Difference between Québec & French accent?

[Azereus]

I've heard many people say on these forums that people from Québec(Canada) have a diffrent way of speaking french than those who live in France. Can anyone explain to me how the Québecers differ in their speaking from the people of France? I know it'll be hard to explain on forums but I'm just very curious. (The one time where I actually feel a little connected with french people, I find out that they are different than real french people!)

[RMJ]

Their vocabulary is different. That makes huge difference. For example, online translators are pretty much useless if you try to translate québécois to English

I'm not sure about pronouncing differences, tho. I can't understand either one well enough. :)

[Matrix]

I wonder what it's like trying to translate Cajun french to english? We got a french corridor in the united states. It's in the state of Louisiana

[aFrenchie]

I know it'll be hard to explain on forums but I'm just very curious.
You mean almost impossible? :)
This "text to speech" link (http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php#top) might help a bit though, since you can choose between two French people and one French speaking Canadian in the list. I have noticed quite a good result by comparing them, but I've heard Québécois accents way stronger than that!

[CFHollister]

You mean almost impossible? :)
This "text to speech" link (http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php#top) might help a bit though, since you can choose between two French people and one French speaking Canadian in the list. I have noticed quite a good result by comparing them, but I've heard Québécois accents way stronger than that!

What would be a good line or two in French that would be a good demonstration?

[aFrenchie]

What would be a good line or two in French that would be a good demonstration?
It would be hard to find or select phrases as best samples... I've tested several things randomly and could hear the accent each time I think. But I say it again, they chose a Québécois who has quite a slight accent to create their samples. I've heard way way stronger accent than that! :)
I'll try some more phrases and will post some if I can hear better results than the average...

[lobowolf14]

Why is everything Quebec? Is Quebec, Canada that much different than Rest-of Canada?

[Twitch]

Why is everything Quebec? Is Quebec, Canada that much different than Rest-of Canada?
Actually it is, québecois is quite different from Metropolitan French (France), and if you learn French in school outside of Québec it is more likely to be Metropolitan. Canada also has the Acadiens which is another French dialect, but it is localised to the Maritimes. From what I been told the French in Québec have the same view and attitude towards French spoken in France as Americans do about English in the UK. I was told by a Québecois why would I want to learn to "parler en cul de poule" when I showed them the brochure for L'Atelier 9 (the school Snatcher studied at).
Here is a Québecois to Français dictionary. Dictionnaire québécois - français (http://perso.orange.fr/fredak/dicoquebec.htm)
Another one, on a page with lots of other Québec info: Dictionnaire québécois/français (http://www.province-quebec.com/dico.php)
A French page on Wiki: Français québécois (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qu%C3%A9becois)
And the English version on Wiki: Quebec French (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French)
Another page in French: Lexique du français québécois (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexique_du_fran%C3%A7ais_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois)
And for québecois swearing: Sacres (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacres)

And according to Wiki in France you might "se gare dans un parking" but in Québec you "se parque dans un stationnement". (In NB Chiac it's "J'vas parker mon car au parking lot.") And noun genders can be different to, like it's une job, in Québec, but un job in France.

And on a side note about Québec being different, the québecois just got declared as a separate nation inside of a united Canada by Parliament. But I always thought of Canada as many nations united to form a Country, so why start to single certain ones out now?

EDIT: some Québecois for your translators: Pantoute! Assisez-vous. À c't'heure. Ch't'un gars patient toé. Ma pitoune. Donne-moi-z-en. Il vente pour écorner les boeufs. Mange pas tes bas! Ayoye, asti!. Y fait frette en câlice! Osti de câlisse, saint-ciboire! I can explain most of those, but I am still learning it myself (câlisse and câlice mean the same thing, just câlisse is spelled differently as an attempt to be less sacriligous than using câlice for swearing).

[aFrenchie]

Twitch, I don't even know that: do all Québécois speak French, and do all Québécois speak English?

[RMJ]

do all Québécois speak English?
I know answer to this for sure. And the answer is: no.

Their only official language is French. We also have Québécois people on AF board.


But anyways, also wiki knows:

uebec is the only Canadian province where French is the only official language. In 2001 the population was: [8]

* French speakers: 82.0%
* English speakers: 7.9%
* Others: 10.1% (Italian 5.2%, Spanish 2.3%, Arabic 1.9%, and others)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec

[aFrenchie]

Thanks for the infos. I was too lazy to search by myself, since there are so many Canadians here :)

[Twitch]

Most English families were forced to learn French in Québec, as when the Bloc Québecois (separatists) made English signs illegal in the province (not enforced since the Bloc left power) they also wanted to close all English schools. But they decided to just require all English schools to teach French to their students, French schools though were not required to offer English classes. So now most of the English people who were living in Québec can now speak French(if you don't good luck finding a job), but most of the French still only speak French. That is generalised but it gives you an idea of what things are like.

EDIT: And the term québecois has come into use by the separatists, as they consider themselves québecois and not Canadian. So the term québecois has political meanings as well, and doesn't necessarily include everybody who lives in Québec. The separatists would argue that Québec's English population is not included. But in that context it is usually la nation québecoise. Like this picture, which is sure to piss of the Canadians, just remember guys it bothers me off too but when you live right on the border you tend to not to brush something like another referendum on Québec sovereignty under the rug. I have been using this forum as a barometer to keep tabs on how strong the separatists movement is, and also to see how much pro Canada stuff I can post before getting banned.
http://forums.laliberation.org/templates/SoftBlue/images/logo.jpg (http://forums.laliberation.org/index.php)

[HibyPrime]

The part of that that pisses me off the most is that they are alienating not only the rest of Canada (obviously), but they are alienating the french in Québec who are non-separatists.. How good of a nation would they be if they alienate their own people?

And on a side note about Québec being different, the québecois just got declared as a separate nation inside of a united Canada by Parliament.

what? when was that?

[Twitch]

what? when was that?
Back in November, here see: 'Your View' (http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2006/11/house_passes_motion_recognizin.html)

And some Just for Laughs footage of comedians from Québec. You might not understand them but it lets you hear the accent.

Jean-Christian Thibodeau
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And others:
Louis-José Houde (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1fvYVg7NQA)
Réal Beland (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyCLyszKwls)
JMP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U5RTdUOGxE)
and well this guy... brigadier (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3rRSGbYfDk)

I didn't watch all of the videos to see the skits were funny but it should let you hear some of the different accents that exist in Québec. Since this is stand up they won't have the polished up speech that journalists and TV announcers would have and it lets you hear more of how French is spoken in Québec.

[Perhonorificus]

Hi guys,

French Canadian Linguistics student here, and one who enjoys Alizée's music (though I was sorely disappointed when I learned she lipsynches so much). The question was "Difference between Québec & French accent"; I believe I can provide somewhat of an answer.

The first major difference is diphthongs (the Alizée FAQ falsely claims that there are no diphthongs in French, which is untrue--they just aren't in France French).

A diphthong, as stated by dictionary.com, is "an unsegmentable, gliding speech sound varying continuously in phonetic quality but held to be a single sound or phoneme and identified by its apparent beginning and ending sound, as the oi-sound of toy or boil." A good Québécois example of this would be the 'a' in "page", which sounds more like "pa-age"--the 'a' here is clearly longer in Québécois than standard French, where all vowels are given equal importance in speech.

The second major difference is affricates, which, too, are non-existent in standard French. Affricates are a transition between some consonants and vowels. In Québec French, they are usually [dz] and [ts] sounds. For example, as a Québécois, I would pronounce "tirer" as [tsirer], and "durer" as [dzurer]. Affricates have a big impact on the way we sound, and are perhaps what makes Québec and French accents sound so totally different at times.

There are other differences, of course, but I believe I highlighted the most prominent ones. Keep in mind I'm no Phonetics buff. Personally, I have no inferiority complexes when it comes to the way I pronounce my words (which is in no way as exaggerated as in the video above): it's easier on the tongue and allows us to pronounce every sound distinctively. With the way the French accent is evolving, it's actually hard to tell apart some of the sounds that are uttered by Frenchmen (the future and conditional moods, for instance, sound extremely similar over there).

[Twitch]

Welcome to the site Perhonorificus :)

I was to lazy to type all of that and I have never studied linguistics at that level so couldn't really explain most of that so I just linked the pages on Wiki that talked about it. Although in the Gaspesian region of Québec, which is the part that borders where I live in New Brunswick, the affricates are not present so we sound closer to international speakers than do most other Quebecers. And being that I learned French as a second language and used it only in school I still sometimes have difficulty understanding Quebecers that use affricates. But my biggest hurdle is simply all the expressions and slang you just don't learn from a book, and there are so many in québecois that understanding the words is just not enough to understand the expressions.

And as for those videos I tried to choose ones with really strong or exagerated expressions to make it easier for the English members to be able to notice the differences. I myself do not sound anywhere like that either, and didn't understand everything that was said in some of them. I still need the nice clear French spoken on the news, either from France or Canada, to really in confidance say that I understood everything.

[Perhonorificus]

Thanks for the welcome. Cool, I'm half Acadian myself, from my mother's side. Very true about people from that region not using affricates!

No accents are better than others, really. It's all a matter of perspective and preference.

[rwd716]

Wtf does all this bs mean? So Quebec isn't actually its own country; rather, Parliament merely stated that they are a nation of people? O Canada! What's going on?

[Twitch]

Actually currently it doesn't mean anything because there were no changes to the Constitution. It is all just words for the moment, basically politians playing politics. But it is not Québec, but the québecois that were declared a united nation inside of Canada. But how are they more a nation in Canada, than say the Acadians, or First Nation tribes, and why not Newfounlanders, they have their own dialect of English. While we're at it should we add the Gaelic speakers of Cape Breton? The list could go on forever because Canada doens't assimilate its imigrants but allows them to keep their cultures(as long as they don't conflict with current laws).

So like I said I have always considered Canada to be a country formed by many united nations, so why start to single certain ones out now? Even residents of Québec don't seem quite sure what to make of it, or who exactly would be considered a québecois.

IMO it is just Ottawa's attempt at stoping the separatist movement by telling them they don't have to leave Canada to be a nation, but in reality the separatists are not going to be sastified by just this and are now going to push for Constitutional changes to make it more than just words.

Québec btw is the only province not to have signed our Constitution, and has laws based on France's Code Napoléon that do not exist in the rest of Canada. Most non separatists in Québec, from what I've heard, view Québec's non signing more as French defiance of the British Crown rather than not wanting to be a part of Canada. And our Constitution still applies to Québec even though they haven't officially accepted it yet.

[Seapaddler]

I've had Metropolitan French speakers tell me that Quebec French has a 200 year old accent and considered old French like we have modern and old English. Their French has been stuck in a time warp while being separated from the Motherland by the big pond all these years.

[Twitch]

Well there is truth to that in that French in Québec was standardized to the King's French back in the 1600's, but after the revolution in France they did away with the King and his French, long before France started to standardize French in France in the 20th century. So that is why a lot of pronouciations and expressions survived in Québec but not in France. But technically the King's French used was a very early modern French, and not Old French (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French), which is very archaic like Old English.

But the Acadians, who never had their French standardized, have an even more archaic pronounciations and syntax than they do in Québec, so much so that I hardly understand them at all (the most pronounced Acadian accents have survived in the lower half of the province, here in the north we are mostly influenced by Québec's pronounciations. But I learned my French in school which was mostly based on Metropolitan French grammar and pronounciation, which is why I am now trying to research and learn the differences between québecois and Metropolitan French).

EDIT: Wiki page on Acadian French (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadian_French)
Notice all the words like: mécordi : Wednesday (Fr: mercredi) or ouâille: yeah (Fr: ouais) and icitte: here (Fr: ici). And one I like to use: chavirer: to go crazy (Fr: devenir fou, folle).

[aFrenchie]

Jean-Christian Thibodeau

And others:
Louis-José Houde (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1fvYVg7NQA)
Réal Beland (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyCLyszKwls)
JMP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U5RTdUOGxE)
and well this guy... brigadier (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3rRSGbYfDk)
Now that's the accent I've heard sometimes and I can tell you that I harldy understand half of what they're saying in those skits! I could understand English almost better than that! :blink:
That's funny how different all those Québécois accents can be, I mean if I compare those with the slighter ones that I can fully understand :confused:
And when I think about the Text to speech link that includes a French speaking Canadian, why did they choose someone who is 100% understandable by a French person? (just a slight accent). Is there some sort of "standard" pronunciation?

[HibyPrime]

Now that's the accent I've heard sometimes and I can tell you that I harldy understand half of what they're saying in those skits! I could understand English almost better than that! :blink:
That's funny how different all those Québécois accents can be, I mean if I compare those with the slighter ones that I can fully understand :confused:
And when I think about the Text to speech link that includes a French speaking Canadian, why did they choose someone who is 100% understandable by a French person? (just a slight accent). Is there some sort of "standard" pronunciation?

It probably has more to do with the speed they are speaking at. The text to speech guy speaks really slowly, while the people in these skits speak really fast..

I know that if I listen to someone with a very thick foreign accent they would have to speak slowly for me to understand clearly.. I'm not sure if it's the same thing you are seeing/hearing.

[Twitch]

Well that is part of it but they do have strong accents, even Perhonorificus, a Québecois, claimed that their accents were stronger/different than his (well at least Jean-Christian Thibodeau). And as to standardization I know each part of the Province has its regional variations like everywhere else, but I don't know if there is a standard for pronounciation.

What I was taught in school in New Brunswick was based mostly on Metropolitan pronounciation, so much so that one of my French teachers explained why we had a hard time understanding some of the local French people by showing us some of the differences. And how words like Pantoute, was a shortened version of Pas-en-toute (Fr: Pas du tout), and the shortened versions with the missing syllables are really hard to understand if you don't actually know them.

For a short while Québec I believe had been 'officially' following France's example in pronounciation and grammar but they have since decided to preserve the unique qualities of québecois, which most people in Québec were still using regardless of any 'official' regulations. Most québecois are proud of the way they speak and are not interested in changing it, about the only thing I heard them want to do is try and remove the anglicizations that have occured over the years.

[Québecois]

I'm new and I'm Québecois so if you have question or anything else just ask me and i'll try to answer

[Kebab]

O_O

I was planning to go to Quebec sometime in the summer to practice my french but I never knew that France and Quebecians had different speech. Tres interessante.

[Azereus]

I live in Toronto so was the french that I was taught in highschool the french which people from France speak or Quebecois french?

[aFrenchie]

I'm new and I'm Québecois so if you have question or anything else just ask me and i'll try to answer
Welcome Québécois! Too bad I can't hear your accent by reading your text :). Ahem, maybe you should speak French for that though :D
So is English only a second language for you too?

[Québecois]

Welcome Québécois! Too bad I can't hear your accent by reading your text :). Ahem, maybe you should speak French for that though :D
So is English only a second language for you too?



Yes English is a second language for me

[Québecois]

I live in Toronto so was the french that I was taught in highschool the french which people from France speak or Quebecois french?


You probably learn the France french

[Québecois]

Québecois french is contraction of France french with a stronger voice
ex: Q Ousse tu va F Ou est-ce que tu t'en va E Where you go

is like English
ex: is not -> isn't I will -> I'll gonna, wanna .....

[Marquis<3Alizée]

Why is everything Quebec? Is Quebec, Canada that much different than Rest-of Canada?

Waaaay different!!!