Quebec French syntax

There are increasing differences between the syntax used in spoken Quebec French and the syntax of other regional dialects of French. In French-speaking Canada, however, the characteristic differences of Quebec French syntax are not considered standard despite their high frequency in everyday, relaxed speech.

Most common distinctive constructions

What follows are examples of the most common distinctive constructions in Quebec French syntax. For comparison, a standard French used throughout la Francophonie is given in parentheses with the corresponding English translation given afterwards in italics. Note that some of the following constructions can also be found in other regional dialects of French such as Acadian French and dialects in Western France.
One far-reaching difference is the weakening of the syntactic role of the specifiers, which results in many syntactic changes:

Positioning of the subject in an isolated syntagm at the beginning of the sentence, with pronouns integrated with the verbal particule :
Increased presence of complex sentences with main or dependent clauses using demonstratives:
Relative clauses using "que" as an all-purpose relative pronoun, or embedding interrogative pronouns instead of relative pronouns:
Loosening of the prepositions traditionally associated with certain verbs:
Plural conditioned by semantics:
The drop of the double negative is accompanied by a change of word order, and postcliticisation of direct pronouns along with non-standard liaisons to avoid vowel hiatus:

Other notable syntactic changes in Quebec French include the following:

In colloquial speech, the verb être is often omitted between je and un, with a t inserted: J't'un gars patient. A t is also often inserted after the second person singular: T'es-t-un gars patient.
Use of non-standard verbal periphrasis:
Particle "-tu" used to form polar questions :
Extensive use of litotes

Pronouns

In daily use, Quebec French speakers frequently use a substantially different set of subjective pronouns in the nominative case from those traditionally used in standardized French:

In common with the rest of the Francophonie, there is a shift from nous to on in all registers. In post-Quiet Revolution Quebec, the use of informal tu has become widespread in many situations that normally call for semantically singular vous. While some schools are trying to re-introduce this use of vous, which is absent from most youths' speech, the shift from nous to on goes relatively unnoticed.
The traditional use of on, in turn, is usually replaced by different use of pronouns or paraphrases, like in the rest of the Francophonie. The second person is usually used by speakers when referring to experiences that can happen in one's life:
As in the rest of the Francophonie, the sound is disappearing in il, ils among informal registers and rapid speech. More particular to Quebec is the transformation of elle to and less often written a and è or est in eye dialect. See more in Quebec French phonology.
Absence of elles - For a majority of Quebec French speakers, elles is not used for the 3rd person plural pronoun, at least in the nominative case; it is replaced with the subject pronoun ils or the stress/tonic pronoun eux. However, elles is still used in other cases.
-autres' In informal registers, the stress/tonic pronouns for the plural subject pronouns have the suffix –autres, pronounced and written –aut’ in eye dialect. Nous-autres, vous-autres, and eux-autres are comparable to the Spanish forms nos and vos, yet the usage and meanings are different. Note that elles-autres does not exist.

Verbs

In their syntax and morphology, Quebec French verbs differ very little from the verbs of other regional dialects of French, both formal and informal. The distinctive characteristics of Quebec French verbs are restricted mainly to:

Regularization
Differentiation
Some expressions that take the subjunctive in standard French take the indicative in Quebec French, or vice versa. This is mostly colloquial spoken usage, since written usage tends to follow the usage of France more closely.

Number

On the other hand, many Quebecers in informal context will decide on the agreement with collective nouns based on semantics rather than morphology. That is to say, for instance, that a verb whose grammatical subject is le monde may appear in the 3rd person plural because le monde designates multiple people although it is singular: le monde là-dedans sont en train de chiâler.