a. There’s a lot of variation in accent within the UK, to the point that you can identify pretty accurately where someone is from using something this quiz: nytimes.com/…/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html.
Anecdotally, I think it is becoming a bit more uniform than it used to be, due to people moving around more than they did historically, though
Québec has language laws that prevent businesses from using English in their advertising among other things, and some controversial rulings have come from it. One such ruling was the use of “le week-end”. Québec was punishing businesses who used this term instead of “la fin de semaine”. There was an interview done with an official from the language police where the interviewer had a dictionary from France which showed “le week-end” is proper French. The Québec official said “France doesn’t decide what words are French. We do.”
I tried searching for it before posting but couldn’t find it. It was a radio interview likely sometime in the 80s. It’s hard to find because a search for controversial things the Québec language police have done turns up a lot of results.
In a way that was very french of him. Only the Poles equal the French when it comes to having a bizarre cultural superiority complex while at the same time being viewed as absolute trash by the rest of Europe.
More French speakers than Quebec, New Brunswick, and a smattering here & there in other provinces? The only other thing the French in this country have is poutine. The least we can do is give them this.
La poutine n’est pas française et je vous prierais de surveiller votre ton lorsque vous parlez à mes colocuteurs d’outre-atlantique. Vive le Canada francophone et le Cameroun.
It’s crazy how small people think Africa is, as if it isn’t the 2nd most populous continent with Nigeria on track to overtake the US in population by 2050. Africa is projected to meet the same population as Asia by 2100 (both are likely to separately have about 3-4x the population of every other continent combined)
Of course a country in the most populous section of Africa have more people who speak the national language than in Canada! Nigeria has like 4x the amount of English speakers of Canada, and Uganda & Egypt both have around the same amount as Canada.
I mean, you’re not wrong, but the French in this country have made being a pain in the English-speaking population’s ass their entire raison d’être since like 1760. They’ve been fighting a resistance war for like 264 years which is why I consider it a good roadtrip if I can get from Cornwall to Edmundston without having to stop. Beautiful province but a pain in the dick to even exist in if you’re an Anglo.
I’m an American anglophone that lives in Quebec for work and uh, yeah. These people are constantly fighting a culture war that nobody else gives a shit about or signed up for. There should never be language police.
Mon très cher « La manœuvre Picard », bien que je partage absolument votre avis ; je me dois, à mon plus amer regret, de vous informer que vous avez irrémédiablement et royalement fucked up votre carte.
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