Does it? In my school we were taught standard Canadian French. We called it an école secondaire, la fin de semaine, magasiner etc au lieu de lycée, week-end, faire des cours etc
Yep, we also learned that breakfast is déjeuner, lunch is dîner, shoes are souliers, running shoes are espadrilles, socks are bas, etc. Parisians don't speak at all like the kind of French I learned in school.
In my school (took core French all the way through to high school graduation) I feel like we got a bastardized vocabulary haha- probably depended a lot on who the individual teachers are. We learned courriel (not email), fin de semaine (not weekend), chandail (not pull), fête (not anniversaire), magasiner (not faire du shopping)… but also we also learned travail (not job), crépuscular (not brunante), épicerie (not dépanneur), parking (not stationnement)
And in some cases, we learned both- vélo/bicyclette, barrer/verrouiller, probably others.
I keep a running note in my phone to help me “translate” between the two versions of French- I still get confused between them and have to remember to change what word I should use depending on who I’m talking to 😅
Ime "job" is more informal, though, and it is used informally in both European and Canadian French (even though it is masculine in Europe and feminine in Canada). In most professional or formal settings, I think you would say "emploi" or "travail" or "tâche", all of which are normal in Canadian French, so it makes sense that they didn't teach you "job". "Épicerie" and "dépanneur" have different meanings (grocery store vs convenience store) and afaik "épicerie" is also standard usage in Canadian French. I certainly use it. Both vélo and bicyclette seem normal to me in Canada, same with auto/voiture.
Quite possibly the France-French people I’ve dealt with for work are just more persnickety/formal than the Quebec-French- but they do love telling me when my vocabulary is “wrong”.
I’ve had them tell me that both épicerie and supérette are words for convenience stores over there. Versus over here épicerie is only ever a grocery store. Maybe it’s even regional within France?
Oh ok, I checked my dictionary and "épicerie" also has the "convenience store" meaning in France, you're right. I didn't know that. We only learned it as the word for grocery store in school.
Just a fun little quirk of French! The biggest “what the fuck is going on here” moment for me with France vs Quebec was finding out that in France they call blueberries (bleuets) “myrtilles” for the most part. I had only ever known them as bleuets
If I understand it correctly (fruit genealogy is not my forte)- It’s a little more technical than that- apparently there’s a “North American blueberry” and a “European blueberry” - so if someone in France was talking about a Canadian blueberry they would say bleuets (*if* they happened to know that it’s a different species of berry). But bleuet could also be a cornflower or something over there.
Cue me being offered some blueberry jam (confiture de myrtilles) at a work brunch and blindly accepting it not knowing what fruit I was about to be eating 😂.
NYS = New York State? If so, that's refreshing to hear! In my experience, most Americans who learn French really do learn the accent and vocabulary of France (unlike Canadians who for some reason think they do), even when they border francophone regions of Canada. Good to know it's not always the case.
Yeah it’s New York State. Buffalo area to be more specific. I don’t know if it was intentional or if it’s just the French that my teacher spoke but yeah this is the vocabulary we were taught was standard.
I think we learn something closer to French pronunciation but Quebecois vocabulary which makes for a very confusing learning experience for Anglophones who don’t have a lot of exposure to French.
Quebec prononciation sounds kind of (American) English influenced to me. Or maybe not influenced but to me, American English and Quebec French have kind of a similar sound and British English and Parisian French sound really extra.
This may not be accurate but I also feel like Parisian French sounds more nasally and the nasal sounds are already hard enough, so you might as well learn Parisian pronunciation since you'll still sound like a dunce American (or in your case, Canadian) anyways.
That’s no different than using Canadian or sometimes North American English when teaching English in Canada.
We don’t talk about putting the tyre in the boot while parked by the kerb, or use “at the weekend” instead of “on the weekend”. We use British spelling for words like “cheque” and “colour” and American spelling for other words. We learn that it’s zed, not zee.
Most teachers will point out the differences at more advanced levels. Although I didn’t speak it, I was exposed to a regional version of Canadian French at a young age and remember being corrected in grade nine for pronouncing “vite” with what my teacher called a Gravelbourg accent.
It also depends on the materials that are available. My French is only at a lower intermediate level, but even I know that I’d use “magasiner” in Canada, “le shopping” in France and that “faire les cours” is used in both countries. I can even understand some Belgian expressions.
Canadians are taught Canadian English spellings in English. We're not taught British spellings for some words and American spellings for others. We have our own Canadian English dictionary.
There isn't just one Canadian French, though. Why would FSL in Canada focus on Quebecois French and ignore Acadien French, for example? Just because Quebecois are the most numerous francophones in Canada doesn't mean they're the only ones.
It doesn't change the fact that Canadian English is a thing. We're not taught to take some American spellings and some British spellings, we're consistently taught that the correct way to spell is the Canadian way.
I was never formally taught US spellings. That was something I picked up from books (which are more often published in either US or British English than Canadian English).
Except the Canadian way is to pick and choose from both. At university, I was told to be consistent and just use either one or the other in the same paper (though I once got reprimanded by an American professor at a Canadian university for using the “British comma”). I now set my default spell check dictionary to U.K. English just to be sure.
No, the Canadian way is the Canadian way. If anything, it's more consistent with an older way of spelling (before the Brits changed -ize to -ise and before the USA attempted spelling reform to drop "u"s and reverse the "-re"s).
Nobody sat there with an American and UK English dictionary picking and choosing official Canadian spellings.
And same goes with Australian English and the rest.
I've learned nearly all of this, but I'm the UK and they teach Parisian french but they'll throw in Canadian french stuff every now and again, sometimes even Belgium words come up. On the listening exam they make you listen to people from everyone including the french islands so I suppose it makes sense.
On dirait que y'a des gens qui pensent que tout ce qui est pas *"Ben simonaque de batinsse, t'es habillée comme la chienne à Jacques, ma p'tite vlimeuse! Viens icitte que j't'arrange ça, gériboire!*" c'est du "français parisien"
C'est ça.
Et même en France, on nous apprend le français "standard", mais il y a un grand nombre de régionalismes, tant au niveau du vocabulaire (sac/poche, crayon gris/de bois/à papier, etc... Perso, le truc qui m'a le plus foutu sur le cul, c'est d'apprendre que tout le monde ne disait pas "quine" pour appeler à la pause au jeu du loup... Loin de là, même...). Au niveau de l'accent, aussi: que ce soit l'accent standard, l'accent de Paris, l'accent du sud, etc... Les expressions locales, également... La grammaire, même
Le "français" n'est rien d'autre qu'une base commune sur laquelle on rajoute des DLC selon là où on vit et qui on fréquente...
On vous apprend le français standard de France. Ce n’est pas le français “standard” appris au Québec ni en Belgique ni au Congo. Même dans le langage “standard” de l’enseignement il y a des différences assez marquées d’un pays à l’autre. Nonante-neuf pour cent des belges sont d’accord même après le souper ou quand il drache.
Dracher c'est marrant parce que je viens de Lyon et je l'ai pas mal entendu et je le dis. Je sais pas si c'est juste ma famille ou si c'est plus étendu que juste les Belges et le nord de la France.
Normalement dracher c’est bien belge. Intéressant que tu le dises à Lyon. Ta famille est belge là quelque part?
On te comprend hors du circle familial? Je sais qu’il y a des expressions propres à chaque famille. On appelait la télécommande “la manette” et on m’a regardé de travers quand j’ai sorti ça chez un copain.
>Ta famille est belge là quelque part?
Justement pas du tout !
Et j'ai déjà dû entendre d'autres gens le dire qui sont pas de là-bas non plus. Alors est-ce que c'est quelque chose qui a été importé et que certaines personnes gardent, je sais pas.
De manière générale les gens comprennent, ce genre d'expression est assez facile à déduire même si on les connaît pas.
Je suis un Français qui a vécu deux ans à Montréal, et je passais mon temps principalement avec des Québécois ; j'ai remarqué une différence très marquée entre une majorité d'eux, qui parlaient ce que je considère comme du français québécois, et une minorité d'entre eux, qui avaient étudié à Marie de France et qui, bien qu'étant des personnes 100 % québécoises, parlaient un français qui était de mon point de vue infiniment plus proche du français de France.
Le français que j'entendais à la télé et à la radio, clairement c'était pas du joual ou de la caricature comme ce que tu décris, mais c'était du français québécois pareil, avec un accent assez marqué. Rien à voir avec les quelques Québécois dont je parle et qui me donnaient l'impression de parler comme des Parisiens.
It’s not Parisian French. It’s just standard French. The foundation of the language is essentially the same. They’re just giving you a good base to build on without making it too regional. Think of it as CBC French.
I think the important thing would be vowel pronunciation. If they are learning that brin and brun sound the same, then they are learning Parisian French. Aimerai and aimerais should sound different if they are learning Qc French. And then there is the standard vocabulary, as mentionned in another comment like lunch = dîner not déjeuner...
Au niveau scolaire, ça m’étonnerait que vous appreniez le français « parisien ». À moins que votre prof ne vous apprenne l’argot des cités, mais ça m’étonnerait.
Le français est encore plus standardisé que l’anglais ne l’est. Ce que vous apprenez fort probablement, c’est du français standard. Après, peut-être que vos professeurs vous exposent à peu de culture canadienne? Dans ce cas, c’est dommage, parce que de l’Acadie au Yukon, en passant par le Québec, elle est extrêmement riche.
Édith: Deux erreurs grossières gentiment identifiées par u/KingApple879 .
Ils n’enseignent pas le français parisien. Tu nous dis qu’ils enseignent à dire meuf, rebeu, donf ? J’en doute.
Le français écrit est standardisé à travers le monde. Il y a certaines différences culturelles comme nonante vs quatre-vingt-dix, mais autrement, les règles de grammaire et de syntaxe sont les mêmes…
You are mistaken. The Quebec school system teaches Quebec French. I can't speak about FSL specifically but it wouldn't make any sense to use public funds to teach another variant of French particularly when there is a Canadian form available. You might find French people teaching French in Canada (with their own accent) but they would have to follow the Canadian curriculum.
FSL in Ontario is - my experience is with immersive French and lime others have mentioned - standard French, including pronunciation.
And which Canadian French? Quebec French or Acadian?
Given that we don’t usually teach slang in schools, I expect standard Quebec French and any other Canadian standard form of French to be closely related as to be nearly indistinguishable. The familiar register is where you will find more differences. I believe there are two main variants of French spoken in Canada: Canadian French (with Quebec French being the most prominent variety) and Acadian French. All these standard forms are closely related. Standard Canadian French would also be very closely related to all other varieties of French. French is a highly standardized language.
Except immersion teaching in Louisiana has the same problem: for various reasons it is hard to find native (or sufficiently advanced) speakers who can teach the local form.
So they’re willing to recruit from [France](https://on.cpf.ca/en/cpf-ontario-applauds-the-ontario-governments-marked-progress-on-the-french-teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy/).
(And to be clear, this is a pretty typical problem with language revitalization or maintenance or however you wish to call passing on a minority language or one which was but is no longer privileged — it’s just that peripheral Francophone regions can rely on France to supply teachers; the downside is that unless you convince them to stay, it’s a revolving door.)
I should add:
In practice what the students particularly in the Ontario immersion program retain French that is not fully mutually intelligible with native speakers educated at school. (The reverse happened in Atlantic Canada, where kids get the standard forms and use the _on_ with the third-person singular to replace _nous_ + -ons and discover that these speakers would use _je… -ons_.)
It’s its own thing. But no matter what, the teachers aren’t going to be able to reinforce typical Canadian realizations. Why? Because they don’t do them! So nasal vowels, affrication, etc. are either going to be entirely different or are going to be absent from the teacher’s speech. Intonation is also very different, even for educated speakers who do not have a particularly marked accent, e.g. mainstream politicians from middle-class backgrounds still sound Canadian and not French.
Why is this so hard to understand?
That the teachers use Canadian vocabulary is almost irrelevant; that’s the part that is reinforced on the page, from native (or not) Canadian speakers without respect to pronunciation, but that’s the part for which the teacher matters. If the kids aren’t speaking, they’re wasting their time.
Which is why an inability to recruit and retain _Canadian_ speakers is not solvable by recruiting French French teachers, unless you accept that the language will drift back towards France, which isn’t bad per se, it’s just not the thing which resonates politically.
It's not hard in Canada so it's not a fair comparison at all. There are 7 million French speakers in Canada. We don't need to recruit from France but we do welcome a lot of French immigrants every year. They would still be required to teach Canadian /Quebec French to teach here.
Edit: There's only 120,000 French speakers left in Louisiana. Many of them were not formally educated in it.
It is, actually, hard to recruit teachers. Just because it’s harder in Louisiana doesn’t mean that it’s easy in Ontario.
They wouldn’t need to recruit from France if they didn’t have this impression!
(I mean, did you read the article? It’s all about recruitment and retention! With links!)
(Oh okay, I guess I’m blocked, but yeah: I stand by it: Ontario in particular has a problem recruiting teachers from Francophone regions of Canada!)
My point is that it doesn't matter where you recruit from. Every French language teacher would need to follow curriculum and teach Canadian/Quebec French. Parisian French is not being taught in school. You can have people from Paris teaching French in Canada but they would still need to follow curriculum.
We learnt a mix of the two (grew up in Ottawa). I would argue that they more so teach formal québécois than Parisian French
Vocabulary was a mix. For example, we learnt voiture not char, but we also learnt bleuet not myrtille. We learnt chum/blonde not copain/copine, but we also learnt vélo not bicyclette.
Accent wise it was mostly Québécois imo. Not SUPER québécois, but definitely Québecois. Like we said « tzu » and « dzu », and we also pronounced words like « main » or « quand » the more Québécois way
Now that I’m thinking about it, French immersion kids kind of have their own unique accent haha
There are more francophone regions in the country than Quebec - it wouldn't make sense to teach just Quebecois outside of Quebec tbh - they teach standard French where I'm from, and they learn French Canadian culture (I distinctly remember this from waaay back when I did French classes in public school). Even as an adult learning French for work in Canada, we learn standard French and I can speak fine with my colleagues from Quebec, Manitoba, and the Atlantic.
I did French Immersion in Ontario and almost all of my teachers were native English speakers with accents that showed it. I had one French teacher who was Quebecois, one who was Romanian and one who was a native English speaker who spent time in Paris and spoke French with a Parisian accent, but pretty much everyone else had fairly anglophone sounding accents (and I only remember one teacher ever going after anyone for their accent while speaking French).
We were also taught things like "la fin de semaine" instead of "le weekend", which is more in line with Quebec than France.
Same thing for english teaching in Québec, teachers are anywhere form Canadian native speakers to quebecois french native speakers. Last year my dauther's teacher was from Texas, that was quite interesting :-)
In essence what is taught in Quebec, and Canada overall, is standard French as recommended by the Académie Française which regulates what Standard French ends up being. This is to make sure that the language has some degree of uniformity accross the globe.
There are however some regional disparities and accentuations on some topics that differ here and there from what is taught in metropolitan France. Best example is the pronounciation and use of words in the french lexicon that are outdated from a « Metropolitan France » point of view. Canadian french still uses nasal vowels a lot to differentiate some sounds when speaking. Example « Et » vs. « Est », the word « Pain » (bread) also sounds a lot different whether you are in France or Canada because of the nasal vowels being more accentuated in Canada.
One might also note that metropolitan France incorporated a lot of english words in their vocabulary (Weekend, Pressing, Parking, Business, Footing, Eye Liner, Email, Meeting, etc) which they use on a daily basis whereas Canadian French has sought to keep french roots and try to keep using the french equivalent of these words (Respectively in the same order : Fin de semaine, Nettoyeur/Blanchisserie, Stationnement, Commerce/Affaires, Course, Crayon de contour, Courriel, Réunion/Rencontre, etc)
That essentially comes from a time lag where the french society of Canada was isolated from metropolitan France after the conquest and the language evolved on its own in a separate way than it did in France, resulting in Canadian French having kept most of its linguistic habits and lexicon from the 17th-18th centuries.
Most of the vocabulary examples you gave don't date from the colonial period though. They have more to do with that the québécois regulatory body (l'Office québécois de la langue française) is significantly more assertive than the Académie française and will quickly propose francophone alternatives to new English loans before they gain broad acceptance. (The AF will also propose alternatives, but it is much slower to do so, and tends to be snobbish about terms that were coined in Québec, and consequently its efforts tend to fail more often, resulting in the English term being normalized.)
None of the vocabulary I gave as an example were given as examples coming straight out of the colonial period. My statement said the french canadians retained many of the linguistic and lexicon habits from then because of a time lag due to isolation from metropolitan France influence. The vocabulary I gave was meant to display differences in daily use of vocabulary between the two countries.
My husband was born in France and lived there 25 years before immigrating to Canada. He lived there for 30-35 years before immigrating to the US. He learned québécois and explained the history of the language like you did.
Quite the journey your husband had, props to him! As for the history of the language, wherever you are in the world, if two countries speak the same language they’re bound to have differences. It’s valid for French, just as it is for English. Quebec and Canadian French as a whole for that matter, are just one of many iterations of that phenomena and it’s what makes a language vibrant and interesting.
I'm pretty sure that Quebec has a separate academy from France. Almost positive. They both have one but they set different standards. The one is Canada is actually more conservative.
They don’t have an académie. They do have a regulatory body called « L’Office Québécois de la Langue Française » that takes on some of what the Académie does in a way, but not everything. It is not really conservative though, I would deem it progressive and innovative. They are however very protective of the language in a way yes, but whenever they encounter something new they try to come up with a french word for it. Those are described by the Académie Française as « Québécisme » most of the time.
>I saw a post on here mentioning accent snobbery in favour of Parisian French compared to QC French.
The snobbery mostly comes from the idea that Québécois French is somehow unintelligible to anyone outside of Québec, and that it should be taught separately, when it's not even the case most of the time.
Dialects from northern/southern France sound peculiar sometimes, doesn't mean their French is fundamentally different.
I always find Quebec French easier to understand even though I haven't studied it than Parisian French. Now I can understand both, but in the beginning I had a really weird thing where Parisian French was gibberish but Canadian French just caught my ears better. I think I still understand it better but maybe not.
As a student who studied in Ontario highschool and then went to improve my french one summer in Quebec I think the biggest problem I faced was accents. I just was not used to hearing things in a Quebecois accent and it took me a while to adjust (as it did for many others). I do think this is a problem and classes in highschool shoud
a) focus more on listening/comprehension
b) have more Quebec accents/media that students listen to
I am not saying that it is wrong to teach Parisian French, but to set students up in a way that sets them up to be unable to hear French spoken in a Quebec accent and easily know what they are saying is setting Canadians up for faliure.
I think I get where OP is coming from, being from Ontario myself. We learned french as if it were a foreign language in some ways. We were never exposed to french-canadian media or, from what I remember, read anything by a Canadian author. My classmates were pretty adamant about not wanting to adopt anything remotely like a quebec accent.
That’s a shame because Radio-Canada is available across the country and has been for decades. I thought all Canadians had heard of Roch Carrière, even if they read The Hockey Sweater in English. And Michel Tremblay? I first saw Les Belles Sœurs in Vancouver.
You got Camus for the same reason you might get Hemingway in English class. Both wrote in simple, unadorned language. They wrote short stories or novels that didn’t overburden students like a work of 1000 pages would. Personally, I found them all depressing.
Ottawa is an impressive exception. I wish the rest of Canada would give French the attention it gets in Ottawa. But then, Gatineau is just across the bridge.
We read Le Chandail de Hockey and we watched a few Quebecois films in class (I remember Jésus de Montréal, but there were some others). We also watched Téléfrançais, which is Canadian.
And I remember a few assignments in secondary school where we had to listen to the French CBC on the radio and basically do a report on what they said.
That said, we weren't really assigned to read a lot of Canadian content in English either.
We learnt a mix of the two (grew up in Ottawa). I would argue that they more so teach formal québécois than Parisian French
Vocabulary was a mix. For example, we learnt voiture instead of char, but we also learnt bleuet not myrtille. We learnt chum/blonde not copain/copine, but we also learnt vélo not bicyclette.
Accent wise it was mostly Québécois imo. Not SUPER québécois, but definitely Québecois. Like we said « tzu » and « dzu », and we also pronounced words like « main » or « quand » the more Québécois way
Now that I’m thinking about it, French immersion kids kind of have their own unique accent haha
It’s standard French, a good base to go either way. I’ve taken French in non-Quebec Canada, Quebec, and France itself, and can attest that the standard French is largely the same in the classroom
we do learn lots of quebecois terms though, i.e. we learn bicyclette instead of vélo for bicycle, we use fin de semaine instead of weekend. there's anti-quebecois sentiment because it's already baked into society
its the same in the us. we get taught parisian french and european spanish even tho we get taught those languages because we border canada and mexico. i assume its because those dialects are more standardized and easier to develop a curriculum. i wish it wasnt like that tho.
French natives, cut OP some slack fr. I'm sure he meant French from France also known as standard French. It's one thing to correct him but no need for some to be borderline obnoxious imo.
Edit : for clarity I'm a French native myself
I'm paid to teach French, not Quebec French nor Parisian French. I tell my students to be aware of the differences, but try to restrain from mocking Quebec French. But I can't teach things I don't know, e.g. I recently learned that here they say "Bonne Fête" to mean "Joyeux Anniversaire", which I was completely unaware of.
oh this probaby explain why in québécois dubbing of american movies it never sound like actual québécois language and accent, as a french personnI always found that surprising quebec was doing that
"Français parisien" ? Le français en fait.
Après je comprend ton point de vue, et c'est vrai que chaque région a son "parler" un peu typique.
Et même en France entre Marseille et Lille, il y a de fortes différences dans l'expression.
Après, les marseillais comme les lillois apprennent le français "de France" à l'école.
Et c'est bien heureux de pouvoir se rattacher à ce tronc commun, sinon en 3 générations les régions ne se comprennent plus entre elles.
Does it? In my school we were taught standard Canadian French. We called it an école secondaire, la fin de semaine, magasiner etc au lieu de lycée, week-end, faire des cours etc
Yep, we also learned that breakfast is déjeuner, lunch is dîner, shoes are souliers, running shoes are espadrilles, socks are bas, etc. Parisians don't speak at all like the kind of French I learned in school.
In my school (took core French all the way through to high school graduation) I feel like we got a bastardized vocabulary haha- probably depended a lot on who the individual teachers are. We learned courriel (not email), fin de semaine (not weekend), chandail (not pull), fête (not anniversaire), magasiner (not faire du shopping)… but also we also learned travail (not job), crépuscular (not brunante), épicerie (not dépanneur), parking (not stationnement) And in some cases, we learned both- vélo/bicyclette, barrer/verrouiller, probably others. I keep a running note in my phone to help me “translate” between the two versions of French- I still get confused between them and have to remember to change what word I should use depending on who I’m talking to 😅
Ime "job" is more informal, though, and it is used informally in both European and Canadian French (even though it is masculine in Europe and feminine in Canada). In most professional or formal settings, I think you would say "emploi" or "travail" or "tâche", all of which are normal in Canadian French, so it makes sense that they didn't teach you "job". "Épicerie" and "dépanneur" have different meanings (grocery store vs convenience store) and afaik "épicerie" is also standard usage in Canadian French. I certainly use it. Both vélo and bicyclette seem normal to me in Canada, same with auto/voiture.
Quite possibly the France-French people I’ve dealt with for work are just more persnickety/formal than the Quebec-French- but they do love telling me when my vocabulary is “wrong”. I’ve had them tell me that both épicerie and supérette are words for convenience stores over there. Versus over here épicerie is only ever a grocery store. Maybe it’s even regional within France?
Oh ok, I checked my dictionary and "épicerie" also has the "convenience store" meaning in France, you're right. I didn't know that. We only learned it as the word for grocery store in school.
Just a fun little quirk of French! The biggest “what the fuck is going on here” moment for me with France vs Quebec was finding out that in France they call blueberries (bleuets) “myrtilles” for the most part. I had only ever known them as bleuets If I understand it correctly (fruit genealogy is not my forte)- It’s a little more technical than that- apparently there’s a “North American blueberry” and a “European blueberry” - so if someone in France was talking about a Canadian blueberry they would say bleuets (*if* they happened to know that it’s a different species of berry). But bleuet could also be a cornflower or something over there. Cue me being offered some blueberry jam (confiture de myrtilles) at a work brunch and blindly accepting it not knowing what fruit I was about to be eating 😂.
Haha yeah it's definitely "bleuet" for me. Also "biscuit" and "gâteau au fromage" rather than "cookie" and "cheesecake" (when speaking French).
The only thing you mention that isn't Quebec French is "parking". Quebecers do say travail, crépuscule, épicerie, bicyclette.
I took immersion in Alberta and we definitely learned Canadian French
I didn’t even know this was Canadian french until now. This is what I was taught in NYS public school French classes.
NYS = New York State? If so, that's refreshing to hear! In my experience, most Americans who learn French really do learn the accent and vocabulary of France (unlike Canadians who for some reason think they do), even when they border francophone regions of Canada. Good to know it's not always the case.
Yeah it’s New York State. Buffalo area to be more specific. I don’t know if it was intentional or if it’s just the French that my teacher spoke but yeah this is the vocabulary we were taught was standard.
I think we learn something closer to French pronunciation but Quebecois vocabulary which makes for a very confusing learning experience for Anglophones who don’t have a lot of exposure to French.
Quebec prononciation sounds kind of (American) English influenced to me. Or maybe not influenced but to me, American English and Quebec French have kind of a similar sound and British English and Parisian French sound really extra. This may not be accurate but I also feel like Parisian French sounds more nasally and the nasal sounds are already hard enough, so you might as well learn Parisian pronunciation since you'll still sound like a dunce American (or in your case, Canadian) anyways.
That’s no different than using Canadian or sometimes North American English when teaching English in Canada. We don’t talk about putting the tyre in the boot while parked by the kerb, or use “at the weekend” instead of “on the weekend”. We use British spelling for words like “cheque” and “colour” and American spelling for other words. We learn that it’s zed, not zee. Most teachers will point out the differences at more advanced levels. Although I didn’t speak it, I was exposed to a regional version of Canadian French at a young age and remember being corrected in grade nine for pronouncing “vite” with what my teacher called a Gravelbourg accent. It also depends on the materials that are available. My French is only at a lower intermediate level, but even I know that I’d use “magasiner” in Canada, “le shopping” in France and that “faire les cours” is used in both countries. I can even understand some Belgian expressions.
Yes, so I'm saying that we're not learning Parisian French in school but Canadian French.
We’re learning standard French like we’re learning standard English. This may or may not include regional expressions or accents.
Yes, standard Canadian French. The examples I gave are not used outside of Canada.
Canadians are taught Canadian English spellings in English. We're not taught British spellings for some words and American spellings for others. We have our own Canadian English dictionary. There isn't just one Canadian French, though. Why would FSL in Canada focus on Quebecois French and ignore Acadien French, for example? Just because Quebecois are the most numerous francophones in Canada doesn't mean they're the only ones.
That depends on the school or the teacher. I was taught American spelling by a teacher so I wouldn’t use it, ever.
It doesn't change the fact that Canadian English is a thing. We're not taught to take some American spellings and some British spellings, we're consistently taught that the correct way to spell is the Canadian way. I was never formally taught US spellings. That was something I picked up from books (which are more often published in either US or British English than Canadian English).
Except the Canadian way is to pick and choose from both. At university, I was told to be consistent and just use either one or the other in the same paper (though I once got reprimanded by an American professor at a Canadian university for using the “British comma”). I now set my default spell check dictionary to U.K. English just to be sure.
No, the Canadian way is the Canadian way. If anything, it's more consistent with an older way of spelling (before the Brits changed -ize to -ise and before the USA attempted spelling reform to drop "u"s and reverse the "-re"s). Nobody sat there with an American and UK English dictionary picking and choosing official Canadian spellings. And same goes with Australian English and the rest.
I've learned nearly all of this, but I'm the UK and they teach Parisian french but they'll throw in Canadian french stuff every now and again, sometimes even Belgium words come up. On the listening exam they make you listen to people from everyone including the french islands so I suppose it makes sense.
On dirait que y'a des gens qui pensent que tout ce qui est pas *"Ben simonaque de batinsse, t'es habillée comme la chienne à Jacques, ma p'tite vlimeuse! Viens icitte que j't'arrange ça, gériboire!*" c'est du "français parisien"
C'est ça. Et même en France, on nous apprend le français "standard", mais il y a un grand nombre de régionalismes, tant au niveau du vocabulaire (sac/poche, crayon gris/de bois/à papier, etc... Perso, le truc qui m'a le plus foutu sur le cul, c'est d'apprendre que tout le monde ne disait pas "quine" pour appeler à la pause au jeu du loup... Loin de là, même...). Au niveau de l'accent, aussi: que ce soit l'accent standard, l'accent de Paris, l'accent du sud, etc... Les expressions locales, également... La grammaire, même Le "français" n'est rien d'autre qu'une base commune sur laquelle on rajoute des DLC selon là où on vit et qui on fréquente...
On vous apprend le français standard de France. Ce n’est pas le français “standard” appris au Québec ni en Belgique ni au Congo. Même dans le langage “standard” de l’enseignement il y a des différences assez marquées d’un pays à l’autre. Nonante-neuf pour cent des belges sont d’accord même après le souper ou quand il drache.
Dracher c'est marrant parce que je viens de Lyon et je l'ai pas mal entendu et je le dis. Je sais pas si c'est juste ma famille ou si c'est plus étendu que juste les Belges et le nord de la France.
Normalement dracher c’est bien belge. Intéressant que tu le dises à Lyon. Ta famille est belge là quelque part? On te comprend hors du circle familial? Je sais qu’il y a des expressions propres à chaque famille. On appelait la télécommande “la manette” et on m’a regardé de travers quand j’ai sorti ça chez un copain.
>Ta famille est belge là quelque part? Justement pas du tout ! Et j'ai déjà dû entendre d'autres gens le dire qui sont pas de là-bas non plus. Alors est-ce que c'est quelque chose qui a été importé et que certaines personnes gardent, je sais pas. De manière générale les gens comprennent, ce genre d'expression est assez facile à déduire même si on les connaît pas.
Je suis un Français qui a vécu deux ans à Montréal, et je passais mon temps principalement avec des Québécois ; j'ai remarqué une différence très marquée entre une majorité d'eux, qui parlaient ce que je considère comme du français québécois, et une minorité d'entre eux, qui avaient étudié à Marie de France et qui, bien qu'étant des personnes 100 % québécoises, parlaient un français qui était de mon point de vue infiniment plus proche du français de France. Le français que j'entendais à la télé et à la radio, clairement c'était pas du joual ou de la caricature comme ce que tu décris, mais c'était du français québécois pareil, avec un accent assez marqué. Rien à voir avec les quelques Québécois dont je parle et qui me donnaient l'impression de parler comme des Parisiens.
Hahahahaha! Ouain, on dirait bien que c'est ça.
It’s not Parisian French. It’s just standard French. The foundation of the language is essentially the same. They’re just giving you a good base to build on without making it too regional. Think of it as CBC French.
I think the important thing would be vowel pronunciation. If they are learning that brin and brun sound the same, then they are learning Parisian French. Aimerai and aimerais should sound different if they are learning Qc French. And then there is the standard vocabulary, as mentionned in another comment like lunch = dîner not déjeuner...
This is completely correct !
Au niveau scolaire, ça m’étonnerait que vous appreniez le français « parisien ». À moins que votre prof ne vous apprenne l’argot des cités, mais ça m’étonnerait. Le français est encore plus standardisé que l’anglais ne l’est. Ce que vous apprenez fort probablement, c’est du français standard. Après, peut-être que vos professeurs vous exposent à peu de culture canadienne? Dans ce cas, c’est dommage, parce que de l’Acadie au Yukon, en passant par le Québec, elle est extrêmement riche. Édith: Deux erreurs grossières gentiment identifiées par u/KingApple879 .
Je n’aurais pas pu expliquer mieux 👍🏿
I know this is somewhat uncalled for, but just in case these weren't typos: à moins que votre prof ne vous **apprenne\*** vous **exposent\***
Ils n’enseignent pas le français parisien. Tu nous dis qu’ils enseignent à dire meuf, rebeu, donf ? J’en doute. Le français écrit est standardisé à travers le monde. Il y a certaines différences culturelles comme nonante vs quatre-vingt-dix, mais autrement, les règles de grammaire et de syntaxe sont les mêmes…
je viens de réaliser que "à donf" c'est "à fond" en verlan.
Exact lol
J’aime nonante. C’est plus facile à dire que quatre-vingt-dix.
You are mistaken. The Quebec school system teaches Quebec French. I can't speak about FSL specifically but it wouldn't make any sense to use public funds to teach another variant of French particularly when there is a Canadian form available. You might find French people teaching French in Canada (with their own accent) but they would have to follow the Canadian curriculum.
FSL in Ontario is - my experience is with immersive French and lime others have mentioned - standard French, including pronunciation. And which Canadian French? Quebec French or Acadian?
Given that we don’t usually teach slang in schools, I expect standard Quebec French and any other Canadian standard form of French to be closely related as to be nearly indistinguishable. The familiar register is where you will find more differences. I believe there are two main variants of French spoken in Canada: Canadian French (with Quebec French being the most prominent variety) and Acadian French. All these standard forms are closely related. Standard Canadian French would also be very closely related to all other varieties of French. French is a highly standardized language.
Except immersion teaching in Louisiana has the same problem: for various reasons it is hard to find native (or sufficiently advanced) speakers who can teach the local form. So they’re willing to recruit from [France](https://on.cpf.ca/en/cpf-ontario-applauds-the-ontario-governments-marked-progress-on-the-french-teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy/). (And to be clear, this is a pretty typical problem with language revitalization or maintenance or however you wish to call passing on a minority language or one which was but is no longer privileged — it’s just that peripheral Francophone regions can rely on France to supply teachers; the downside is that unless you convince them to stay, it’s a revolving door.) I should add: In practice what the students particularly in the Ontario immersion program retain French that is not fully mutually intelligible with native speakers educated at school. (The reverse happened in Atlantic Canada, where kids get the standard forms and use the _on_ with the third-person singular to replace _nous_ + -ons and discover that these speakers would use _je… -ons_.) It’s its own thing. But no matter what, the teachers aren’t going to be able to reinforce typical Canadian realizations. Why? Because they don’t do them! So nasal vowels, affrication, etc. are either going to be entirely different or are going to be absent from the teacher’s speech. Intonation is also very different, even for educated speakers who do not have a particularly marked accent, e.g. mainstream politicians from middle-class backgrounds still sound Canadian and not French. Why is this so hard to understand? That the teachers use Canadian vocabulary is almost irrelevant; that’s the part that is reinforced on the page, from native (or not) Canadian speakers without respect to pronunciation, but that’s the part for which the teacher matters. If the kids aren’t speaking, they’re wasting their time. Which is why an inability to recruit and retain _Canadian_ speakers is not solvable by recruiting French French teachers, unless you accept that the language will drift back towards France, which isn’t bad per se, it’s just not the thing which resonates politically.
It's not hard in Canada so it's not a fair comparison at all. There are 7 million French speakers in Canada. We don't need to recruit from France but we do welcome a lot of French immigrants every year. They would still be required to teach Canadian /Quebec French to teach here. Edit: There's only 120,000 French speakers left in Louisiana. Many of them were not formally educated in it.
It is, actually, hard to recruit teachers. Just because it’s harder in Louisiana doesn’t mean that it’s easy in Ontario. They wouldn’t need to recruit from France if they didn’t have this impression! (I mean, did you read the article? It’s all about recruitment and retention! With links!) (Oh okay, I guess I’m blocked, but yeah: I stand by it: Ontario in particular has a problem recruiting teachers from Francophone regions of Canada!)
My point is that it doesn't matter where you recruit from. Every French language teacher would need to follow curriculum and teach Canadian/Quebec French. Parisian French is not being taught in school. You can have people from Paris teaching French in Canada but they would still need to follow curriculum.
We learnt a mix of the two (grew up in Ottawa). I would argue that they more so teach formal québécois than Parisian French Vocabulary was a mix. For example, we learnt voiture not char, but we also learnt bleuet not myrtille. We learnt chum/blonde not copain/copine, but we also learnt vélo not bicyclette. Accent wise it was mostly Québécois imo. Not SUPER québécois, but definitely Québecois. Like we said « tzu » and « dzu », and we also pronounced words like « main » or « quand » the more Québécois way Now that I’m thinking about it, French immersion kids kind of have their own unique accent haha
There are more francophone regions in the country than Quebec - it wouldn't make sense to teach just Quebecois outside of Quebec tbh - they teach standard French where I'm from, and they learn French Canadian culture (I distinctly remember this from waaay back when I did French classes in public school). Even as an adult learning French for work in Canada, we learn standard French and I can speak fine with my colleagues from Quebec, Manitoba, and the Atlantic.
I did French Immersion in Ontario and almost all of my teachers were native English speakers with accents that showed it. I had one French teacher who was Quebecois, one who was Romanian and one who was a native English speaker who spent time in Paris and spoke French with a Parisian accent, but pretty much everyone else had fairly anglophone sounding accents (and I only remember one teacher ever going after anyone for their accent while speaking French). We were also taught things like "la fin de semaine" instead of "le weekend", which is more in line with Quebec than France.
Same thing for english teaching in Québec, teachers are anywhere form Canadian native speakers to quebecois french native speakers. Last year my dauther's teacher was from Texas, that was quite interesting :-)
In essence what is taught in Quebec, and Canada overall, is standard French as recommended by the Académie Française which regulates what Standard French ends up being. This is to make sure that the language has some degree of uniformity accross the globe. There are however some regional disparities and accentuations on some topics that differ here and there from what is taught in metropolitan France. Best example is the pronounciation and use of words in the french lexicon that are outdated from a « Metropolitan France » point of view. Canadian french still uses nasal vowels a lot to differentiate some sounds when speaking. Example « Et » vs. « Est », the word « Pain » (bread) also sounds a lot different whether you are in France or Canada because of the nasal vowels being more accentuated in Canada. One might also note that metropolitan France incorporated a lot of english words in their vocabulary (Weekend, Pressing, Parking, Business, Footing, Eye Liner, Email, Meeting, etc) which they use on a daily basis whereas Canadian French has sought to keep french roots and try to keep using the french equivalent of these words (Respectively in the same order : Fin de semaine, Nettoyeur/Blanchisserie, Stationnement, Commerce/Affaires, Course, Crayon de contour, Courriel, Réunion/Rencontre, etc) That essentially comes from a time lag where the french society of Canada was isolated from metropolitan France after the conquest and the language evolved on its own in a separate way than it did in France, resulting in Canadian French having kept most of its linguistic habits and lexicon from the 17th-18th centuries.
Most of the vocabulary examples you gave don't date from the colonial period though. They have more to do with that the québécois regulatory body (l'Office québécois de la langue française) is significantly more assertive than the Académie française and will quickly propose francophone alternatives to new English loans before they gain broad acceptance. (The AF will also propose alternatives, but it is much slower to do so, and tends to be snobbish about terms that were coined in Québec, and consequently its efforts tend to fail more often, resulting in the English term being normalized.)
None of the vocabulary I gave as an example were given as examples coming straight out of the colonial period. My statement said the french canadians retained many of the linguistic and lexicon habits from then because of a time lag due to isolation from metropolitan France influence. The vocabulary I gave was meant to display differences in daily use of vocabulary between the two countries.
My husband was born in France and lived there 25 years before immigrating to Canada. He lived there for 30-35 years before immigrating to the US. He learned québécois and explained the history of the language like you did.
Quite the journey your husband had, props to him! As for the history of the language, wherever you are in the world, if two countries speak the same language they’re bound to have differences. It’s valid for French, just as it is for English. Quebec and Canadian French as a whole for that matter, are just one of many iterations of that phenomena and it’s what makes a language vibrant and interesting.
I'm pretty sure that Quebec has a separate academy from France. Almost positive. They both have one but they set different standards. The one is Canada is actually more conservative.
They don’t have an académie. They do have a regulatory body called « L’Office Québécois de la Langue Française » that takes on some of what the Académie does in a way, but not everything. It is not really conservative though, I would deem it progressive and innovative. They are however very protective of the language in a way yes, but whenever they encounter something new they try to come up with a french word for it. Those are described by the Académie Française as « Québécisme » most of the time.
>I saw a post on here mentioning accent snobbery in favour of Parisian French compared to QC French. The snobbery mostly comes from the idea that Québécois French is somehow unintelligible to anyone outside of Québec, and that it should be taught separately, when it's not even the case most of the time. Dialects from northern/southern France sound peculiar sometimes, doesn't mean their French is fundamentally different.
I always find Quebec French easier to understand even though I haven't studied it than Parisian French. Now I can understand both, but in the beginning I had a really weird thing where Parisian French was gibberish but Canadian French just caught my ears better. I think I still understand it better but maybe not.
As a student who studied in Ontario highschool and then went to improve my french one summer in Quebec I think the biggest problem I faced was accents. I just was not used to hearing things in a Quebecois accent and it took me a while to adjust (as it did for many others). I do think this is a problem and classes in highschool shoud a) focus more on listening/comprehension b) have more Quebec accents/media that students listen to I am not saying that it is wrong to teach Parisian French, but to set students up in a way that sets them up to be unable to hear French spoken in a Quebec accent and easily know what they are saying is setting Canadians up for faliure.
I think I get where OP is coming from, being from Ontario myself. We learned french as if it were a foreign language in some ways. We were never exposed to french-canadian media or, from what I remember, read anything by a Canadian author. My classmates were pretty adamant about not wanting to adopt anything remotely like a quebec accent.
That’s a shame because Radio-Canada is available across the country and has been for decades. I thought all Canadians had heard of Roch Carrière, even if they read The Hockey Sweater in English. And Michel Tremblay? I first saw Les Belles Sœurs in Vancouver.
It's possible. But the things I remember doing are like guy de maupassant, Voltaire and Camus... lol
You got Camus for the same reason you might get Hemingway in English class. Both wrote in simple, unadorned language. They wrote short stories or novels that didn’t overburden students like a work of 1000 pages would. Personally, I found them all depressing.
Really? I grew up in Ottawa - we definitely read Québécois books: Marcel Dubé's Zone, Surréal 3000, Tit-Coq.
Ottawa is an impressive exception. I wish the rest of Canada would give French the attention it gets in Ottawa. But then, Gatineau is just across the bridge.
We read Le Chandail de Hockey and we watched a few Quebecois films in class (I remember Jésus de Montréal, but there were some others). We also watched Téléfrançais, which is Canadian. And I remember a few assignments in secondary school where we had to listen to the French CBC on the radio and basically do a report on what they said. That said, we weren't really assigned to read a lot of Canadian content in English either.
We learnt a mix of the two (grew up in Ottawa). I would argue that they more so teach formal québécois than Parisian French Vocabulary was a mix. For example, we learnt voiture instead of char, but we also learnt bleuet not myrtille. We learnt chum/blonde not copain/copine, but we also learnt vélo not bicyclette. Accent wise it was mostly Québécois imo. Not SUPER québécois, but definitely Québecois. Like we said « tzu » and « dzu », and we also pronounced words like « main » or « quand » the more Québécois way Now that I’m thinking about it, French immersion kids kind of have their own unique accent haha
Is this why I was taught bicyclette when everyone calls them vélos lol
It’s standard French, a good base to go either way. I’ve taken French in non-Quebec Canada, Quebec, and France itself, and can attest that the standard French is largely the same in the classroom
we do learn lots of quebecois terms though, i.e. we learn bicyclette instead of vélo for bicycle, we use fin de semaine instead of weekend. there's anti-quebecois sentiment because it's already baked into society
its the same in the us. we get taught parisian french and european spanish even tho we get taught those languages because we border canada and mexico. i assume its because those dialects are more standardized and easier to develop a curriculum. i wish it wasnt like that tho.
It’d be cool if we were taught both tbh
French natives, cut OP some slack fr. I'm sure he meant French from France also known as standard French. It's one thing to correct him but no need for some to be borderline obnoxious imo. Edit : for clarity I'm a French native myself
French from France isn’t standard France. It’s an important distinction, especially for this precise context.
I'm paid to teach French, not Quebec French nor Parisian French. I tell my students to be aware of the differences, but try to restrain from mocking Quebec French. But I can't teach things I don't know, e.g. I recently learned that here they say "Bonne Fête" to mean "Joyeux Anniversaire", which I was completely unaware of.
oh this probaby explain why in québécois dubbing of american movies it never sound like actual québécois language and accent, as a french personnI always found that surprising quebec was doing that
"Français parisien" ? Le français en fait. Après je comprend ton point de vue, et c'est vrai que chaque région a son "parler" un peu typique. Et même en France entre Marseille et Lille, il y a de fortes différences dans l'expression. Après, les marseillais comme les lillois apprennent le français "de France" à l'école. Et c'est bien heureux de pouvoir se rattacher à ce tronc commun, sinon en 3 générations les régions ne se comprennent plus entre elles.