Quebec French

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As Quebec French ( French français québécois ) is called the Regiolekt the French in, Quebec , Ontario and the western provinces of Canada is spoken. The traditional name French Canadian ( Canadian French , French le canadien, le canayen ) is today more and more by the designation Quebec French replaced that omits, however, that this variant west of the province of Quebec is spoken of the French also (see Francophone Canadians , French in Canada ).

Acadian French , which is spoken in the maritime provinces of New Brunswick , Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and in a small part of Gaspésie , which belongs to Québec , as well as Newfoundland French , which is spoken on the west coast, can be clearly distinguished from Canadian or Quebec French. Port-au-Port Peninsula) Newfoundland is spoken.

Due to its spatial isolation from the rest of Francophonie , Canadian or Quebec French, like the other variants of French in North America (see French in the USA , Haitian ), has significant differences compared to French in Europe. These differences are particularly pronounced in everyday language. On formal occasions, many speakers approach the français de Radio-Canada (the French used by Canadian Broadcasting), which is not that far removed from European standards.

history

French became the official language of the French colony of New France during the 17th century . Most of the French colonists who settled in the Saint Lawrence River Valley in the 17th century came from Île-de-France and from provinces in the west and north-west of France: Normandy , Poitou , Guyenne , Brittany , Saintonge and Aunis . With the exception of the settlers from Île-de-France, they did not speak standard French, but their local patois . The common language of the settlers, however, was the Parisian Koine , which became even more pronounced with the arrival of the Filles du roy , so that their mother tongues have left little traces in Canadian French.

With the cession of New France to the British in 1763 at the latest, Canadian and Quebec French broke away from the development of French in Europe: On the one hand, it retained many elements of an older language level, on the other hand, it also took many new influences from its North American language Environment. The close proximity to English and various indigenous American languages as well as the influx of non-Francophone immigrants to Canada were decisive here .

Lexicons

Canadian or Quebec French has preserved a number of archaisms that are now out of date in France:

  • French casserole 'pot, saucepan': qc./can. chaudron (standard French 'cooking kettle')
  • French très froid  : qc./can. frette 'bitter cold'
  • French pull 'sweater': qc./can. chandail
  • French pomme de terre 'potato': qc./can. patate

Many words were borrowed from English or formed analogously to English (it is the goal of language policy to push this back):

  • French annuler ' to cancel, to dissolve' | closely. cancel | qc./can. canceller
  • . French dentifrice , toothpaste '| closely. toothpaste | qc./can. pâte à dents (loan translation)
  • French fève 'broad bean', haricot '(green) bean' | closely. bean | qc./can. bine 'bean'
  • French travail 'work', boulot 'work, job' | closely. job | qc./can. job, djobe
  • French ventilator 'ventilator' | closely. fan | qc./can. fanne
  • French voiture 'car' | closely. car | qc./can. char

Words have also been adopted from other languages:

  • from the Basque oreinak 'deer, antler' comes the original 'elch' (in contrast standard French élan )
  • from the Algonquin caribou 'reindeer' (in contrast standard French renne )

French words were recreated for life in Canada (neologisms), some with the aim of avoiding anglicisms:

  • a dépanneur is a neighborhood shop where you can shop outside of opening hours
  • magasinage 'shopping, shopping' is a loan translation from English shopping , while standardFrench hasseveral words, e.g. B. courses 'grocery shopping', full 'personal shopping' etc.
  • poudrerie describes a storm in which the wind throws up the snow that is already lying
  • tuque is a large wool hat that covers the ears (any other hat as an extension)

Anglicisms in French France were "French":

  • French vol charter 'charter flight': qc./can. vol nolisé
  • French week-end 'weekend': qc./can. fin de semaine
  • . French ferry , ferry ': qc./can. traverser

Sentence structure

In colloquial language there is the question particle -tu , which is used in direct question sentences. A similar question particle can still be found today in some northern French patois , where it originally appears as -ti , since it arose from the inversion question ( Jean, es t-i l là? - "Is Johann there?").

  • C'est-tu loin, ça? - "Is it far?"
  • Ta mère est-tu là? - "Is your mother here?" (With the disappearance of "to be")
  • J'ai-tu l'air fatigué? - "Do I look tired?"
  • Y'en a-tu d'autres? - "Are there others?"
  • Ça vous tente-tu vraiment d'y aller? - "Do you really want to go there?"
  • M'as-tu aller là? - "Will I go there?" (Compare Haitian / esk ma alé la? /)
  • Faut-tu être cave pas à peu près! - "Don't you have to be really stupid?"
  • C'est-tu pas possible, ce qui arrive là! - "Is what happens there possible?"
  • Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'c'est ça? - "What's this?"

In basilectal variants, the past tense of the verb être 'sein' is analyzed analytically, with agglutinated present tense forms.

  • (moué) chu tà àprà manjé "I was eating" (from j'suis'tais (j'étais) après manger )
  • (toué) té tà
  • (lui) i (é) tà
  • (èl) è tà
  • (nouzot) ouen tà (nouzot = nous-autres)
  • vouzot tà (vouzot = vous-autres)
  • (euzot) son tà / (euzot) i tà (euzot = eux-autres)

Feminine forms

The Québecers or Canadians use feminine forms for a number of nouns that do not have a feminine form in French in France:

  • l'author, l'author
  • le maire, la mairesse
  • le premier ministre, la première ministre
  • le professeur, la professeure

Regional variants

There are also regional variants within Canadian or Quebec French. Speakers from Lac Saint-Jean or from the Beauce are not always easy to understand for the other speakers either.

The most striking feature of the Montreal variant is the particularly intensive diphthongization of long vowels. For example, a Montreal speaker would pronounce the word père “father” [ paɛ̯ʁ ], while a speaker from Québec City would say [ pɛːʁ ]. There are also grammatical differences, e.g. E.g. in gender: “the bus” is called “le bus” in Montreal and internationally, in Québec it is called “la bus”.

literature

  • Pierre Martel, Hélène Cajolet-Laganière: Le français québécois. Usages, standard et aménagement . Presses de l'Université Laval, Quebec 1996
  • Lionel Meney: Dictionnaire Québécois Français . Guérin Universitaire, Montreal 1999
  • Kristin Reinke: Language norm and language quality in francophone television in Québec: investigation using phonological and morphological variables . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004
  • Kristin Reinke, Luc Ostiguy: La concurrence des normes au Québec, dans les médias, à l'école et dans les dictionnaires . In: Carsten Sinner (Ed.): Norms and Conflicts of Norms in Romania . Peniope, Munich 2005
  • Kristin Reinke, Luc Ostiguy: La langue à la télévision québécoise. Aspects sociophonétiques . Éditeur officiel du Gouvernement du Québec, Quebec 2005
  • Britta Scheunemann: Québécois slang. The French of Canada . Reise-Know-How Verlag, Bielefeld 2006
  • Henri Wittmann : Le joual, c'est-tu un créole? . In: La Linguistique 9/2, 1973, pp. 83-93. ( PDF ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))
  • Le français, une langue pour tout le monde: Une nouvelle approche stratégique et citoyenne. Ed. And publisher Commission des États généraux sur la situation et l'avenir de la langue française au Québec, 2002 ISBN 255037925X (see ed. The lemma in French Wikipedia, also in English)
  • Lothar Wolf: French Language in Canada . Munich 1987
  • Stefanie Rudig: Language Dichotomy in Contemporary Montreal. A Review of the 'Two Solitudes' in Recent Fiction and Non-Fiction. Journal for Canada Studies , 2014, pp. 105 - 125 full text Numerous references (abridged version of dies., Encounters avec l'Autre in Contemporary Montreal Literature: Aspects of Francophone-Anglophone Interactions at the Turn of the New Millennium. Ibidem, Stuttgart 2011)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Robert Fournier / Henri Wittmann : Le français des Amériques . Presses Universitaires de Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières 1995. 334 pp.
  2. ^ A b Henri Wittmann : Le français de Paris dans le français des Amériques. Proceedings of the International Congress of Linguists 04/1616 (Paris, June 20-25, 1997). Pergamon, Oxford 1998 (CD edition). ( PDF ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))
  3. ↑ a b Denis Dumas: Nos façons de parler. Les prononciations en français québécois . Presses de l'Université du Québec, Sainte-Foy 1987.
  4. ^ Gaston Paris: Ti, signe de l'interrogation. In: Romania 6/1887, pp. 438-442
  5. ↑ Luc Ostiguy / Claude Tousignant: Le français québécois. Normes et usages . Guérin Universitaire, Montreal 1993.