Can An Italian Understand Canadian French?
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- So How different is Canadian French from France French? Let's check it out!
Links to the original creators, check them out!
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Canadian French (French: français canadien) is the French language as it is spoken in Canada. It includes multiple varieties, the most prominent of which is Québécois (Quebec French). Formerly Canadian French referred solely to Quebec French and the closely related varieties of Ontario (Franco-Ontarian) and Western Canada-in contrast with Acadian French, which is spoken by Acadians in New Brunswick (including the Chiac dialect) and some areas of Nova Scotia (including the dialect St. Marys Bay French), Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland & Labrador (where Newfoundland French is also spoken).
In 2011, the total number of native French speakers in Canada was around 7.3 million (22% of the entire population), while another 2 million spoke it as a second language. At the federal level, it has official status alongside English. At the provincial level, French is the sole official language of Quebec as well as one of two official languages of New Brunswick and jointly official (derived from its federal legal status) in Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Government services are offered in French at select localities in Manitoba, Ontario (through the French Language Services Act) and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in the country, depending largely on the proximity to Quebec and/or French Canadian influence on any given region. In New Brunswick, all government services must be available in both official languages.
Dialects and varieties
Quebec French is spoken in Quebec. Closely related varieties are spoken by Francophone communities in Ontario, Western Canada and the New England region of the United States, differing only from Quebec French primarily by their greater conservatism. The term Laurentian French has limited applications as a collective label for all these varieties, and Quebec French has also been used for the entire dialect group. The overwhelming majority of francophone Canadians speak this dialect.
Acadian French is spoken by over 350,000 Acadians in parts of the Maritime Provinces, Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands, the Lower North Shore and the Gaspé Peninsula.[2] St. Marys Bay French is a variety of Acadian French spoken in Nova Scotia.
#canadian #french #quebec
Metatron... Quebec French is definitely not the same as other parts of Canada. Acadian French (which is mostly in modern-day New Brunswick, but you can find it throughout Atlantic Canada - Nova Scotia and PEI) might be worth a look. The corruption of the word Acadian gave the USA the word Cajun for Louisiana French, which is where a huge number of Acadians were deported to by the British in the 18th Century.
''Quebec French'' is Canadian French, Acadian French is just that: Acadian French. They are named according to what region of New France (Canada, Acadia, Lousiana) they were part of, ''Canada'' being Quebec.
@@rpoutine3271 Québec is not all of canada. All provinces have many french speakers and if you listen to the french canadian translated disney movies that is a bit more similar to what i would call french canadian in general. It is a neutral accent but there are many dialects included in canada and québec dialects are included of course. Just within Québec there is a large variety of dialect depending on the region. Louisianna is not french canadian anymore ahah it is cajun from the usa many acadians fled to Louisiana but they were not the only french influence i believe and it is very different from acadian french.
@@natypataty196 You don't understand. ''Canada'' is the true name of the province of Quebec, which was taken by the Anglos in what is now Ontario... Then it became the name of the dominion and then the whole country, which then expanded West.
The true Canadian French is very old and barely spoken in public now, as an accent it isn't neutral, it has a rolled R, it is less nasal, uses words that were found over a thousand years ago et cetera... It sounds much closer to Middle French.
Cajun French is still Louisiana French, the French that is spoken somewhere in the Maritimes is still Acadian French and refered as such. Acadia and Louisiana aren't Canada, all three were distinct regions in New France, Canada was the region that is now the ''province of Quebec''.
@@rpoutine3271 no i understand that Québec was once the whole settlement but that was a very long time ago. You can't say it's the same now. Even people in québec do not speak old french canadian which was technically old french from france anyway. Today french canadian is not only québec french since québec is a mere province among many in Canada, no quotation marks needed it has been that way for a long time. French canadian is made up of several dialects which includes acadian french and chiac and the many different accents in québec itself. We are all one country let's not pretend québec and acadia are seperate from canada even tho there are some differences in culture and dialects there is always such cases in every country. Culture and dialect varies in each country depending where you go. In fact many countries have even larger differences in culture and dialects often they have different languages and even religion depending on the region. So really in Canada it's not that much of a difference in culture. All french in canada today is French Canadian unless it is a french speaker immigrating from another country then their french would be from whatever country they came from. However we translate movies in a neutral accent which is similar to many french canadians accents and i would say it is the more generally presented standard of french canadian. Same how the USA would have it dubbed in a neutral american accent even though they have many english dialects who are all considered an american accent. Just because québec used to be all of canada and the french spoken there at the time was. THE french canadian does not mean it's the same today. Things evolved as time passed and the country grew larger and so did the diversity in french speakers. Therefore i don't think it is accurate to insinuate that french canadian is québec french and that all other french is not and it's their own thing like acadian french. It's all Canada, not new france that time has passed long ago now it is canada the country with 10 provinces and 3 territories.
@@natypataty196 Yes I can say it, it is simply the truth, what was stolen still belongs to its rightful owner. Now you guys basically call us ''Territory of Quebec city'', our land doesn't currently have a real name because it was appropriated, stolen, just like our national hymn.
When it comes to the French language it is just how it works. French from the Maritimes isn't ''Canadian French'', but ''Acadian French''. The Prairies' French, Canadian French and Acadian French are three distinct dialects/accents. ''Quebec French'' doesn't exist because Quebec is a city with an accent identical to its surrounding region.
Please do Louisiana cajun French next.
you don’t wanna open up that can of worms mate
I like their rolling R sound
Nice video! If I may comment, being from Québec, I believe that the second person that was interviewed was actually french (from France) but took a quebec accent after being here for a while... it sounds a bit ''hydbrid-''. Also, we actually consider ourselves ''less sophistiated'' than people in France, this is what the guy said the interview. I am not a linguistics expert, but my understanding is that our french is indeed closer to ''older'' french. The main reason would be that the french academy has been ''modernising'' french over the past centuries. However, when quebec was conquered by the british, we had to cut our ties with France, so we kept a more ''traditional'' french, while it was still evolving in France. Now, with the Internet, we have more acces to foreign french accents and it is getting easier to understand each other, after being exposed to it. Also if I may reommend an other french acccent, I would suggenst the acadian or even the ''chiac'' accent! It can be challenging even for us!
They were imitating the French accent to some degree. Also, we are not speaking the French of ''old times'' anymore, we spoke Middle French 100 years after it was gone from France itself... but we are speaking modern French with a slight bit of our Middle French accent, the accent changed alot starting from the 70s, before that it really did sound old.
There are some things in Quebec French that are closer to 17th century French but it changed a lot on it's own being influenced by English. At the beginning, a lot of settlers spoke different dialects from France since being from different parts of France, mainly Brittany, Poitou-Charante and Normandy. what connected them was the arrival of Les Filles du Roi, who spoke the Île-de-France French and permitted communication between families. In any case, there are some regional accents that anyone speaking proper French would have a very hard time understanding since the accent is ''à couper au couteau''. You can spot Quebec accent easily when they pronouce T ''TS'' and D ''DZ''.
Et vous comprenez tous les parlez régionaux aux Québéc ? Qu'en est-il du Cajun ?
@@CT-7567R3X
Oui, sans aucun problème par habitude. Le Cajun est compréhensible à part quelques mots ici et là.
@@doswheelsouges359 Personnellement je dois tendre l'oreille pour le cajun mais je comprends 80%. Quant au français du Québec il est bien plus compréhensible qu'avant. Je me regarde quelques 'une de vos séries et youtubers sans aucun probleme.
Like you said, we quebecois have integrated more english patterns but whe also kept some old french patterns.
Check out on diphtongue, we still have this difference in common with french Belgium and french Switzerland (but we kept more).
Also, you are right at the end, she still has a quebecois accent.
I wouldn't really say Quebec is bilingual, it's more so that Montreal is bilingual
I think New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province.
@@corinna007 Yup you are right
But for most people (even in Montréal) The Quebec province as a whole is Montréal
Parts of Montreal...still pretty easy to find a neighborhood where no one will help you unless you speak French. They learn English like Americans learn Spanish: it's taught, but you still have to want to learn, or you'll never get confident.
@@senbonzakurakageyoshi662 Montreal is like a whole different place closer to Boston than the rest of Quebec, it is far too metropolitan or cosmopolitan to be a good exemple of what Quebec is.
He should try Chiac
@Metatron there is a reason why Québecois is acclaimed to be the older version of French, pronunciation wise, and it is Old French. Speaking of which, you should check out Old French!
Oh man, I was excited for this one. I'd love see you go deeper into this. If you go into expressions and the way we talk, sometimes even european french don't understand it. We do understand them a bit better, at least people from my generation, since most old french dubs for movies often came from there. So we have an edge.
Hey just want to say i've been a big fan of both of your channels for many years now and being from Québec myself i was really glad to see you react to my native language and i cant wait for the next time you look at it.
I noticed that many of the videos you watched were mainly from Montréal and in that city they tend to have a more international accent compared to the rest of Québec and the accents change a lot from city to city and even within the same communities, personally like many others i tend to use more of a rolled ''r'' and there are many vowels that change being pronounced more deeply or longer, of course this all depends on region or the way people's family speaks.
I would suggest to look at more rural accents or at least out of Montréal if you want the ''true'' Québec accent.
Anyways loved the video and hope you continue to make great content like this for many years to come.
5:39 No, he said people in Quebec were less sophisticated than the people in France, not more. 😂 (I'm from Montreal Quebec.)
Another interesting difference between the French in Quebec and the French in France, besides the "in" vs "en" sounds, is that in Quebec people say "tsu" instead of "tu", which makes Quebec's French closer to the Japanese つ than France's French.
(Sorry, I shouldn't have paused the video to write a comment before watching it until the end. 😅)
Two things, please do the history video and check out more Quebec
I live in Ottawa, Ontario, which is across the river from the province of Québec. I studied Parisian French before I arrived in Canada (I'm not proficient, though), and one thing that I thought that I noticed about Ontarian French (less on Québec French) was that the Rs sound more rolled to me. I'm Brazilians and I'm used to that harsh h-sounding r, so I guess that I'm more thrown-off when a language has really rolled Rs. The Ontario French, to me, feels like it incorporates some English sounds (to my very untrained ears). Also, the French here has a lot of Catolicism-related curse words that I don't recall learning when I was studying European French, but it's not like the Alliance Française focuses on teaching you how to curse in French. Maybe they do use those words a lot in France as well, I can't be sure.
Metatron.... The French language in Canada originated with mostly rural French immigrants about 200 years ago and has been on a separate evolutionary path from their homeland ever sense. Because of the isolation of the French Canadian communities multiple strains of the language have also developed. French Canada has a very passionate attachment to their language and tend to be devastated when they visit Paris and are sometimes laughed at because of their accent. A Paris partner of mine once described the language as French spoken with an American accent.
And if you really want to dive down the insane French Canadian language rabbit hole..... try out "Joual."
More like 400 years ago.
I like that there are features of archaic northwestern France 'langue d'oil' dialects (Berry, Poitiers, Anvers, Normandie), like the grammatical pattern [ (pronoun) (verb) - tu? ] to ask a yes/no question: Il marche-tu? (does it work?), T'es-tu là? (Are you there?)
You should try Acadian French, or Saguenay or Gaspesian accents. You could even try Chiac!
8:39 im from quebec and i swear when you said "direct" it sounded like 100% quebecois
wooooww Metatron the way you said directe in canadian french sounded too much québécois😂
Hello Metatron. I got talking to an attractive Irish looking lass in Vancouver and I realised she was a French speaker. I asked in my school learned French about her looking Irish. She explained that some Catholic Irish had settled in Quebec, where their religion was the majority. I wonder if this had a similar effect on Quebec French as on American English?
After initially thinking I was getting on really well with her, I reminded myself how friendly Canadians were and that the language made no difference. I realised that she was just being polite.
Funny that years later my girlfriend, despite having a Yorkshire accent like mine, is half Irish by ancestry.
For a video of Yorkshire French, see "Ripping Yarns" episode "Eric Olthwaite".
THERE WE GO!!!!
You should try Louisiana French or Louisiana Creole.
should come over and have a taste at a cabane a sucre
Yeessseesssssss enfin!! Trank you metatron!
It feels like listening to the intonation of Brazilian Portuguese from European Portuguese
It was not really a good test I would say. The people interviewed in the video were very carful to speak in a high register tant was close to standard French. I'm a linguist born in Quebec City and I lived in Montreal for 13 years and I can say that nobody really speaks like that naturally even in urban areas. Maybe politicians and university professors in formal contexts. There are also many differences in regional prononciation and some rural accents and dialects are difficult to understand without training or exposure.
I don't think the palatalisation of /t/ and /d/ in [ts] and [dz] before high front vowels is due to the influence of English. It is quite common in Romance languages as in Brazilian Portuguese for example. For French in eastern Canada some accents like Gaspésie and Acadie don't have it. For European French it varies a lot in prononciation and intensity.
It is right that the prononciation of the French dialects spoken in North America is quite conservative compared to the dialects in Europe. We kept the distinction in quality of many vowels that was lost in Europe. We also kept some distinctions between vowel length that was also lost in most of Europe. We also kept some old lexicon and grammatical structures that were lost in Europe due to greater standardization efforts.
As for the innovations, we can note that some speakers now diphthongize the long vowels and the nasal vowels, and also the palatalisation of /t/ and /d/ before front high vowels.
On the other hand, in Euro Portuguese there is an additonal vowel sound commonly used for non-stressed 'e', which is extremely rare in Brazilian Portuguese - the high central vowel /ɨ/...
I am an Italian who has lived in Montreal for 70 years . The accent that is used in Quebec is the accent used in France in the 15 & 16/century in the north of Quebec there is a mixture of Acadian and 16 century French.
Poutine is pronounced poo-tsin as well!
How about doing Cajun French.
The gentleman in the jean jacket is completely wrong. The reason why French Quebecers still retain the pre-French Revolution accent and lexicon is because those living in the abstract nation of La Nouvelle France became the subjects of the British Empire after the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Contact between the citizens of the territory that became known as Lower Canada and France was severed. It was only about two centuries later that contact between the territory known as Quebec and France was reestablished. The French accent in France, particularly Paris, shifted from the one spoken by nobles to the one spoken by the less educated Bourgeois. In Quebec, we retained the accent of 'la noblesse' due to the geographic location and our lexicon evolved due to the alliance of our French ancestors and inter-marriage with the people of the first nations of Huron-Wendat, the Algonquin, Ottawa and Ojibwa. Another example of how location, geographic isolation, politics and war influenced the evolution of a nation's language is that of Iceland and Norway. The language spoken in Iceland is closer to that of the Norwegian spoken pre-13th Century than the one spoken in Norway. Thank you for reading!
Canada was populated by largely working class French often from the north west and west of France. It remained the language of the working classes, cut off from France, with English the language of the ruling elite. It absorbed many English words such as becosse and braker. Incidentally, the word stop came from French, not vice versa. The French standardised their language around the Parisian dialect, and had an elite who imposed their language on everyone especially with the arrival of radio and then TV. In about 1850, half the French didn’t even speak French, they spoke a language close to Catalan. And some spoke Breton of course. Quebec is, like America, less formal compared to Europe, whereas France is quite centralised and formal. Quebec favours the informal register, with vous indicating plurality, or sometimes respect towards another person. Tu is used more than vous with strangers. I heard a native French speaker from Manitoba, his accent was strange, not unlike the Louisiana accent. Maybe that is very old French, or anglicised.
20th episode of this series
Please do one for Talian
Bienne développé c'est SA prononciation, elle anticipait peut-être une voyelle après bien. Beaucoup de ces gens ne sont pas nécessairement des francophones de naissance.
Quebec isn't really bilingual. French is the majority language and most people outside of the Montreal area and the area close to Ottawa really don't speak English all that much. Many really just don't at all, especially among older people. Still far higher than the rest of Canada.
One thing I know about Quebeckers is they're anglophobic.
Not really Romance but maybe you could tackle Basque...?
This girl cannot pronounce French properly at all. The stress is ALWAYS on the last syllable in French. And the "e" at the end of a word is ALWAYS silent.
So if she lives in Quebec, she sures stayed on the English speaking side of the street and someday imagined she could speak French.
In my opinion the problem is that she pronounces the words to slowly. This often results in an unnatural pronunciation. I don't think she would sound like this when talking at normal speed.
Entendo melhor latim do que qualquer versão do francês.
as a french speaker, same thing for portuguese
Try Asturian.
Because English and French are both official languages here in Canada, I had to study French in school, but I dropped it as soon as I could because the classes were useless, and therefore I forgot almost all of it. 😅 But if I read it I can still kind of figure out some things.
Every and any language is useful to learn.
@@doswheelsouges359 I said the classes were useless, not the language. The classes were just the same repetition over and over with no real conversational speech.
Can an Italian understand the Klingon language?
It’s a complex topic but what’s important to note is that in the 17th and 18th centuries, France was far from a linguistically homogenous place. The people that formed the Acadian settlements on the east coast (where I grew up) sounded more Latin (rolled Rs and so forth) while Quebec was peopled with northerners whose pronunciations were closer to Germanic in nature. But in any case, the people’s French changed massively following the revolution and Parisian became the standard. In Canada, the language did not remain frozen in time (jean jacket guy has it wrong - it’s not even the same as in the 1950’s) but it has conserved elements from the first settlers though as I mentioned, they were a pretty diverse bunch, speaking different French dialects as well as Breton, Poitevin, Basque and others.
If you want a real treat, listen to Acadians specifically from Clare county in Nova Scotia. That’s a bona fide linguistic time capsule.
Most of the early french colonists who arrived in Canada during the 1600’s had departed from La Rochelle France.
@@jokester3076 I’m not sure about the proportions. Most Acadians sailed out of La Rochelle but my ancestors and most québécois sailed out of northern ports, like Brest.
@@marcgauthier6894Brest is west. Okay, a bit northwest I’ll admit. But yeah, very different regional culture from Southwest La Rochelle.
Never mix up people from Brittany with people from Normandy, that’s a friendly advice 😅
Hello! I’m super happy that you are interest by the Québécois french! There is a thing that were not mentioned in the video; don’t you know that in Québec we kept some sound that don’t exist anymore in métropolitain french. For exemple :The " circonflexe" accent( ê,ô,â) or the sound "un" that in Europe they pronouce "in" and in Québec we pronouce"un".
Rolled Rs aren't "more Latin".
All French dialects and even most Germanic languages used to have rolled Rs until at least the 18th century.
Even today the most conservative Germanic languages and dialects have rolled Rs.
It's Normandy influence, therefore more Germanic, perhaps, not necessarily an Anglicization. Probably both.
If you want to hear other french-canadians' accents, there's the acadians of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia (and Louisiana), that have a similar accent to Québec but seem to not have the ''ts'' and ''dz'' in front of vowels.
I've been waiting for this one😁. Thank you for posting this video. I've been living in Montreal for 11 years now and people do tend to say that it's an old french. Having english speaking provinces and states(U.S) all around I'm sure it was influenced by it same as France french has german influence. The further you go up north the more it gets difficult to understand. 😂 Montreal being a cultural meting pot, immigrants arriving in thousands every year it's hard to hear the true quebec accent. If you go to Gaspesie or even Lac St-Jean area that is where you'll hear it at it's finest. Even now after all this time I still have difficulty understanding accents from those areas. Last year I've been to Gaspesie and same issue, but the people where so nice they just switched to a more literal prononciation and I could understand them just fine.
Great video!! As a native French speaker from Quebec, I can speak to a few things you touch upon during the video, though I am no expert. Most people you heard in the video had a Montreal accent, which is closer to a French accent. However, just like for other languages, there is a big difference between urban and rural accents, and French in Canada (or even Quebec for that matter) is no exception. Although they are not dialects, some urbanites from Montreal will have a hard time to understand someone from the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.
Anyhow, usually, people from Quebec will be able to understand people from France very easily, but the opposite is not always true. Quebecers tend to mumble a lot, while a Parisian French will try to pronounciate each syllable very clearly. Also, in Quebec, we will often drop the last syllable if there is an "e", while a Parisian French will pronounce it. The prounouciation of numbers is also different, and there are some words that are written differently (e.g. yogourt in QC vs yaourt in France). Lastly, an often remarked difference between QC and France is the way we swear hahaha. The words we use to swear in QC are pretty unique and are words from the Church (that's a big topic to big for the comment section).
And by the way, the guy who talked about being sophisticated was saying that people from France are more sophisticated. ;) He is not entirely wrong because the higher echelon of society left Quebec after the English occupation during the 7 years wars. It took many years to build back educated French speakers, and the catholic clergy played a big role in preserving French in Canada. Finally, I would also like to remark that most of the French settlers who left France in the XVII and XVIII century to go to Canada were from Normandy (about 70%), and it is therefore normal that Quebec french is different than the Parisian variety.
3:28 Yes! Since they have been isolated from France, Canadian French still kept most of the features 17th century (if I'm not mistaken) French had before France decided to rebuild the way the language was spoken. It is very nasalized and, for example, they do not pronounce "merde" like you would expect, instead they say "MAARDE" in such an aggressive and unique way (sometimes the R is thrilled, too, when they emphasize it - but I do hear lots of equivalent phonemes they use interchangeably throughout their speech, and sometimes you can even hear a retroflex R being used in words such as "un" [sounds like "ar"] or "vieux" [sounds like "veeur"]; words like "future" [sounds like "fut-zaar"] and "nature" [sounds like "nat-zaar"] also presents a very unique phoneme that is basically a mix between the retroflex R and some other very nasalized vowel I don't even know. Nasal vowels such as "vent" sound like "væn", for instance - and they do have more sound variations that help identify different words that no longer sound distinct from one another in European French (a good example is "maître" and "metre"; European French speakers will pronounce them the same way - maybe just with the exception of the Belgians).
You did comment on the way they say "bien", and yes, they really pronounce it in a completely different way: sometimes I hear "bien" like she said it (closer to Spanish) and sometimes they pronounce it like "ben" (closer to Portuguese). You can notice how different their vowels are when they pronounce words like "NON" (it sounds like the Portuguese "não", which also means the same thing - it is unbelievable). Of course, depending on whether or not they care about being understandable for foreigners, they will try to imitate the European accent as much as they can (which is the accent used in the news, radio, television, etc). And I think the accent is also most widely known because of the way they tend to pronounce "moi" as "moé" (or "toi" as "toé" and so on); you can notice LOTS of differences in the way they speak, change vowel rhythm and everything - it's basically what British English is to American English! It's the most interesting variety of a language I know. Also, I love it how they use Catholicisms as swear words ("tabarnak", "ostie", "viarge", "ciboire", etc) - maybe one of the few language varieties that does not use anything sexually related to swear.
This thing is like a whole new version of French, hahaha! Most French speakers would never understand someone who speaks Canadian French unless they try to reduce their accent and slow down a bit - it sounds very, very, or even extremely old-fashioned for other French-speaking countries. Foreigners often say it sounds like a "Wild West" variety of French, or French as if it were spoken by an Australian or something similar (at least from what I've heard).
Since 1756
Canadian French and Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation is very similar. Both are very conservative with the sounds and that’s probably why they sound similar in some ways.
@@pertinaxtheroman6972Thank you! I still do not know much of it, so I might have said something incorrect, but I'm often searching about it, it's very fascinating the more you hear it.
Contrary to what you hear, Canadian French did not keep most of 17th century French but some of it. It did not change as much as metropolitan French. Also, it is heavily influenced by English in a different way metropolitan French is. To my surprise, in the last 20-25 years, metropolitan French integrated some of the same Anglicism as Quebec French in their vocabulary.
"Hostia" is a very common swear word in Spain
TABARNAK CRISSSSSSSSSSSSS
HAHAHAH! CALISSE!
ESTII D'CRISS
"Tabarnak de Tabarnak de Tabarnak !" - Bob Graton
t'a parke ou ton p'ti char
😆@@sunshinegurl3632
Pour les affriquées tsu/dzi, je vois que la vidéo aborde le sujet plus tard. Il ne s'agit pas probablement d'une influence de l'anglais pour plusieurs raisons:
1) les parlers du Nord de la francophonie ont des affriquées (djudge en normand qui donnera la prononciation du juge en anglais, ou aider en normand qui peut donner [ed͡ʒi] et amitié [amit͡ʃi]). Voir aussi catch en anglais qui provient (encore) du normand cachier [chasser en francien] et dont l'origine est captiare en latin.
2) l'acadien n'a pas ce trait, c'est particulier au québécois. Or l'acadien a subi encore plus d'influences de l'anglais que le québécois à plusieurs égards.
Lire "Qu'est-ce que tsu dzis?" sur Internet
17th century French in Quebec encountered the same phenomenon as 17th century English did in the rest of Canada and the American colonies.
Both languages became isolated from Europe, and maintained a lot of elements that were lost in UK English and Metropolitan French.
Even more than that! Canada stayed part of Britain, and America continued to be fuelled by english speaking immigrants for a while, so some connection was maintained across the anglosphere. Whereas Quebec was isolated from the rest of the francosphere more.
I don't know if this is true. First of all because you are isolated it does not mean you cannot have a strong development. Also France in Europe is much more isolated liguistically from any other language than Quebec is. French is basically the sole language of the country of France but surely the situation is not the same in Quebec. It is in "danger" of being strongly influenced by English. Whether that IS the case I don't know but I would say that they could have kept some elements for sure but there is no reason why it also lost some other elements that are still alive in France.
@@Serenoj69
It is true. For a certain period of time after the conquest, French-Canadians were totally isolated. It kept some 17th century quirks but less than some are pretending. It evolved on it's own with heavy English influence. It just changed a bit less than metropolitan French which was academically overhauled between New-France conquest and modern times.
Metropolitan French derives from the language that was used in tribunals. In absence of microphones, every word had to be pronounced and articulated clearly. It was that kind of French that was imposed in schools after the Revolution. It lead to the disappearance of many phonemes. In Metropolitan French, an "A" is always pronounced the same way. In Québec, we have at least four ways to pronounce it, depending on the accents used or its position in a word: a (normal a), à (very open and short), â (longer and sometimes pronounced as Latin "au") and at the end of words it's very closed and sounds almost like "awe" in English. We have four distinct nasals: an, on, in, un. In France, "in" and "un" are pronounced the same way. In France, the circumflex accent (^) has almost no effect on pronunciation. In Québec, there's a huge difference between "tache" and "tâche", or "bette" and "bête". We also use many diphthongs (sometimes even when not warranted). That "phonetical richness" may explain why our variety of French is harder to understand, even when we use a formal register. And then you have to add differences in vocabulary and some "archaisms" (which are still very modern to us), which make things even harder.
"in" and "un" are not pronounced the same. That's mostly a Parisian thing.
The distinction between patte and pâte also still exists in some regions.
Although I have to agree that your accent/dialect is most likely one of the more preserved.
@@ataraxieabrutissante267 Yes, but isn't "Metropolitan French" a Parisian thing? Because there are many accents in France, and I wouldn't call the French spoken in Marseilles or Lille "Metropolitan French".
@@Xerxes2005Not really, Parisian is really its own thing and accent is very distinctive from « metropolitan French ». Real Parisian accent is actually becoming rare because Paris is a city inhabited by people from all over the country. In Metatron’s video where he reacts to « metropolitan » French there’s a moment where a guy with a moustache really speaks like a stereotypical Parisian. I lived in Paris for 30 years and I never heard someone speak like that outside of old « polars » movies from long before the 80s.
« Metropolitan french » is more a kind of « common ground » version of French which is not exactly representative of how every individuals in the country speak.
It’s like when I visit Montréal, I can’t honestly say that everyone speak with the same level of accent. Some are so thick you could cut them with a knife, others are barely noticeable.
If the idea was to be clear, they did a bad job. There are so many different words that sound exactly the same. And btw yes, I think the women explaining the difference in pronunciation had quite an accent when she said words in ‘standard french’.
Bella serie, complimenti; ti suggerisco di provare con il francese della louisiana, che non ha la r moscia, e con il corso (della corsica), molto simile ai dialetti italiani centro meridionali. Un saluto.
I do have an anecdote about Canadian French. I'm French myself, and a few years ago, I went to Montreal for a couple of weeks for work, along with 3 colleagues (a German, a Spaniard and an Italian). In Montreal, we met with a French speaking guy in the company, who was not from Montreal, but from a different part of Canada, closer to the Atlantic coast, if I remember correctly. I don't know exactly where he was from.
Anyway, this guy naturally started to speak with me in his mother tongue... French. The problem is... I could barely understand anything. I could pick some words here and there, sometimes a bit more, but it was, like I was listening to a different language, similar enough so that I could pick some words, but not close enough for me to understand what he was talking about.
It was very embarrassing, because he obviously spoke French, I was the foreigner (Frenchman in Canada) and I didn't want to hurt his feelings, as a proud French-speaking Canadian.
Fortunately, I found a solution. As we were supposed to work as a team, I told him that we should speak only English, so that my other colleagues could follow the conversation and not feel rejected. He agreed, his English was perfect, and I could understand him way better in English than in French.
So there are definitely French Canadian accents that are almost unintelligible to us, French, but I never had any problems understanding people originating from Montreal, or Québec city. Yet, there are a number of words and expressions that are completely unfamiliar to the French, and it can sometimes feel very difficult, but overall, apart from slang and regionalisms, these French varieties are basically 95% identical. It can take a little time to get used to it, but there's definitely no language barrier between us.
And I should add that Canadian French speakers are much more exposed to Parisian French than we are to Canadian French. It's easier for them to understand us, than for us to understand them. I think it's also the case for French speakers from different countries all over the world.
😮 Puzzling to me : Why are so many people from France 🇫🇷 using "sur" so much ? "Je vais sur Paris au lieu de à Paris, vers Paris, aux environs, ou On est sur un jaune au lieu de c'est un jaune, etc. It evacuates so many conjunctions. Do they even realize it 😮 ?
@@joannegosselin810 I fail to see how this is related to the video or my comment, but yes, "Je vais/monte/descends sur Paris/Lyon/Bordeaux" is quite common. Concerning colors (on est sur un jaune), I've heard it from time to time, but it's much rarer, and usually comes with a nuanced explanation of why it's this color rather than this one. You wouldn't point at a color and say that… you would quite simply state the obvious "c'est (un/du) jaune". It also sounds a bit pretentious.
* Je vais à Paris : the most common, by far
* Je vais vers Paris : usually said when you are currently doing it, and you tell it to someone on the phone for instance.
* Je vais aux environs de Paris : you don't say that (unless very specific reason to say it), but you can say "ça se trouve aux environs de Paris".
* Je vais sur Paris : sure, we say it. Why? I don't know. Languages evolve in mysterious ways, sometimes.
Of course, this is all much more nuanced than that, some things you can only say appropriately under some circumstances and not others, but that's way too complicated to be debated in a UA-cam comment. I'm sure there plenty of counter-examples to go against what I said. That's a generic response.
@@welchomestudio I like your comments, knowledgeable and nuanced . Thanks
@@welchomestudio I think the "Sur Paris" bit is more military in nature, like "March on Paris" is like an army approaching Paris.
I guess the people interviewed are toning down their accent when hearing the interviewer is French, because their Quebec accent is way less strong that what you can often hear.
Something you will notice with spoken Canadian french (written Canadian french is very similar to metropolitan french) is the frequent use of contractions for words. For example, "Je suis allé" becomes "ch'tallé", and "Je ne sais pas" becomes "ché pas". The same applies for pronouns, "Il y est" becomes "Yé" and "Elle est" becomes "Eille". Additionally, while speaking, you will see Canadians omit the "ne" in negative phrases. For example a Canadian would say "Dit moi pas ça" rather than "ne me dit pas ça".
Omitting 'ne' is pretty much universal in modern French
It sounds like the people in the region of Pas-de-Calais (Calais, Lens, Lille), they generally speak with the sound "Ch", more in the rural zones. That's why they are called "Ch'timi", a patois close to the Picard variant of Langues d'Oïl.
Same in France French, besides "chui allé" instead of "chtallé" (that would be the contraction of "j'étais allé" in France)
@@sieheRueckseite we say chui allé more than chtallé depending on regions
@@tibsky1396also see Jersey and other Channel Islands French . They have this too
Louisiana French would be an obvious next test.
Oh bin tabarnak!
Esti calisse!
I would love to see you reacting to Galician!
It’s not that much that we metropolitan were more « sophisticated », but our French evolved with a wider diversity of neighboring other languages influences : UK English, Spanish, German and of course Italian too. Canadian French always had only one real main « competitor » influence : North American English.
Those differences are not specific to French. Every language evolved a bit differently in America from their European counterparts. It’s even possible that there’s a similar pattern for those differences. I don’t think that has anything to do with the level of sophistication of the population.
3:50 to answer your question , No that guy has no clue what he is talking about, Im from Quebec and Ive had the chance of reading old registries of agricultural Seigneurs ''Lords'' from the 17th century back when I was studying the establishement of the first agricultural hubspot in the Saint-Laurent and the fench they spoke is barely understandable, so from my point of view, the french language as always and constantly changed from both Europe and Canada. Especially for writting.
In all fairness as you have touched upon quebecois, please twist yours ears around Louisiana cajun french.
You will surely enjoy it.
We sure as hell do next door in SE Texas.
(And no, most of us have no idea what they're saying, but it sounds so nice to hear)
If you have ever heard the hymn 'Amazing Grace' in cajun, you know what I'm talking about.
Louisiana French , straight French not Kouri Vini or various Patois , is similar in that it its base is 16-18th century French. Of course after the French defeat in the Seven Years War also known as the French and Indian War here many Acadians were forcibly evicted from Quebec and Nova Scotia some moved to Louisiana. Of course Louisiana already had its own Creole culture, many Creoles were smugglers and Pirates that raided British and Spanish shipping, like the famous John Lafite.
Notice how the guy actually pronounced "English" in the way that English-speakers would, instead of "anglais"? The Quebecois may politically resist loanword intrusions, but they are not immune!
"Joual" is what it is called. The accent is very funny to my ears. Some seem to adjust their speach (second one) to their French interviewers. The accent here is not strong at all. The first one was better.
The young guy to my mind indeed said that they are speaking the original language. Now the fun thing, with Portuguese the same happens. Brazilians say the same. And when it comes to Spanish I read that a teacher told his students they speak the "pure" Spanish and that was also in America (Argentina or so)....Would this all be true? Or is this a way to validate your own accent over the one spoken in the originating countries?
What I note as a Portuguese is that here, we talk about Quebec French and Standard French. While in Portuguese we get this (to me tiresome) Brazilian Portuguese vs European Portuguese or even Portuguese Portuguese...It is not accepted when a Portugese would say his Portugese is the standard variety. To my mind it would be a lot easier to just talk about Quebecois, Francois, Brasileiro and Portugues. Since all these varieties are only spoken in the specific countries. There is not Brazilian accent in Portugal nor is there are Quebecois accent in France.
As a french canadian what I heard about the origins of our accent.
When america was discovered there were french settlers. It was before French Revolution. In france french wasn’t standardized. The settlers came from anywhere from france. They were obligated to standardize the NA french so everyone will understand each others.
There were wars with england. The last war was won by england. And north american french colonies were conquest.
So the link with france was cut. Our frenchs evolved in a parrallel way. When French Revolution occurred lots of things changed drastically which include france french and accent.
So our quebec french looks more like old french with English influences
Occitan
Many of the i sounds in Québecois sounds almost like the Turkish ı (the i without the dot), being pronounced much less pointy than in standard French. For my ear that is the most distinct difference.
one of the guys from the easyfrench video said people in france were more sophisticated which explains why it evolved there and not in quebec. obviously he lacks linguistic formation because the language has evolved on both sides of the ocean, just not on the same aspects.
also, being sophisticated (or rather thinking of oneself as sophisticated, which implies distancing oneself from those who are seen as unsophisticated) mostly applies to the ruling classes, and he misses the fact that in a bilingual context, there are more chances for the ruling classes speaking another language altogether, not just a different sociolect, as was the case in metropolitan france (with the exception of regional languages such as basque, breton, corsican, alsacian, flemish, arguably the regional romance languages and romance dialects...).
in the end, contemporary standard metropolitan french has evolved not only because of the sheer will of the ruling classes, but also due to broader socioeconomic factors such as paris being the political and demographical center for more than two centuries, massive immigration from the other french (and colonial) regions to the parisian region, different social structures and interactions between local sociolects, the heavy losses of ww1 (which probably helped mix the different local accents even more), the impact of other neighboring languages and cultures (mostly english due to our history, but it's not necessarily the same english and the same relation to english as in canada), and so on...
I want you to try the channel "ma prof de françaos". She speaks colloquial quebec french, or "l'histoire nous le dira" for more "standard" french with the quebec accent
Belgian french next ? Also polynesian french (Tahiti for example) might be really interesting
Louisiana/Cajun French 🇺🇸
You should have put the Fleurdelisé instead of the Canadian flag.
I'd love to learn the Quebecois French because I like to read much poets and artists from there, Quebecois accent, but my ear isn't as fine to grasp the many vowels and consonants of the French language. Certainly something similar happens to me with English, I have to read the pronunciation or otherwise I don't really grasp the subtleties in names.
It's surprising how Quebecois sounds alot like the dialects spoken in the Swiss canton of Jura. That old lady absolutely reminds me of Grandmi and her friends.
It wouldn't surprise me if Quebecois French was more conservative of some form of French from the 17th or 18th century. From what I've seen, there is a common trend that European languages spoken in the Americas tend to be more conservative than their European counterparts
The affication of T and D is not from english, it's from French dialects, and it is still used in France is some regions in northwestern France.
The accents here were rather mild, as far as Quebec accents go, so you might have noticed more linguistic elements with stronger accents. It's always great to see how enthusiastic about all these languages and accent!
😅Ah ben tabarouette! 👍👍
That 't' and 'd' difference is one that I had never noticed in Québec French. Merci!
To me there's also a difference in the "i" sound sometimes, for instance when she pronounces "type". To my ears it's closer to the ı in Turkish, or to the i in the Friulian word "mandi", since you know that. The "a" also sometimes sound like a very open "o".
By the way, I'm native Italian, (actually Friulian is my mother tongue), but I'm fluent in French, having been living in France for basically half my life. Unlike those appearing in your videos, some people in Canada speak variants of French that are totally unintelligible to me. Unfortunately I cannot find any exemples on the web. In this video (ua-cam.com/video/mn-ABXpYTts/v-deo.htmlsi=1N-aAf1eDVbmsBTf) they speak with a "stronger" accent, though.
You should have used the Québecois flag instead of the Canadian one, to be honest.
I lived 3 years in montreal, I like their French accent more
As a french canadian from Montreal, funny enough i live exactly where they shot their video, i can 100% compare quebec french with all the italian dialetti. While in school we learn 'proper' french which would be considered like in france. We definately have our own slang, accent, and regionalisms. In more recluded regions of quebec, their accent can be very different from a region to the other, honestly i think just like in italy. Historically, i think it did have a correlation with the different social classes, immigration influence ( not so much immigrants elsewhere than montreal for instance ), francophones from elsewhere in canada than quebec have their own accent and dialect, the acadians being the perfect exemple. Quebec people have an identity crisis, so we're both attached with our european roots, but also heavily influenced by our neighbours the americans. All that to say, ever since i'm in relationship with an italian girl and learning italian language and culture, i can totally compare this to italy, and i have a better understanding of why the state of french is like this here in quebec. Thanks for the great content always, really usefull for an italian language student : )
Most languages that are "isolated" from its main counterpart tends to be more conservative while the old region encounters a change in its accent and vocabulary. A good example is that of American and British English. 18th century English was spoken with an accent close to modern American. The "London" accent originates in the late 19th century. Another good example is Icelandic. Norwegian, its mainland cousin, has been influenced by Danish and Swedish but Icelandic and Old Norse are still mutual intelligible.
But even American English sounded different in the 19th century
That’s misleading. Some accents kept some older features of English English of the time. But overall, the accents that sprung forth were different in the Thirteen Colonies
Pas de S à la fin de mots (ici), du moins je ne l'ai pas entendu.
Mais il y a des cas de consonnes finales prononcées en québécois mais plus en français hexagonal : bout (boutt'), froid (frett'). Mais l'inverse existe aussi, la graphie est la même au Québec qu'en France mais en Québécois certaines consonnes finales ne se prononcent pas : un char neu (neufff en France), un our (un ourss en France), le scorbu (mais le scorbuttt en France), etc.
Il a dit le contraire : moins sophistiqués que les Parisiens, mais c'est un anglicisme dans ce sens (sophistiqué en français, c'est TROP recherché).
Mais la raison du changement est plutôt que ce sont les bourgeois parisiens qui ont imposé leur nouvelle prononciation à la Révolution et que la prononciation de la noblesse (proche des Québécois) est alors tombée en désuétude. Louis XVI est le dernier rwé (roi prononcé à l'ancienne, comme au Québec) de France, Louis XVIII premier rwa (roi prononcé comme les bourgeois de Paris, la façon moderne) des Français [et plus Françwé].
Ya juste les vieux et les arrèrer qui disent encore un "our" pour dire un ours!
As a quebecker.
Merci pour cette vidéo .
By gods! He's running out of latin languages!!
beyond overjoyed with this. this is the french of my mother's family. this is the french I grew up with my memere, peperee, tantes, ocles, and cousins. love, love, love this.
5:20 He said the opposite of what you said at 5:40
Pour moi cette forme de langue est très charmante, parce qu'il est plus mélodique mais répétitive. C'est une pointe moyenne entre métro et cadien. Je vivre dans michigan et quand j'écoute francais en vivre c'est québécois
Oui, la prononciation du québécois est plus proche de l'ancienne prononciation, il y a un livre sur le sujet ("D'où vient l'accent des Québécois ? Et celui des Parisiens ? : Essai sur l'origine des accents, Contribution à l'histoire de la prononciation du français moderne" de Jean-Denis Gendron).
Myth . Y'a qu'à écourter les enregistrements des années 50 et 60 .
As a Spanish speaker, I understand this variety much more.
The older the French, the easier it is.
@@tylere.8436 I've noticed
Yes she has still an accent when she say the words in international french
The pronounced Ns at the end of syllables are velar, not alveolar. They're the ones that germanic languages spell as -ng. All western romance languages (including northwestern Italian languages, iberian languages, and french galloromance languages) replace all coda Ns with velar Ns, which is probably part of the reason why standard french and portuguese have turned them into a nasalisation of the preceding vowels
Try Louisiana French
In Brazilian Portuguese some people say “tipo” as “chipo” I see similar sounds between the two languages. 😁
@@pertinaxtheroman6972 Yeah Paulista accents are more similar to Canadian French both have strong nasal vowels kkkkk
Do an episode on French Canadians
Next : do Haitian creole
At 5:23 he's saying that the people that stayed in Québec was less educated because we were more busy building a civilization, where it France it was more upgrading it!
France french lost a few sounds like “” and “IN”.
Canadians pronounce “” like “AW” while French keep it as a normal “A”
You should try listening to XQC (French Canuck Overwatch player) speaking in English.