France vs Quebec - Differences Between France & Quebec French 

lol

Excellent point.

The English-speakers who pretend that the French spoken in Paris is not the same as the French spoken in Lyon or Lille are completely clueless... I'm from Alsace, and I speak exactly the same language as someone from Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Brussels (Belgium) and Geneva (Switzerland). But I don't speak Quebec French, aka Frenglish.

Maxime Schmitt duuuude Quebec French contains way less anglicisms than Paris French you know that right

s w my duude, you are so wrong.and im québécois,go to a construction site or car mecanic just with that we beat them or loose idk..

You mean Parisienne have friends?

aortablue and there is nothing wrong with that :)

woltersworld Amen! Haha What a special thing for North America, to have a French speaking region.

+aortablue Étant un passionné d'Histoire, j'ai lu que si l'on voulait entendre un français du 17e siècle parler; il suffit d'écouter l'accent québecois.

+Cali Méro Le français tel qu'il se parlait dans le Poitou est similaire à l'accent québécois aujourd'hui.

tontonblindkillou Oui, ce qui nous reste de la langue du XVIIe siècle, ce sont des textes écrits par des lettrés donc assez éloignés du langage du petit peuple, en vérité. Il est vrai que les Québécois d'aujourd'hui ont conservé certains mots de l'ancienne France, mais il y a eu beaucoup d'ajouts d'expressions anglophones aussi... au fond, tu as raison, on ne peut pas vraiment regarder le québécois comme un authentique "conservatoire" de la langue française de jadis.

Speak baguette

It's your ancestors land so you're absolutely welcome here

C'est super d'entendre ça!

u look cute

+Brandy Wells I was waiting for that, too.

+fastballonly Yeah, me too haha

There are many videos about that.

+Brandy Wells I was a bit aggravated that he talked about having differences without actually citing any specific examples. Zut!

Jessy Chainé ne soit pas si affecté et change de petit culotte s'il ne sont plus propre.😘

Indeed. It would be about as rude as if you were to ask a New Yorker or Texan to put up a fake British accent.

I don't know. I'm a Québécois myself and I would be offended if I was asked to speak French "correctly" as in "speaking with a French accent". However, there are many registers of language in Québec (as in France): popular, familiar, standard (like in tv news). So, I wouldn't mind speaking slower, to articulate more and to use a better vocabulary if it could help someone who is not used to our accent. But it wouldn't be parisian French.

Montreal is the second largest French speaking city in the world. The French is different but its like English do we speak 'the Queen's English in North America no

@@Xerxes2005 French Canadian myself too. Yeah, I would not be offended if asked to switch to a more formal or standard register by someone clearly struggling in their second language (i.e. closer to international French - basically good old textbook standard Canadian French that our school teachers would be proud of - no, it won't sound Parisian but they should have little difficulty understanding me). The casual forms of our dialect can be a little challenging to a second language speaker who learned international French. No worries. Judgemental/condescending terms like "correct" or "proper" French might leave me rather unimpressed though and depending on the circumstance might result in my pointing out that they might not want to use that wording when requesting a register switch. Keep asking like that and eventually they'll hit someone who's touchier about it and get an earful.

+Maxime Schmitt Wrong. French Quebecers mentality is protestant like just like their anglo neighboors while French mentality is catholic. Huge difference in the way of thinking. French language in Quebec is based on english translations to French which is not the case of the French in France.

+lebonnetdespatriotes.net I'm both French and protestant (lutheran) and I don't know what you mean... Quel est le rapport entre mon commentaire et le tien????

Québécois with Protestant mentality? Where did you get that? Translations from English? Like what?

+Maxime Schmitt La difference est bien plus grande entre les Français et les Québécois que la difference entre les Britanniques et les anglo de l'Arkansas. Le protestantisme aux Etats-Unis en particulier a participé à créer cette mentalité typiquement anglo nord américaine qui est en totale opposition à l'universalisme catholique français. Cherche à ce que veut dire WASP en anglais (White Anglo-Saxon protestant). Donc pour revenir à nos poules, les Québécois sont plus impregnés de l'idéologie protestante anglo-saxonne que de l'universalisme catholique français. Le catholicisme au Québec est devenu largement minoritaire tant dans sa représentation que dans les mentalités. Les Québécois se sont anglicisés dans la mentalité.

+kebec1 Il suffit de vivre au Etats-Unis et au Québec pour se rendre compte de l'évidence même. Les phrases sorties tout droit de l'anglais ne manquent au Québec : "Une lumière" (traffic light) "des pantalons" au pluriel, le singulier n'existe pas (trousers) "Tomber en amour" (fall in love) "Bon matin" (Good morning) "Bienvenue" au lieu de "de rien" (you're welcome) "Ça a d'l'allure" (it makes sens) "Donner un lif" (to give a lift) "Lâcher un coup de fil" (Drop a line) "Lousse" (Loose) etc...etc...

I speak french at a level 1 but read it at a much higher level, so I had no trouble in restaurants etc. when I visited France. I did find out one big difference between Quebec and France, politeness. At no time was I yelled at, called names for not being able to speak French. People were helpful and understanding with the little French I knew. I enjoyed my stay in France that is more than I can say foe Quebec.

***** Lol no. I am from Chile and know for a fact almost no one from other spanish speaking countries can understand us when we speak fast between chileans. I have a hard time understanding central americans. You can easily distinguish a Spanish person from an Argentinian and a Colombian. Plus the amount of words each country has, and the different meaning associated to the same words in different countries is too big. For example here we say "guagua" to call a baby, while that word in Dominican Respublic or Cuba refers to a Bus. Or the word "coger" in spain means to pick up, in some south american countries it means to have sex, while in some countries it is not even used.

+Kebab You haven't heard arabic and german then, especially arabic developed some huge differences in its language between the different peoples making it for someone from Oman almost impossible to understand someone who is from Tunisia if he does not speak in standard arabic. Same goes for german. A guy from northern Germany will not be able to understand someone from Switzerland if he speaks in his own dialect.

+Kebab Try Arabic throughout the middle east and North Africa X)

Brazil and Portugual speaks Portuguese, but different pronunciations, Netherlands, Suriname (South America) and Dutch Caribbean speaks Dutch.

The wrost spanish is in central america(not panama) even tho people from chile speaks differently

Indeed, it should not be pronounced like that at all.

Kwebek

as opposed to KAY-beck??

En effet, c'est plutôt Kébek.

@@nom_chompsky Your suggested pronunciation is closer to the way Quebeckers with English as their mother tongue (anglo-Montrrealers and such) say it, although their first vowel is often indistinct and closer to an "uh" or even a glottal stop (Kuh-beck or K'beck). Basically, anglo-Quebeckers almost pronounce it as Quèbec rather than Québec but their pronunciation is distinctive and recognizable in English. It's one of the quickest tells of a Quebec English accent from a Canadian Standard accent (along with "close the lights" instead of "turn off the lights"). The French language pronunciation is closer to Kay-beck (said quickly it can clip down to resemble K'beck much like the anglo-Quebecker form but there's usually at least a trace of the é). The weird thing is that anglophones trying to approximate that pronunciation who aren't second language French speakers often massively overstress the syllables for some reason and draw the word out like there are at least a half-dozen vowels in it (taking up to 2-3 seconds to say the word as two heavily stressed distinct syllables instead of well under 1 second like a native would) and it just sounds really odd (like two words) when drawn out like that. It's two quick clipped syllables in either language with a slight second syllable stress. French tends to have quick, clipped syllables in general unless you have someone drawing a word out for effect, is bloviating (usually with a lot of humming and hawing) or has a particularly languid regional accent. Pronouncing the province's name with a W in the first syllable immediately marks the speaker as an outsider to the province. QU makes a K sound in French as a rule, not a KW like in English. No one who grew up there or was educated there would use that level of English phonetics on a French word like that. Quiche isn't pronounced KWEESH anywhere in the English speaking world so it's a little puzzling when the W creeps into Quebec but it is common with folks who aren't local. Pronouncing it "KWEE-beck" like some Westerners do makes even English-speaking Quebeckers wince (memories of Preston Manning there).

Just tell him to speak international french that's much less offensive.

I would not know how to speak English any other way, so I wouldn't expect a Québecois to put on a European French accent,

Oh ... yes ... I love your comment. The part about a Quebecois chuckling about a visitor's mistake in French applies also to us English speakers from the U.S. On a trip to Quebec City a few years back, I kept pronouncing the delicious Quebecois dish poutine as "putain," because I was trying like an idiot to mimick the *joual* dialect that I love to hear in *la belle province*. To my untrained American ears, the Quebecois people in Quebec City were pronouncing "poutine" with a twang that made it sound like "pootanh." So ... Imagine my embarrassment after I had returned to Montreal (my layover city, at the time) to join a good friend for an inexpensive lunch of poutine, when he elbowed me gently while informing me that the Quebecois merchant giving me my change was laughing hysterically because I had just ordered a bowl of "b***h." Let's just say I vowed to that friend (and to myself) henceforth to pronounce the delicious yet artery-clogging dish as "POO-TEEN" even if I sound like I've had only one lesson of beginner French. lol

+AngelOfTheNight2007 They must have laught a lot since the way you write it sound very similar to ''putin'' wich is often used by people from France to swear.

Xavier Girard In France, l'Académie Française protect the French language since 17th and is the pre-eminent French council for matters pertaining to the French language. The problem is you can't force people to listen and follow the recommendation of l'Académie Française.

I like how stop signs in France say Stop but in Québec it's Arrêt.

One example is that, is stop signs in parts of France it says STOP, and in all of Quebec (except like Westmount maybe) is ARRÊT.

No anglicisms in Québécois? How about brakes /brek/ for freins? Seems to me I've heard many others as well. Couldn't produce a list at the moment, though.

***** En France on dit surtout: "faire du lèche-vitrine" ou "faire les courses" quand il s'agit de produits de consommation courante

Natasha Gorey or I guess New Brunswick French. It is very different from Quebecois French and even more different than Parisian!

Natasha Gorey the Acadian accent... I watched a documentary on them and was like "what are they speaking?" :)

woltersworld I am from New Brunswick. My roomate is from Ontario but she is French. I was speaking to her in French and she had no idea what I was saying.

Natasha Gorey Truth.

+Natasha Gorey Acadian French is also interesting. I just came back from New Brunswick and spent the 15th of August in Moncton with some friends who live there. I understood the accent right away. This was not the case for NewFoundLand English though! It took me about 2 weeks to get used to their accent. (I am from Qc)

well i will give you an example : you can say balls for testicules in english. On french Canadian you can say "gosses" and it means thé same thing, in french of France they say "gosses" but it means "children" so that is one difference.

+sion8 This was a video aimed at tourists and travellers, not linguists lol

Adrian Zhang I guess, but that is not what I wanted out of this video. Just as well he could have said more examples.

They have a lot of different dialects in France and Canada. It's not just one for each.

Guy Incognito 🎩​ I know is just I was hoping for some insightful information rather than this very general overview. Such as Acadian French in the Atlantic Canada region as well as those dialects from Ontario and other western provinces. In France you have Parisian French in the north while the southern dialects which are closer to those in Canada than those of the north thanks to the fact this was the area where most French Canadians' ancestors came from during the French colonial period in N. America.

I must disagree!

Bein ça dépent des personnes. Mon amis à des origines hongroises alors il préfère la Hongrie que la France. Il reste tout de même un fier québécois francophone.

Bien d'accord...My country is Québec, but my nation, my language, my culture and my origins are French. Je dis cela en anglais pour que les autres qui ne parlent pas notre *merveilleuse* langue puissent comprendre. ;)

Très content de savoir que tu aimes notre culture autant que moi!

Oui, ...we are Quebecois...not Canadian. Quebec is a French nation.

+Alexandre Beauvais Je me souviens :)

+Alexandre Beauvais_ 2016 - Ontario : Excuse publique et Nationale de la PM en chambre, en regard de la loi 17. Belle reconnaissance, mais on y croit peu, car le mal est fait. L'avenir dira si ces excuses seront suivies d'actions pertinentes comme la création d'une Université Francophone Ontarienne...

i live in ontario now and im french educated

leb anon Et ça veut dire quoi au juste? T'es pas en train d'essayer de me dire que tu parles français par hasard?

+Alexandre Beauvais Whats your point? Women didn't have the right to vote in Canada until something like 1916-1919.. A lot has changed my friend. Today's Government does everything it can to appease Quebec.

Hem, I live in Estrie wich is Eastern Township and Flanglais is just a joke that people here have because absolutely nobody actualy realy speak it. In the village I grew there was even an English School yet about 95% of the population spoke French as a first language and nobody spoke Franglais unless joking or speaking to english people and even that is usualy done only to laugh.

En France, l'unité linguistique ne s'est faite qu'après la guerre 1914-1918, selon l'effort de l'Éducation nationale d'uniformiser la langue, alors qu'au Québec, l'unité linguistique remonte au XVIIe siècle avec l'arrivée des "Filles du roi" en Nouvelle-France, dont la majorité provenaient d"île de France, soit la région parisienne et parlaient la langue du roi Louis XIV, du fait que beaucoup étaient des orphelines prises en charge et éduquées par les autorités religieuses.

De dede "they don't do anything to make us understand them." what ? but you understood what she asked to you right ? I'm from south west of France, i have seen a few times some Quebecois tourist who did not understand what someone said because of the combination of the local accent and words. So the person repeated what he said but slowly and with a more academic French in order to avoid local slang words or local expressions, this time they understood what he was saying. That was simply courtesy, it's normal to have difficulty with other accent.. Je suis du sud ouest de la France, j'ai déjà vu plusieurs fois des touristes Quebecois un peu perdus car ils ne comprenaient pas ce que leur disait leur interlocuteur. La personne a donc répétée plus lentement et en utilisant un Français plus academique afin d'éviter toutes expressions locales ou mots de jargon et cette fois ils ont compris. C'était simplement de la courtoisie, il n'allait pas leur jeter des cailloux quand même, c'est tout à fait normal de ne pas comprendre un accent.

+kazauksp le problème c'est que c'est souvent des parisiens et y'en a pas mal qui doivent être désagréable avec les québécois :\

now that would be cool!

or Flanders/South Africa!

Thats how french people say au revoir. It sounds like "ur vwah", with less stress in the 'r'. Normally, they say "uvwah"

Your name is not French... I'm a Québécois of French origin and I don't feel Canadian. Vive le Québec libre et vive la France !

James Y yeah the French spoken in the Maritimes is pretty crazy Pour example ; En français acadie En chu Canadien En français Parisian Je suis Canadien A lot of it has to do with our French is very similar to French that hasn't been hear in France since the 17-18th century and it is also liked in with some first nations and English words and we haven't really had new word introduced into the langue in almost 400 years.

James Y or another example is J'ai drivez ma car dans a la ditch et regardez le match de hockey dans ma tv avec my friend bill in my house ce soir

And to anyone French desole sur ma français

At the same time, and I say this as a quebecer, we're not dumb and we can easily guess that a sucette means lollipop there like it's only logical and it's not that hard. He's not entirely wrong.

Go HABS Go!

On l'est tous :)

est-ce que tu serais plus fière d'un Québec libre?

***** mais tu ne crois pas que les intérêts Québécois sont subjuguée par les intérêts de la reste (anglophone) du Canada, ou que le vue du Canada par le reste du monde est un d'un pays anglophone tissé avec l’histoire Britannique et de la royauté Britannique il me semble que le Québec est la seule partie du pays qui est different, et il est dominé par la reste du pays...

Jérémie Patterson décaliss

Alex piccolo In general everybody find funny other French accent. Everything depend on which accent is yours.

Alex piccolo Well, it's the same with North American English. The North American versions have preserved some of the older vocabulary and older styles of accents.

***** For example, older English from around the colonial era had rhotic 'r's. With the modern British accent (and some American, especially north eastern, accents), the 'r's are more often softened, whereas Americans still use the hard 'r.' This is because England went under a transformation when the old money started becoming replaced by new money. New money people started using softer 'r's to distinguish themselves from those of lower classes, and the pronunciation stuck. (This may also be part of the reason why Brits sound more sophisticated or pretentious, depending on your view.)

Alex piccolo Interesting to know! - French language student

***** It's not a crazy comment; it's a factual comment. The modern English accent of soft 'r's is new. Just because I used "British" in lieu of "English" doesn't change that fact. My ignorance of how widespread the accent is (the reason I used "British" instead of "English," as in it being A British accent [not THE British accent], in the first place) doesn't invalidate the basic point.

For real! I just apologize and say that my French is basic/elementary. Usually people take pity on me and speaker slower with less argot.

To me the biggest difference is the people, French from France smile more than French Canadians (who are Italian and British, not French at all).

I don't think he was BS-ing you. I'm an Aussie living in Canada and I watch a lot of British TV shows. Sometimes I have to turn on the CC because I miss some dialogue in shows such as Vera or Shetland because of the regional accents. I've even had to use CC on a New Zealand show (Brokenwood) because, boy, those Kiwis talk real funny!

Because its targeted toward english speakers who cannot speak french Parce que cette vidéo est pour les anglophones qui ne parlent pas français

Guy L​ Because there are Anglophones who are trying to learn French as well. For them, it's hard to differentiate accents.

c'est une bonne question !!!

Armando Gonçalves parcequ que la personne qui à pris l initiative de faire ce video visait une clientèle Anglophone.

Pourquoi serait-il en français? Wolter fait des vidéo guides pour les voyageurs et il est Américain. Si je fais un guide sur les voyages en Corée est-ce-que je doit le faire en coréen?

Adam Hovey our French is older and less up to date as Quebec. A lot of words that young people speak are what 90 year olds in France or Quebec might speak

What do you mean by "chanting"?

@@ashjones7297It should be written « singing » accent. French people always say that our accent is like a melody.

@@YONFT7079 Oh true? I'm Australian going to Quebec in a week. So I'm quite interested in the differences between quebec and french.

@@ashjones7297 Enjoy your stay in Quebec! I wish you the best!

@@YONFT7079 Thank you! I'm very excited, and very keen to learn French 🙂

im fomr quebec too, and i say "le video"

French Fan......dammit, I don't even know which one I use...LE video? LA video?.....

***** ***** I didn't watch Mark's video yet but in my opinion ( as a French) there is fewer difference between French spoken in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland than between French spoken in France and Quebec, because France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland are geographically close, their French evoluated closely. In Quebec you can find some old expressions or words that are not used anymore in the French from France. Some words or expression have a slightly different meaning, here an example, the word " gosses " is a slang word for "kids" in France but mean "bollocks" in Quebec. Which lead to extremly shamefull and funny misunderstanding situation, in France the innocent sentence " j'aime jouer avec mes gosses" ( I like to play with my kids) will become absolutly not innocent in Quebec :). By the way the French in France is not exactly the same from North to South. In France there is 45 regional languages ( which for most of them only exist in France), because many of them are a variation of a few same languages we can reduce those 45 to 9 main regional languages ( l'alsacien, le basque, le breton, le catalan, le corse, le picard, le flamand occidental, le francoprovençal et l'occitan). A long time ago, one language among those 45 had been chosen as the lingua franca of France, le Français/French. Until the late of the 19th century ( when teaching and speaking French in school became an obligation) only 1/4 of the French actually spoke French ( mainly people who received an education, nobility, scientist, etc). Napoleon the French emperor, born in Corsica, learned French at 8 when he went to a military school. As a consequence, in each region of France you can find slang words or expressions who comes from its regional language. Let's take a simple example, there is a French viennoiserie sweet roll called " chocolate croissants " in English. In south west of France ( from where i come) or Quebec we use the word " Chocolatine ", which come from the Occitan word " Chocolatina". In the rest of France, Switzerland and in a part of Belgium, it's called " pain au chocolat ". In the other part of Belgium it's called " couque au chocolat ". In one region of France ( burgundy) and in Lebanon it's sometimes called " croissant au chocolat ". If i go to a bakery in Eastern France and ask for a "Chocolatine" they will stare at me without an idea of what i am talking about ( it happen to me a few times ). The main differences between French in Quebec, France, Belgium, Lebanon, Romania, Switzerland, Cameroun, Senegal, Congo, etc is about expressions and influences of regional languages. I don't even talk about accent. The difference between French from France and Quebec is similar to the difference between US and UK English or Spain and South America Spanish.

kazauksp Wow, thank you for taking your time to give me such a well explained answer.

***** I'm Belgian so I can tell you that there's basically no difference between the french spoken in France and the french spoken in Belgium. We sometimes use Walloon expressions between but that's rare and it depence of the part of the country ;)

kazauksp Thanks for the recommendation, I'll put it in my list!

Algrimir Thank you! What's a "Walloon expression"?

The phrase for sending someone off with "[Have a] Good day!" -- heard in Quebec province (and outside of Quebec in Canadian provinces where French is spoken) -- is: "Bonne journee" (with an acute accent on the first "e" in "journee." I just want to appease the linguists among us.

You are correct... for the most part. Poudrerie, whiteout in English, is not unique to Canada and northern countries. I am from Montreal and moved to NC 10 years ago. I have seen whiteout conditions down here, in VA and PA as well. Not often, but it does happen. Cheers! :-)

Ho! This is what a whiteout means? Happy to learn that. Thank's buddy.

+aildoux they use alot of English words in France but these words are closely related to the English root word. Words such as addictif ...

+Joshua Schwartz Arabic has more dialects than English. but yea, there're many dialects/accents in English.

+Andréanne Bastrash C'est parce qu'en France l'anglais n'a aucune chance de remplacer le Français car nous ne sommes pas entourés d'anglophones. On peut donc se permettre d'inclure certains anglicismes sans voir la langue disparaître. En France il n'y a pas cette lutte de préservation de langue c'est pour ça, mais c'est honorable de la part du Québec de vouloir conserver cette belle langue.

Guildwars42 oui c'est vrai ça. Je suis d'accord :)

+Andréanne Bastrash S'lut, chu dzu Québec et j'va parker mon char et then j'voudrais ben plugger mon laptop coz c'est awesome.

Maxime Schmitt Lol c'est vrai que j'ai déjà entendu des québécois et il y a des anglicismes qu'il n'y a pas en France, peut être moins ceci dit je sais pas.

Guildwars42 Crois-moi, les Québécois emploient bien plus d'anglicismes que les francophones vivant hors du Canada. L'idée que les Français sont plus anglicisés qu'eux est complètement fausse. Non seulement ils utilisent plus de mots et expressions anglaises dans leur quotidien, mais même leur syntaxe est basée sur l'anglais. C'est très rare de tomber sur un Québécois capable de parler dans un français bien structuré.

Not really that much… The accent is very different, but the language itself is pretty much the same outside of some slang. Ironic as it may seem, France French actually has more English loanwords in the common vocabulary.

Not really. Even in Quebec, Standard French (i.e. Parisian French) is taught in schools and language centers. French-learners there don't start with Quebecois.

i totally agree. I was born in a french country and once i came to Canada I met alot of "francophones" from trois-rivières/montréal and their french sounds very wierd . I also have a Québecois uncle and i could not understand a word he said. For that reason I only know a few french speaking people in ontario that come from french colonies close to Africa because their french is more "parisien" and i can understand them better. Mon rêve c'est d'aller en France un jour. Vous êtes chanceuse de vivre la-bas en ce moment. :)

+Nicholas Tyler Offended? Nah. At least, for me, I think if I would meet somebody who actually tries to speak my language and who can't understand the way I speak, I will make the effort to pronounce my words in a way he will be able to understand. There's nothing to be offended about in that, I do know most people who learn French world-wide learn a more standardized pronunciation, and that pronunciation is not at all the one we use here in Quebec.

They might get a kick in the children.