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Quebec French or Québécois French is a dialect of French spoken by the great majority of people in Quebec. It developed out of 17th and 18th century French and in many respects it resembles it more closely than contemporary France French, although it also includes elements of various provincial dialects and oïl languages.
In Quebec, depending on one's perception of its status as a rightful dialect, the language may be called le français québécois, le franco-québécois or simply le québécois.
Although Quebec French is sometimes thought of as an almost exclusively non- standard variant, and certain aspects of it are sociolinguistically stigmatized, most aspects of Quebec French that distinguish it from the French of France are found throughout the different registers of speech and writing, including standard and formal usage.
Two similar but nonetheless distinct dialects tend to be confused with Quebec French. Those are Saguenay French , spoken in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, and Gaspésie French , in Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine .
Main article: History of Quebec French
Quebec French is substantially different in pronunciation and vocabulary to the other varieties of French spoken throughout the world, just as Portuguese, Spanish, and English language of the Americas are with respect to European dialects. However, in the case of Quebec French, the separation was increased by the reduction of cultural contacts with France after the Conquest of New France by Great Britain in 1759. The French RevolutionThe period of the French Revolution in the history of France covers the years between 1789 and 1799, in which democrats and republicans overthrew the absolute monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church perforce underwent radical restructuring. While France wo and its aftermath have substantially altered the French spoken in France, while Quebec conserved older forms.
Although Quebec French constitutes a coherent and standard system, it has no objective norm since the very organization mandated to establish it, the Office québécois de la langue françaiseThe Office quebecois de la langue francaise (Quebec Office of the French language) was established on March 24, 1961 along with the Quebec ministry of Cultural affairs. Its mandate was enlarged by the 1977 Charter of the French Language, which also establ, believes that objectively standardizing the dialect would lead to reduced interintelligibility with other French communities around the world, linguistically isolating Quebecers and possibly causing the extinction of the French language in the Americas.
This governmental institution has nonetheless published many dictionaries and terminological guidelines since the 1960s, effectively allowing many Québécismes (French words local to Quebec) that either describe specifically North American realities or have been in use before the Conquest, and creating new, morphologically well-formed words to describe technological evolutions to which the Académie françaiseThe Academie francaise (French Academy) is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Academie, limited to forty members, has the task of acting as an official authority on the language, even though it has no enf, the equivalent body governing French language in France, was extremely slow to react.
The effect, other historical factors helping, is a negative perception of Quebec French traits by Quebecers themselves, coupled with a desire to improve their language by conforming it to the Parisian French norm. This explains why most of the differences between Quebec and France French documented in this article are marked as "informal" or "colloquial". Those differences that are unmarked are most likely so just because they go unnoticed by most speakers.
Interintelligibility of formally and informally spoken Quebec French with France French is a matter of warm debates between linguists. If a comparison can be made, the differences between both dialects are probably larger than those between AmericanAmerican English or US English (en-US according to RFC 3066) is the diverse form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. It is the primary language used in the United States. According to the 1990 census, 97 percent of U., British, and AustralianAustralian English is the form of the English language used in Australia. Differences from other variants of English Australian English is similar in many respects to British English but it also borrows from American English. For example, it uses truck in English, but not as large as those between HighHigh German (in German, Hochdeutsch please note that Hochdeutsch is also used to refered to today's standard German) is any of several West Germanic languages spoken in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Luxembourg (as well as in neighbouri and SwissSwiss German Schweizerdeutsch Schwyzerdutsch Schwiizerdutsch Schwyzertutsch is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland. The term Hochdeutsch (High German) or Schriftdeutsch is, in a Swiss context, often reserved for Standard German, which is i German.
Television programmes and films from Quebec, when shown internationally, often must be subtitled, which some Quebecers receive as an offence although they themselves sometimes can hardly understand European French pronunciation and slang. Recent raises in reciprocal exposure are slowly improving interintelligibility though, and slang expressions have even been crossing the ocean in both directions.
In general, European French speakers have no problems understanding newscasts or other moderately formal speech. However, they will have great difficulty understanding for example a sitcomA sitcom or situation comedy is a genre of comedy performance originally devised for radio but today typically found on television. Sitcoms usually consist of recurring characters in a format in which there are one or more humorous story lines centred aro dialogue. This is much more due to idioms, slang and vocabulary rather than accent or pronunciation. To the extent that sitcom dialogue reflects everyday colloquial speech, European French users will have difficulty with everyday colloquial speech of Quebecers speaking to one another. However, when speaking to a European French speaker, a French speaker from Quebec is perfectly capable of shifting to a slightly more formal "international" type of speech.
Quebec's culture has only recently been discovered in Europe, especially since the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille), and the difference in dialects and culture is large enough that Quebec French speakers overwhelmingly prefer their own home-grown television drama or sitcom shows to any shows from Europe. The number of such drama or sitcom TV shows from France shown on Quebec television is about the same as the number of British TV shows on American television outside of obscure cable channels: more or less none at all.
Quebec French was once stigmatized, among Quebecers themselves as well as among Continental French and foreigners, as a low-class dialect, sometimes due to its use of anglicisms, sometimes simply due to its differences from European French, seen as a standard. Until 1968, it was unheard of for Quebec French vocabulary to be used in plays in the theatre for instance; however, in that year the huge success of Michel Tremblay's play Les Belles-Sœurs proved to be a turning point. Today, francophones in Quebec have much more freedom to choose a "register" in speaking, and characters in TV shows invariably speak "real" everyday language rather than "normative" French. In Europe, Quebec French is rediscovered as a very charming variety of French that is sometimes difficult to understand: vous entendre parler, c'est comme une chanson (hearing you speak is like hearing a song).
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