How is Quebec french different from French french?

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Don't trust what you read or hear. As a dialect somewhat resembling regional European French of old, Quebec French is actually purer than French French. Members of the AcadÃ©mie franÃ§aise have said so themselves. This comes from the fact the French-speaking Quebecers feel threatened in an overwhelmingly English-speaking North American environment and have taken active measures to protect and promote the use of French in Quebec. The French in France do not feel as threatened and openly integrate English into their everyday use of the language, hence "Je laisse mon scooter au parking et je fais du shopping tout le week-end", while Quebecers would say "Je laisse ma moto dans le stationnement et je magasine toute la fin de semaine".

What most people think is standard Quebecois French is actually "joual", i.e. English words used within a French syntaxic structure. It was common among under-educated Quebecers who had to express concepts for which they did not know the proper French term. A mechanic, for instance, had a better chance of being understood if he said "la strappe de la fan a jammÃ©", than actually looking the words to get across that "la courroie du ventilateur s'est bloquÃ©e".

I hope I was able to dispel some myths surrounding the "lower status" of Quebec French.

By the way, nowadays, I find that the only REAL difference between Quebec and France French is that Quebec French puts accents on capital letters, whereas European French does not.

georgeonfridays

If you've studied French french speaking to someone from Canada can drive you nuts. It's like speaking to someone with an extremely deep southern accent and poor grammar. Not to say that all canadians are lacking in the grammar department, just that to a French french speaker it seems that way.

Tanya

Quebec french is kind of like broken french. Frankly the people from France frown upon it.

Goddess of Grammar

It's mainly the pronunciation, Quebec French is more nasal, French French is sort of spoken in the front of the mouth.
The tonality is very different, but I can't explain how.
Other points: The slang and especially vulgar expressions are different. Quebec swears are church words, France swears are more likely sex words.
Both use a lot of English words, but they use them in different ways. In Quebec, people will just slip in an English word but will not think of it as a French word (super, cool, fuckÃ©), whereas in France, anglicisms like "le parking", "le weekend", "les baskets", "l'email" are proper (in Quebec, we'd say "la stationement", "la fin de semaine", "les souliers de course", and maybe "le courriel").
Quebec questions tend to include an extra "tu" in there, no idea why (Qu'est-ce que tu veux-tu faire?)
And, people in Quebec are less formal in the sense that they are much quicker to use "tu" over "vous".

arnold

The slang.
Take english for example: Its diffrent all over america but stil the same language: it just said diffrently, with accents and stuff.
Like western accents, new york accents, california accents.. etc

Robyn

They use a lot of different expressions, it sounds different (accent), different words are feminine or masculine, lots of things

I studied European french.. then went to quebec and had re-learn a lot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French#Formal_language

Eric C

French for La Belle Province has a lot of slang in it, and i mean a lot. French from France is more proper.

Dashin' IN

Quebec french has a lot of ancient and no longer used french words and even if they used current words their accent make them almost unrecognizable.

Jessikuh

Some of our words are different too. Their the same words, just somehow they have morphed into having different pronounciations.
For ex) I went to France and asked for "Beurre" (burr) and the waiter looked at me like i didnt know what I was talking about, and he said you mean "boooooore"?
anyways,
yeah our french is more english influenced and we have different slang.

ejfitzroy

Yes, some expressions, vocabulary and pronunctiations are different.

kenoplayer

According to a friend of my mom's who is from France, he said that Quebec french to France french is like American English to British English. They mispronounce a lot of the words and spell many of them slightly different.

Julia

well I guess that all depends on what kind of french , french french is :P..but if you mean like france french..well..it's just a different way of speaking. Like our english and england english, its different.
But if you mean like proper french or something like that, i guess its just different because they use slang. But it's like that in Ontario too. Like instead of saying its cold in the car (Il est froid dans l'auto), we would say 'C'est frete dans le char'...yeahh

hope i helped :)

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