Canadian French

Laura   Monday, April 05, 2004, 21:41 GMT
I am wondering what the phonetic motivation is for Canadian French having high tense vowels before some consonants and higg lax vowels before others. I can't figure it out!
french man from France   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 09:09 GMT
Because they speak french with an accent which has been influenced by some foreigners accents
Jordi   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 12:32 GMT
I don't pretend to be an expert but in Quebec they have evolved from regional forms of French that were spoken somewhere in Brittany, Anjou and Normandy a few centuries ago. Standard French has had a different evolution. It's what is called "l'accent du terroir" as it was spoken back in 17th and 18th century in those parts of rural France.
french man from France   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 13:38 GMT
Jordi,

it does not explain why Canadian French have high tense vowels before some consonants and higg lax vowels before others.
It's only because they have been influenced by other languages.
They don't speak an "accent du terroir" because they do not have an accent like that bacause bretons, angevins and normands don't speak like that.
Apart for the Angevins, bretons and normands did not speak french when they came to Quebec. It's because Swiss and Aostiens came to Quebec, most of the people started to speak french for a common language.

At least they are so preoccupied to show their culture as a latin one, they voluntary translate every english expression (more than the french in France) as a french expression. For example :

Hot dog = chien chaud

STOP (driving expression) = arrêt

............
Lavoisel   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 15:54 GMT
"French man from France", only because we live in France doesn't mean we know every single accent which are or used to be used in the country. As accent always evolve, Normand accent and Quebec accent could be two different children of the same parent accent without us being aware of it. Who knows?
In the other hand, what makes language evolve? Foreign languages, most of the time. Very blatantly, English has influenced French from France ("hot dog", "start-up", ...) and French from Quebec ("gang", "spot", ...) in a different way.
That is exactly how both French French accent(s) and Quebecois French accent(s) has/have been influenced as well: differently.
But whether one was more influenced than the other, I really couldn't tell.
We may simply notice that the Quebecois have much more contact with an English speaking population than the French in everyday life and that it is probably not without effect.
However, honestly, do the Canadian French roll the "r" because of the influence of Canadian English? Is it English that makes them pronounce "toi" like "toé"? Was their inimitable intonations originally inspired by their Anglosaxon neighbours? I do not believe so... Canadian English is nothing near that.
All this tends to confirm the thesis Jordi mentioned above.
Face it, the French spoken by the Quebecois is probably as much French as the one you, as a Parisian, and me, as a Valentinois, speak. They have therefore no need for proof of the Latiness of their culture because it is exactly what their language is: Latin. Even though, saddly, it is very common belief that the proper French is the Parisian one.*


* That very belief makes Jordy call French French "Standard French". Not that I think he trusts the belief, just that he seems to have inherited the language habit. Am I wrong, Jordy?
Céline Dion   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 18:46 GMT
from wikipedia.com:

Québécois French is substantially different in pronunciation and vocabulary to the French of Europe and that of France's Second Empire colonies in Africa and Asia.

Similar divergences took place in the Portuguese and Spanish and English of the Americas with respect to European dialects, but in the case of French the separation was increased by the reduction of cultural contacts with France after the Conquest by Great Britain in 1759. The French Revolution and its aftermath also substantially altered the French spoken in France, while Quebec conserved older forms: for example, the slang pronunciation of moi as moé in Quebec, often considered substandard joual, is actually the old royal pronunciation used by pre-Revolution kings of France.

Thus, whereas it was 18th century bourgeois Parisian French that eventually became the national, standardized language of France after the French Revolution, the French of the Ancien Régime kept evolving on its own in America. Indeed, the French spoken in Quebec is closer idiomatically and phonetically to the French spoken in Belgium despite their independent evolution and the relatively small number of Belgian immigrants to Quebec. Also, many early French immigrants to Canada were largely from areas outside Paris, and their regional vocabulary also had a strong influence. Quebec French was also influenced by the French spoken by the King's Daughters who were of the petit-bourgeois class from the Paris area (Ile-de-France) and Normandy.

There is also the inevitable fact that Quebec French speakers have lived alongside and among English speakers for two and a half centuries ever since beginning of British administration in 1763. Thus anglicisms in Quebec French tend to be longstanding and part of a gradual, natural process of borrowing, whereas the often entirely different anglicisms in European French are nearly all much more recent and sometimes driven by fads and fashions.

Some people (for instance, Léandre Bergeron, author of the Dictionnaire de la langue québécoise) have referred to Quebec French as la langue québécoise (the Québécois language); most speakers, however, would reject or even take offence to the idea that they do not speak French.
Jordi   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 19:07 GMT
* That very belief makes Jordy call French French "Standard French". Not that I think he trusts the belief, just that he seems to have inherited the language habit. Am I wrong, Jordi?

Lavoisel, I agree with you and I don't believe that there is a better French than the others. There obviously is a standardised form of French (langue littéraire) but that would include the language used by writers from Québec or by people from Madagascar, for instance. As far as accents are concerned our friend Céline Dion (it's great to have such a great Canadian singer writing in Antimoon) seems to know very well what she's talking about. It's great to know she has such a hobby between concert and concert. It's normal than Belgium French or Swiss French now have some similarities with Quebec French. It is a known fact in dialectology that the periphery of the main innovation centre --in this case Paris-- or edges of a language keep more ancient forms of that same language and are, therefore, more conservative on the whole.
Lavoisel   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 19:11 GMT
Thank you very much for the quotation, "Céline Dion", that was very interesting!
Céline Dion   Tuesday, April 06, 2004, 22:35 GMT
De rien. Il n'ya pas de quoi. Veuillez voir mon grand spectacle au "Caesars Palace" quand vous êtes à Las Vegas.

L'amour toujours,
Céline
nic   Wednesday, April 07, 2004, 07:10 GMT
You can't leave and not having some evolution in your pronunciation with so many english neighbours.
If not, why is the south east accent (from France) different with the alsacian one. It's because south east accent has been influenced by many italians and alsacians by germanics.
So, it's the same for Quebec, they have been influenced by their english neighbours.
At least, do not forget some enflish canadians who came to leave in Quebec adopted the french, there has been an influence.

I don't think they have their accent just because of their old french, look at U.S.A, they have their own accent and their own vocabulary because they have not been only influenced by english but by many other cultures (from chinese to germans, dutch, italians, arabs....).

The bretons at this time did not speak french but their own language (a part aristocrats, the others were farmers or someting like that).
robert Charlebois   Wednesday, April 07, 2004, 07:29 GMT
Merci à tous de votre amitié!
Lavoisel   Wednesday, April 07, 2004, 15:40 GMT
"why is the south east accent (from France) different with the alsacian one. It's because south east accent has been influenced by many italians and alsacians by germanics."



I did mention the English influence in my previous post, didn't I? Even though it is very real, this influence is not what makes the Quebecois roll their "r", sing their sentences and pronounce their "toi" like "toé". These features are much more likely to have to do with their deep Frenchness rather than with their Englishisation. That's all I was saying.

As for the Alsatian and the Savoyard, I wouldn't compare them with the Quebecois, because the former are often not - or at least have long been not - native French speakers, whereas the latter are all native French speakers. Plus, the Canadian French have never been invaded by their English countrymen, did they? Their situation is thereby very different.

However, there do is such a thing as Englishisation of Quebecois French, as our friend "Céline Dion" confirms.



"The bretons at this time did not speak french but their own language (a part aristocrats, the others were farmers or someting like that)."


You have read what Celine Dion quoted, haven't you? The Wikipedia Encyclopedia is not very likely to be mistaken. Let me quote again the sentences you may have missed:

"Also, many early French immigrants to Canada were largely from areas outside Paris, and their regional vocabulary also had a strong influence. Quebec French was also influenced by the French spoken by the King's Daughters who were of the petit-bourgeois class from the Paris area (Ile-de-France) and Normandy."
Ben   Monday, April 12, 2004, 17:59 GMT
What do you mean by "roll their r's"--does that mean that the Quebecois pronounce their R's similar to the way English speakers do?
Lavoisel   Monday, April 12, 2004, 18:04 GMT
No, I meant that the way they pronunce the r's is similar to the way the Spanish, the Italians and the Portuguese do.
It seems that "to roll the r's" doesn't mean the same thing in French and in English. ;-)
Elaine   Monday, April 12, 2004, 22:16 GMT
"roll their r's" -- also known as the "alveolar trill" or "trilling the r's". This is something we don't do in English.