Quebec French
Quebec French, also known as Quebecer French or Quebecker French, is the predominant variety of the French language spoken in Canada. It is the dominant language of the province of Quebec, used in everyday communication, in education, the media, and government.
Canadian French is a common umbrella term to describe all varieties of French used in Canada, including Quebec French. Formerly it was used to refer solely to Quebec French and the closely related dialects spoken in Ontario and Western Canada, in contrast with Acadian French, which is spoken in some areas of eastern Quebec, New Brunswick, and in other parts of Atlantic Canada, as well as Métis French, which is found generally across the Prairie provinces.
The term joual is commonly used to refer to Quebec working class French, characterized by certain features often perceived as phased out, "old world" or "incorrect" in standard French. Joual, in particular, exhibits strong Norman influences largely owing to Norman immigration during the Ancien Régime; people from Normandy were perceived as true Catholics and allowed to emigrate to the new world as an example of ideal French settlers. The Acadian French equivalent of joual is called Chiac.
History
The origins of Quebec French lie in the 17th- and 18th-century regional varieties of early modern French, also known as Classical French, and of other langues d'oïl that French colonists brought to New France. Quebec French either evolved from this language base and was shaped by the following influences or was imported from Paris and other urban centres of France as a koiné, or common language shared by the people speaking it.New France
Unlike the language of France in the 17th and 18th centuries, French in New France was fairly well unified. It acquired loan words, especially place names such as Québec, Canada and Hochelaga, and words to describe the flora and fauna such as and , from First Nations languages.The importance of the rivers and ocean as the main routes of transportation also left its imprint on Quebec French. Whereas European varieties of French use the verbs and for "to get in" and "to get out" of a vehicle, the Québécois variety in its informal register tends to use and, a result of Quebec's navigational heritage.
British rule
With the onset of British rule in 1760, the French of Canada became isolated from that of Europe. This led to a retention of older pronunciations, such as moé for moi and expressions that later died out in France. In 1774, the Quebec Act guaranteed French settlers as British subjects rights to French law, the Roman Catholic faith and the French language to appease them at a moment when the English-speaking colonies to the south were on the verge of revolting in the American Revolution.1840 to 1960
In the period between the Act of Union of 1840 and 1960, roughly 900,000 French Canadians left Canada to emigrate to the United States to seek employment. The ones that returned, brought with them new words taken from their experiences in the New England textile mills and the northern lumber camps. As a result, Quebec French began to borrow from both Canadian and American English to fill accidental gaps in the lexical fields of government, law, manufacturing, business and trade.1960 to 1982
From the Quiet Revolution to the passing of the Charter of the French Language, the French language in Quebec saw a period of validation in its varieties associated with the working class while the percentage of literate and university-educated francophones grew. Laws concerning the status of French were passed both on the federal and provincial levels. The was established to play an essential role of support in language planning. Protective laws and distaste towards anglicisms arose at the same time to preserve the integrity of Quebec French, while Metropolitan French on the other hand does not have that same protective attitude and in recent decades has been more influenced by English, causing Quebec French not to borrow recent English loanwords that are now used in Metropolitan French.Social perception and language policy
Mutual intelligibility with other varieties of French
There is a continuum of intelligibility between Quebec and European French; the two are most intelligible in their more standardized forms and pose more difficulties in their dialectal forms. The differences between both varieties are analogous to those betweenAmerican and
British English even if differences in phonology and prosody for the latter are greater.
Quebec's culture has only recently gained exposure in Europe, especially since the Quiet Revolution. The difference in dialects and culture is large enough that speakers of Quebec French overwhelmingly prefer their own local television dramas or sitcoms to shows from Europe or the United States. Conversely, certain singers from Quebec have become very famous even in France, notably Félix Leclerc, Gilles Vigneault, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Céline Dion, and Garou. Some television series from Quebec such as Têtes à claques and L'Été indien are also known in France. The number of such shows from France shown on Quebec television is about the same as the number of British shows on American television even though French news channels like France 24 and a francophone channel based in France, TV5 Québec Canada, are broadcast in Quebec. Nevertheless, Metropolitan French series such as The Adventures of Tintin and Les Gens de Mogador are broadcast and known in Quebec. In certain cases, on French TV, subtitles can be added when barbarisms, rural speech and slang are used, not unlike cases in the US of a number of British programmes being shown with subtitles.
Relation to European French
Historically speaking, the closest relative of Quebec French is the 17th and 18th-century koiné of Paris.Formal Quebec French uses essentially the same orthography and grammar as the French of France, with few exceptions, and exhibits moderate lexical differences. Differences in grammar and lexicon become more marked as language becomes more informal.
While phonetic differences also decrease with greater formality, Quebec and European accents are readily distinguishable in all registers. Over time, European French has exerted a strong influence on Quebec French. The phonological features traditionally distinguishing informal Quebec French and formal European French have gradually acquired varying sociolinguistic status, so that certain traits of Quebec French are perceived neutrally or positively by Québécois, while others are perceived negatively.
Perceptions
Sociolinguistic studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s showed that Québécois generally rated speakers of European French heard in recordings higher than speakers of Quebec French in many positive traits, including expected intelligence, education, ambition, friendliness and physical strength. The researchers were surprised by the greater friendliness rating for Europeans, since one of the primary reasons usually advanced to explain the retention of low-status language varieties is social solidarity with members of one's linguistic group. François Labelle cites the efforts at that time by the Office québécois de la langue française "to impose a French as standard as possible" as one of the reasons for the negative view Québécois had of their language variety.Since the 1970s, the official position on Québécois language has shifted dramatically. An oft-cited turning point was the 1977 declaration of the Association québécoise des professeurs de français defining thus the language to be taught in classrooms: "Standard Quebec French is the socially favoured variety of French which the majority of Francophone Québécois tend to use in situations of formal communication."
Ostiguy and Tousignant doubt whether Québécois today would still have the same negative attitudes towards their own variety of French that they did in the 1970s. They argue that negative social attitudes have focused instead on a subset of the characteristics of Quebec French relative to European French, and particularly some traits of informal Quebec French. Some characteristics of European French are even judged negatively when imitated by Québécois.
Typography
Quebec French has some typographical differences from European French. For example, in Quebec French a full non-breaking space is not used before the semicolon, exclamation mark, or question mark. Instead, a thin space is used; this thin space can be omitted in word-processing situations where the thin space is assumed to be unavailable, or when careful typography is not required.Spelling and grammar
Formal language
A notable difference in grammar which received considerable attention in France during the 1990s is the feminine form of many professions that traditionally did not have a feminine form. In Quebec, one writes nearly universally une chercheuse or une chercheure "a researcher", whereas in France, un chercheur and, more recently, un chercheur and une chercheuse are used. Feminine forms in -eur as in ingénieu are still strongly criticized in France by institutions like the, but are commonly used in Canada and Switzerland.There are other, sporadic spelling differences. For example, the Office québécois de la langue française formerly recommended the spelling tofou for what is in France tofu "tofu". This recommendation was repealed in 2013. In grammar, the adjective inuit "Inuit" is invariable in France but, according to official recommendations in Quebec, has regular feminine and plural forms.