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Quebec French, also called Québécois French, is an array of dialects that developed out of early regional French languages; a variety of French spoken by the people of the province of Quebec, Canada.
Although Quebec French is sometimes thought of as an exclusively non-standard variant, and certain aspects of it are sociolinguistically stigmatized, many (perhaps most) aspects of Quebec French that distinguish it from the French of France are found throughout the different registers of speech and writing, including standard and formal usage.
Québécois French is substantially different in pronunciation and vocabulary to the French of Europe and that of France's Second Empire colonies in Africa and Asia.
This is due to the long history of French in Canada, the fact that the 16th and 17th century French immigrants to Canada were largely from areas outside Paris, and the strong influence of the French spoken by the King's Daughters who were of little bourgeois class from the Paris area (Ile-de-France) and Normandy.
Whereas it was 18th century bourgeois Parisian French that eventually became the national, standardized language of France at the time of the French Revolution, the French of the Ancien Régime kept evolving on its own in America. Indeed, the French spoken in Quebec is closer idiomatically and phonetically to the French spoken in Belgium despite their independent evolutions and the relatively small number of Belgian immigrants to Quebec.
There is also the inevitable fact that Québécois French speakers have lived alongside and among English speakers for two and a half centuries ever since the conquest of Quebec by Britain in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Thus anglicisms in Québécois French tend to be longstanding and part of a gradual, natural process of borrowing, whereas the often entirely different anglicisms in European French are nearly all much more recent and sometimes driven by fads and fashions.
Many in France and Belgium do have some problems understanding Quebec French, especially when spoken informally. The difference may be compared to heavily-accented Australian English versus American English (think of the original Mad Max movie).
Quebec television shows and movies, when shown in France and other francophone countries, were sometimes subtitled into European French because of these differences, which sometimes offended Quebecers because they themselves were generally able to comprehend the accents of France and adapted to the heavy use of French argot. More recently, the exposure to Quebec culture has been more common on the old continent and the European ear is gradually adapting to this exotic element.
In general European French speakers have no problems understanding newscasts or other moderately formal Québécois speech. However, they will have great difficulty understanding sitcom dialog (this is much more due to idioms, slang and vocabulary rather than accent or pronunciation). To the extent that sitcom dialog reflects everyday colloquial speech, European French users will have difficulty with everyday colloquial speech of Québécois speaking to one another. However, when speaking to a European French speaker, a Québécois French speaker is perfectly capable of shifting to a slightly more formal "international" type of speech.
The difference in dialects and culture is large enough that Québécois French speakers overwhelmingly prefer their own home-grown television drama or sitcom shows to any shows from Europe. The number of such drama or sitcom TV shows from France shown on Quebec television is about the same as the number of British TV shows on American television outside of obscure cable channels: more or less none at all. This is in marked contrast to English Canada, where every single one of the top TV shows is American (with the sole exception of Hockey Night in Canada), and Canadian English is sufficiently similar to American English that English Canadians can easily pass for Americans. Ironically, about the only time you will hear European French on a Quebec TV screen (other than documentaries) is when watching a dubbed American movie or TV show, since it is rarely economical to produce a second dubbed version in Québécois French for such a small market.
A few go so far as to refer to Quebec French as the "Québécois language" rather than as a dialect of French (for instance, Léandre Bergeron, author of the Dictionnaire de la langue québécoise). However, the overwhelming majority of Quebecers refer to their language simply as "French".
One well-known distinction is a tendency to affricate dental stops before high front vowels and semivowels: the second-person pronoun tu, /ty/ in the French, is /tsy/ in Québécois (n.b.: phonetic transcription in X-SAMPA.)
Québécois also contains a much wider range of vowel allophones than the French of France; for example, the masculine and feminine adjectives petit and petite, /p@ti/ and /p@tit/ in French, are /p@tsi/ and /p@tsIt/ in Québécois. Similar pre-voiceless consonant allophony are to be found with the vowels /y/ -> /Y/, /o/ -> /O/, and /u/ -> /U/.
Long and nasalized vowels in the French of France are often diphthongized in Québécois père (father), /pE:r/ in France, is /pEjr/ in Québécois, and banque (bank), /ba~k/ in France, is /ba~w~k/ in Québécois.
Some diphthongs are tripthongized, such as the suffix -oir: in France /-wax/, in Quebec often /-wQj(x)/.
Older speakers often use a rolled r rather than the fricative used in France and in modern Québécois.
In many cases, an orthographic t that is not pronounced in France will be pronounced in Quebec: /lIt/ lit (France /li/), /fEt/ fait (participle) in some senses (France /fe/), /frEt/ froid, sometimes rendered frette (France /frwa/). There is also /IsIt/ ici (sometimes rendered icitte). These usages are mainly colloquial. On the other hand, the t in but and août are not pronounced in Quebec although they are in France.
Some initial consonants are deleted or reduced: /jœl/ gueule (France /gœl/), especially in the construction ta gueule /tæjœl/ "shut up". Another example is /py/ plus (France /ply/). In the latter case there is a difference in meaning: the phrase y'en a plus can mean "there is more" (il y'en a plus) if pronounced /jãnæplœs/, but the negative meaning "there is no more" (il n'y en a plus) is /jãnæpy/.
Some affixes are found in Quebec more widely than in France, in particular the adjectival suffix -eux, which has a somewhat pejorative meaning: tête -> têteux (stubborn), niais -> niaiseux (foolish, irritating); obstiner -> ostineux (stubborn); pot -> poteux (a user or dealer of marijuana). This is from the Normand dialect.
There are also various lexical differences between Québécois and the French of France; these are distributed throughout the registers, from slang to formal usage.
Many differences that exist between Quebec French and European French arise from the preservation of certain forms that are today archaic in Europe.
For example, espérer for "to wait" (attendre in France).
Cour in Québécois is a backyard (jardin in French), whereas in France cour has dropped this meaning and primarily means a courtyard, plus other derived meanings like courthouse (palais de justice in Québécois).
The word breuvage is used for "drink" in addition to boisson; this is an old French usage influenced by the English "beverage."
The word piastre or piasse, a slang term for a dollar (equivalent to "buck"), was in fact the term originally used in French for the American or Spanish dollar.
The word couple is used in standard French as a masculine noun (a couple, married or unmarried), but in Quebec it is also used as a feminine noun in phrases like une couple de semaines (a couple of weeks). This is often thought to be an anglicism, but is in fact a preservation of an archaic French usage.
There are also words for Quebec specialties that do not exist in Europe, for example poutine, cégep, tuque (a Canadianism in both official languages), and dépanneur (a corner store/small grocery; dépanneur in France is a mechanic who comes in to repair a car or a household appliance).
Blueberries, abundant in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, are called bleuets; in France, they are called myrtilles and bleuet means cornflower. (Bleuet is also slang for someone from the Saguenay.)
There are many idioms in Québécois that do not exist in France, such as fait que ("so"); en masse, en maudit, pas mal (all mean "a lot"); s'en venir (for arriver and venir ici); ben là! or voyons donc! ("oh, come on!").
Speakers of Québécois also use the informal second-person pronoun tu in more contexts than speakers in France do.
The expression "you're welcome" is bienvenue in Quebec, de rien in France; and the expression bonjour can be used for "goodbye" in Quebec, which it cannot in France.
As with any two regional variants, there are an abundance of slang terms found in Quebec that are not found in France. Among them, the best known is the art of sacrer, a form of profanity that uses references to Catholic liturgical equipment, rather than the references to prostitution that are more common in France.
One of the more hazardous differences is the fact that gosses ("kids" in France) means "testicles" in Québécois. (Gosser means "to annoy.") Boules, which means testicles in Europe, means breasts in Quebec.
Some slang terms unique to Quebec:
History
Comparisons
Phonetics
Morphology
Lexicon
Preservation of forms
Quebec specialties
Idioms
Slang terms
| Ben | very | Used informally for "Well...," on both sides. Ben, tu te souviens de cette encyclopédie sur Internet?. It is derived from the formal form Et bien. |
| Bibitte | Small insect | |
| Blonde | Girlfriend | NB, the girlfriend in question could have black hair (or skin!) |
| Bobette(s) | Underwear | |
| Brailler | To weep, to whine | |
| Char | Car | In Europe, a char is an army tank or a chariot. |
| Crosser | To masturbate; to cheat | Crosseur = wanker, swindler |
| Écoeurant | Wonderful | Means dreadful in Europe, a sense also found in Qc. Note, someone calling you mon écoeurant is not a term of endearment. |
| Envoye (enweye) | Let's go, hurry up, come on | Pronounce with a "w" sound, not with "v" |
| Fin / Fine | Nice, sweet (of a person) | |
| Foufounes | Buttocks | Une foufoune (Eu) is an impolite sexual slang word for a vagina. Compare fanny. |
| Le fun | fun, amusing (adjective, not noun, despite the le) | C'est très le fun des jeux pas mal le fun |
| Garrocher | To throw | |
| Jaser | To chat | Slandering chat is Eu., unusual. |
| Pantoute | Not at all | Contraction of pas en tout (pas du tout) |
| Platte | Boring, unfortunate | plat with the t pronounced |
| Poche | stupid | |
| Pogner | get, grab | |
| Quétaine | kitsch, tacky | |
| Tanné | Fed up | |
| Tapper, tomber sur les nerfs | To irritate someone | |
| Se tasser | Move over | S'entasser: to be jammed in together |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Achigan | Black bass |
| Atoca | Cranberry |
| Boucane | Smoke |
| Manitou | Important individual |
| Maskinongé | Muskellunge (a pike) |
| Micouène | Large wooden spoon |
| Mocassin | Moccasin |
| Ouananiche | Land-locked variety of salmon |
| Orignal | Moose |
| Anglicism | Meaning | English word (cognate) |
|---|---|---|
| anyway | Anyway | anyway |
| bécosse | Outhouse, washroom | backhouse |
| bines | Pork and beans | beans |
| chum | Male friend; boyfriend | chum |
| checker | To check | check |
| chiffe/chiffre | A shift [work period at factory, etc] | shift |
| cruiser | Make a pass at | cruise |
| cute | Cute (good-looking) | cute |
| faker | To simulate, pretend (eg, orgasm) | fake |
| fan | A fan (of a band, a sports team) | fan |
| filer | To feel [bad, guilty, etc] | feel |
| flocher | To flush (toilet) | flush |
| flyé | Extravagant, far out, over the top | fly |
| frencher | To French kiss | french |
| fucké | Broken, crazy | fucked up |
| full | Very | full |
| game | Game, sports match | game |
| hot | Hot (excellent, attractive) | hot |
| hotchicken | Hot chicken sandwich | hot chicken |
| match | Match (sports) | match |
| moppe | Mop | mop |
| pâte à dents | Toothpaste | calque of "toothpaste" |
| pinotte | Peanut | peanut |
| party | Party, social gathering | party |
| slacker | slacken, loosen; slack off, take it easy; fire [employee] | slack |
| smatte | Smart; wise-guy; likeable [person] | smart |
| smoke meat | Montreal smoked meat (like pastrami) | smoked meat |
| steamé | Hot dog | steamed |
| tof | Difficult, rough | tough |
| toffer | Withstand, endure | tough it out |
| toune | Song | tune |
| tripper | To be high, to be aroused, to enjoy | trip |
| whatever | (Indicating dismissal) | whatever |
It is also very commonplace for an English word to be used as a nonce word, for example when the speaker temporarily cannot remember the French word. This is particularly common with technical words; indeed, years ago before technical documentation began to be printed in French in Quebec, an English word might be the most common way for a French-speaking mechanic or other technical worker to refer to the mechanisms he or she had to deal with.
It is often difficult or impossible to distinguish between such a nonce anglicism and an English word quoted as such for effect.
There are some anglicisms that have no obvious connection to any currently existing modern Canadian English idiom. For example, partir sur un nowhere (to go on an adventurous trip without necessarily knowing your destination or perhaps even your travel companions).
A number of Quebecisms used in the standard register are also derived from English forms, especially as calques, such as prendre une marche (from "take a walk," in France, se promener, also used in Quebec) and banc de neige (from English "snowbank;" in France, congère, a form unknown in Quebec.) However, in standard and formal registers, there is a much stronger tendency to avoid English borrowings in Quebec than in France.
As a result, especially with regard to in modern items, Québécois often contains forms designed to be more "French" than an English borrowing that may be used anyway in European French, like fin de semaine which is week-end in France, or courriel (from courrier électronique) for France's e-mail or mèl. Some are calques into French of English phrases that Continental French borrowed directly, such as un chien chaud for European French hot dog'\'. Likewise, the word "gay" in the sense of "homosexual" is used in the English form in France, but in Quebec, the spelling gai'' is standard.
Although many (not all) of these forms were promulgated by the Office de la Langue Française (OLF) of Quebec, they have been accepted into everyday use. Indeed, the French government has since adopted the word courriel (although it remains to be seen whether it will come into widespread use among the French public as it has in Quebec).
The perceived overuse of anglicisms in the colloquial register is a cause of the stigmatization of Québécois French. Both the Quebercers and the French accuse each other (and themselves) of using too many anglicisms. A joke runs that the difference between European French and Québécois French is that in Europe, on se gare dans un parking (one parks in a carpark) and in Quebec, on se parque dans un stationnement (you park in a parking lot).
Quebec and France tend to have entirely different anglicisms because in Quebec they are the gradual result of two and a half centuries of living among English speakers, whereas in Europe they are much more recent and result from the increasing international dominance of American English.
See also Franglais.
Here are some other differences between standard Quebecois and European French:
Standard register
Perception
Other differences
| Québécois term | Translation | Meaning of term in Europe | European term | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auto | Car | car (childish or archaic) | Voiture | |
| Abreuvoir | Water fountain | Watering place for animals | Fontaine | Used mainly for animals in Europe |
| Achalandage | Traffic (of a store, street, public transit) | Stock, merchandise (archaic) | Trafic | |
| Aubaine | Sale | Opportunity | Promotion | An item is une aubaine but en promotion |
| Barrer | To lock | To block or to strike through | Fermer à clef, verrouiller | Quebecois usage archaic in Europe |
| Bête | Disagreeable (person) | Stupid | Désagréable, impoli | European usage also used in Quebec |
| Cartable | Binder | School bag, Satchel | Classeur | See also classeur |
| Cédule | Schedule | Tax bracket (archaic) | Emploi du temps | |
| Chandail | T-shirt, sweater, sweatshirt | Knit sweater | T-shirt, pull | |
| Choquer | To anger | To shock | Fâcher | |
| Classeur | Filing cabinet | Binder | Armoire à dossier | See also cartable |
| Correct | Good, sufficient, kind, O.K. | corrected | bon, beau, etc. | |
| Croche | Crooked; strange, dishonest | Eighth note | crochu; bizarre | |
| Débarbouillette | Dishrag | Serviette, torchon | ||
| Débarquer | Get out of (a car, etc.) | Disembark (from a boat) | Descendre | |
| Déjeuner | Breakfast | Lunch | Petit déjeuner | See also dîner, souper. Qc. usage same as in Belgium. |
| Dîner | Lunch | Dinner | Déjeuner | Qc. usage same as in Belgium. |
| Efface | Eraser | Gomme | Gomme is used for chewing-gum | |
| Espadrilles | Running shoes | Rope-soled sandal | Baskets | |
| Être plein | To be full (from eating) | pleine: to be pregnant; also to be drunk (in Belgium at least) | Avoir trop mangé | |
| Fesser | To hit | To spank | Frapper | |
| (ma) fête | (my) birthday | (my) saint's day | anniversaire | |
| Linge | Clothes | Linen | Vêtements | |
| Liqueur | Carbonated beverage | Liquor, liqueur | Soda | |
| Magasiner | To go shopping | Faire des courses, de la lèche-vitrine | ||
| Maringouin | Mosquito | Moustique | ||
| Mouiller | To rain | To wet | Pleuvoir | |
| Niaiser | Annoy, tease, kid, act up | (doesn't exist as a verb; niais="stupid") | Se moquer or (hum) dire des niaiseries | Déniaiser (Eu) is to make a man lose his virginity. J'avais juste vingt ans et je me déniaisais/ Au bordel ambulant d'une armée en campagne (Brel) |
| Patate | Potato | Potato (informal term) | Pomme de terre | |
| Peser | Press (a button) | Weigh | Appuyer | |
| Poudrerie | Blizzard, blowing snow | Gunpowder factory | Blizzard, tempête de neige | |
| Rentrer | Enter | Re-enter | Entrer | In Quebec, "re-enter" is rerentrer |
| Sans-coeur | Lazy | Heartless | Paresseux | |
| Souper | Dinner | Late-night dinner | Dîner | Qc. usage same as in Belgium. See also déjeuner, dîner |
| Suçon | Lollipop | Hickey | Sucette | and vice-versa: a sucette is a hickey in Quebec |
| Valise | Trunk of a car | Suitcase (also in QC) | Coffre | |
| Viaduc | Overpass | Long highway bridge, for instance over a valley | ||
| Vidanges | Garbage | Act of emptying | Ordures |
Many, but not all, of the European equivalents for the words listed above are also used or at least understood in Quebec.
In general, standard spoken and written Québécois uses the same grammar as the French of France, though there are isolated exceptions. There are many differences in informal grammar: for instance, some words have a different gender than in standard French (une job rather than un job), and some expressions that take the subjunctive in standard French take the indicative in Quebec French, or vice versa (bien qu'il est trop tard rather than bien qu'il soit trop tard). This is mostly colloquial spoken usage, since written usage tends to follow the usage of France more closely.
There are a few differences in verb structure. For the verb s'asseoir (to sit), the conjugation with eoi is much more common in Quebec than ie or ey; je m'asseois instead of je m'assieds, assoyez-vous instead of asseyez-vous. Also, the verb haïr usually is conjugated as j'haïs /Zai/ (the verb has two syllables) rather than je hais /Zœ e/ (the verb has one syllable).
In Quebec, it is common to say Fais-toi-z-en pas rather than (ne) t'en fais pas (don't worry, don't get upset).
In colloquial speech the verb être is often omitted between je and un(e), with a t inserted: J't'un gars patient.
The particle tu is often in colloquial usage when asking a question of someone. There is no translation, the particle merely serves to "engage" the listener colloquially:
The preposition à is often used in possessive contexts, where the French of France uses de; le char à Pierre ("Pierre's car") instead of la voiture de Pierre.
In a number of cases, Quebec speakers prefer to use the preposition à instead of using a non-prepositional phrase with ce ("this"); for exammple à matin or à soir instead of ce matin and ce soir ("this morning" and "this evening"). Note also à cette heure, sometimes spelt asteure (literally "at this time") for maintenant ("now").
These usages of à are considered colloquial (non-written).
In colloquial speech, the combination of the preposition sur + definite article is often abbreviated: sur + le = sul; sur + la = su'a or sà; sur + les = sès. Sometimes dans + un or dans + les is abbreviated to just dins.
Formal Québécois also has a very different approach to non-sexist language than the French of France. There is a much greater tendency to generalize feminine markers among nouns referring to professions. This is done in order to avoid having to refer to a woman with a masculine noun, and thereby seeming to suggest that a particular profession is primarily masculine. Forms that would be seen as highly unusual or stridently feminist in France are commonplace in Quebec, such as la docteure, l'avocate, la professeure, la présidente, la première ministre, la gouverneure générale, and so forth. Many of these have been formally recommended by various regulatory agencies.
Also, rather than following the rule that the masculine includes the feminine, it is relatively common to create doublets, especially in polemical speech: Québécoises et Québécois, tous et toutes, citoyens et citoyennes.
In fact, a union in Quebec, rather than use either professionnels (masculine only) or professionnels et professionnelles (masculine and feminine), decided to promulgate an epicene neologism on the model of fidèle, calling itself the Fédération des professionèles [1]. However, this sparked a fair amount of debate and is rather on the outer edge of techniques for nonsexist writing in Québécois French.
On the other hand, in informal speech, some feminine markers are lost; for example, the pronunciation y (derived from ils) is often used for both ils and elles (the third person plural masculine and feminine pronouns).
Québécois has a variety of registers, ranging from formal Québécois, strongly influenced by modern European French and with phonological features softened, though still vigorously preserving many Quebec traits, to joual.
Significant regional differences exist when comparing, for example, the Québécois of Montreal, Quebec City, and the Saguenay. For example, Montreal Québécois diphthongizes in more contexts than Quebec City Québécois.
Québécois is the most prominent variety of Canadian French, and most French-Canadians have similar dialects. However, the Acadians have a separate dialect, Acadian French. See also Michif.
Québécois has often been stigmatized, among the Quebecois people themselves as well as among the Continental French and anglophones, as a low-class dialect, sometimes due to its use of anglicisms, sometimes simply due to its differences from European French, seen as a standard. However, some writers and thinkers, especially Michel Tremblay, are trying to improve the image of Québécois and promote its use as a distinct and vigorous language. In Europe, Québécois is seen as a very charming language that is sometimes difficult to understand.
Grammar
Verbs
Particle tu
Prepositions
Non-sexist usage
Lects
Reference work
