How Similar Are Québec French and Metropolitan French?

We in Québec have nothing in comon with the Camemberts....

All Quebecois understand people from any region of France. The south of France accent is not something we are use to it but when you make an effort, you can get it. But in the other hand, French doesn’t understand Quebecois at all and make them constantly repeat or even put subtitle in Quebecois movies… except when they cross the ocean and come visit or live here in Quebec. Suddenly they understand Quebecois! I let you conclude.

I took high school French in the US in the 1980’s. I’m noticing in your examples of Quebec French words that we were taught, vs the counterparts you’re giving for Metropolitan French. We were taught une bicyclette for bicycle, and un vélo moteur for a scooter or motor bike. There were others in your examples that also correlated with Québécois. I’m guessing that in forty years there have been some of these changes to Metropolitan French.

I live in Northern Ontario and have come across a lot of different varieties of French speakers from Quebec. I am learning French as a second language on-line from Laurentian University. I think that a lot of French speakers from Quebec who now live in Ontario tend to use English and French in the same sentence, bouncing back and forth. The most significant word that I have heard since moving from the south is oui! When some people say it, it sounds like way with the ending as a nasal sound. It was so weird to hear it the first few times. I couldn't understand them and was laughed at for it! Oh, well! I was always taught France French in elementary and high school back in the 1970s and 1980s. There is quite a difference!

In spoken Metropolitan French, more often than not the subject is also put as a tag at the beginning of the sentence, as in Québécois French!

This is dumb. There are various accents in Quebec and there are various accents in France. Pretty much, people from Paris assume for no clear reason that their accent is the «  correct one ». 😂 There’s also Belgian and Swiss accents, etc…. Same for vocabulary. Disregard anyone from Paris says.

J'ai appris le français parisien (ma langue maternelle est l'espagnol). J'écoute le français métropolitain et il est facile pour moi de le comprendre. Mais quand j'écoute le français québécois, si personne ne me dit que c'est du français, je penserais que ce n'en est pas.

I from Quebec. When I went to Europe and told them I like Poutine.. everyone got mad at moi. pourquoi? so sad.

To me, the French from Quebec just sounds less beautifully than European French. It's less chic.

Let's not forget that the Québécois are North Americans. When North Americans take a bath or shower, we might use a face cloth to wash. The French word is ''débarbouillette'' as they use the same face towels as the rest of us. In France, they have a ''gant de toilette'' so words would differ due to the use of different items.

Je suis Québécoise et je comprends très bien le français de France. Ma mère est Québécoise et mon père est Français. Ça doit aider 😂. Vous avez bien expliqué les différences entre le Québec et la France. Il est bien important de mentionner que ce ne sont pas tous les Québécois qui parlent d'une manière aussi stéréotypée lorsqu'ils emploient le langage informel ( le joual). Le fait d'employer les mots char ou bicyclette est commun, mais nous utilisons aussi auto, automobile, voiture et véhicule pour remplacer char. Aussi, l'emploi du mot vélo est très répandu notamment dans la ville de Montréal. De plus, la manière de parler, de prononcer et de s'exprimer varie selon la région du Québec. Bref, j'ai eu l'opportunité de discuter avec plusieurs Français et au bout d'un certain temps, ils finissent par bien comprendre les Québécois qui utilisent un langage informel. Merci beaucoup pour votre vidéo !

Correction: It wouldn't be 1850, rather 1840/1841, because of the proclamation to unite Upper and Lower Canadas, since that period various French Canadians migrated to the United States and contact between English and Quebec French increased.

French is such a funny language to try to read as an english speaker because most of it is completely incomprehensible, but then there's just a random word that's identical to the english one and you're like "oh hey I know that guy!"

To ve honest i have a french friend here in Québec at furst i dont understand when she speak but day by day i learn you know im from philippines and in the philippines people dont speak french i learn français Québec

Well Québec french is came from french métropolitain because without the french Québec may not exist i learn french Québec because live in Québec Québec

Un char actually comes from charriot and not war tank.

There is as many French dialects and accents as there is different English dialects and accents. They are called regionalisms. A Texas farmer would have a hard time having a conversation with a Scottish sheep herder for example

The MF seems easier to understand over the QF.

Only missed opportunity here on the meals of the day; Canada retained the older names; déjeuner, dinner, souper. However, the King Louis XIV and his court rose later in the day moving breakfast to brunch and then thus creating the little breakfast; petite déjeuner, déjeuner, dinner

tu pourrais le dire en français idiot

le québequois sonne un peu bizarre mais est tout à fait compréhensible pour n'importe quel francophone d'europe.

That is so fascinating. I am learning French on Duolingo and in school in Toronto and it’s crazy how different the sentences are

Quebec needs to let it go and learn English… like the rest of the CONTINENT!! Lol

As a Quebec French speaker, I find that the level of accent is often correlated with social class and education levels. Some people have a really thick accent that they can't shake off. This also applies to the level of anglicisms used. Very few will say "je vais garer le char" but many may say "je vais me stationner" instead of "je vais me parker".

Oh and these anglicisms remind me of a trend I hate and that's more common in Montréal, that is to not conjugate verbs taken from English. Like "je vais me park" instead of "je vais me parker" (er having the é sound of infinitive verbs).
In the end I think partly because of all the different regions having evolved with some level of isolation, you get various accents and various preferred words.

Another thing is that in Quebec, if you read translated novels for instance then they were often translated in France, we read Franco-Belgian comic books, we watch dubbed movies a couple decades ago and before were always dubbed with some sort of semi-neutral International French, and most of us have heard French people on TV or in real life as many from France come here to study or to live permanently (a lot more than Québécois in France), and as such we are often familiar with the Metropolitan French, and many of us can even imitate the accent quite decently. Meanwhile the French have close to no exposure to Quebec French.

Oh and I don't believe that "bicyclette" is used more than "vélo", at least not nowadays. A bike shop is a "boutique de vélo". Vélo sounds more serious than bicyclette, like a kid "fait de la bicyclette" but an adult going on a long bike ride for the sport of it "fait du vélo". I've also never heard "bicyclette de montagne", it's always "vélo de montagne". Many younger people may say "bécyk", which sounds a bit more serious than bicyclette but also less about the sport, or use the English word "bike", may be more common for mountain biking.

I find it funny that "sur le" becomes "sul" in pronounced Quebec French, which is the same as the italian "su il" becoming "sul".
I feel like some of these Quebec ways of speaking may come from older French patterns.

Note that "weird" is not on the same level as "fun" or "job" in Quebec French, it's a lot more recent and most people would say "bizarre", including young people.
"Ça fait du sens" is also rather recent and it grates the ears of people like me. It's more common in regions with more English (Montréal and Outaouais).

Calisse d'ostie de tabarnak de criss de chienne de mangeux de marde. Tu connais rien du Québec

In school in Ontario I was in french emersion system. They always learned towards the kings French. But in order to be bilingual in Canada they should have educated us in Quebecois. As the local french speaking people in Quebec can understand me very well, I'm always a little behind with the speed and dialect. So always left asking and learning. Just my two cents.

J'aime le Québec, je suis fasciné par la ville et j'aimerais y vivre, mais je parle le français métropolitain.

Quebecois French is like Singaporean English. In SG we sometimes do a Chinese to English direct translation, but our formal English is still standard English. Plus, we drop the tightness of English (French for Quebec) accents to strong vowels type like in Quebec.

"Osti" is like the QF version of hostia in spanish lol

He is dead on about formal french being taught in quebec school. This is why we understand french people and when they talk, but they have trouble with us because how we speak, but we would write the exact same way, aside from informal vocabulary. This is super akin to latin american countries

One thing you should have mentioned is the many homophones in MF that are created by the merger of -ais and -ai. For example in MF "je partirais" and "je partirai" sound exactly the same, but in QF the suffixes sound distinct.

Also, I've never heard someone use the verb "parker" in Quebec, the standard term here is "stationner". In MF a parking lot is "le parking", but in QF it's "le stationnement".

As always, I just love your videos...thank you for all the hard work. I am one of those weird mixes of French and English...born into a mostly french speaking family in Northern Ontario(Timmins). My Nanny(paternal Grandmother) was of Scottish/English descent(first generation Canadian herself) so she had to learn french when she married her husband and moved from Toronto to Timmins and lived with his all french family. All of her children were fully bilingual, with very little accents. When they speak english they sound english and vice versa. My parents split when I was a baby and my mother's(fully french speaking with a heavy french accent when they did speak some english, family from Sturgeon Falls area of Ontario) new husband only spoke english. So my first heard language was mainly french, but I couldn't speak it at all, and when I moved back with my dad and his new wife they sent me to French Immersion school for JK and SK and then in the full french school for my elementary grades. For high school, I chose to switch over to the English school system. All this to say that my brain can easily switch between the 2 languages, as well as MF since that is what we were taught in school, but just didn't really use it in day to day speaking. I don't get to use my french often anymore, but it only takes me about 15 minutes of being "back home" or even just speaking on the phone with my mother and my french accent starts to come back. Unfortunately, my slang and swear words in french never evolved from an 8th grade level...

Ngl I like Québécois music but as someone who's not a native speaker of either, Parisian French grammar is a lot more intuitive

quoicubé

Ils ont juste à rester en France si ils sont pas capable de comprendre notre français,ici au Québec ils y a des personnes qui ont des problèmes avec les accents de plusieurs personnes de certaines régions

Quebec ES independiente

Quebec independiente

Dans les annees 60 en Fance je me suis fait dire a l'hotel..... " surtout ecrivez pas comme vous parlez " ....ca m'a reste sur le coeur comme on dit....maintenant que leur pays de frotteurs de miroirs est en faillite, les v'la qui nous envahissent ces tabarnak la.... ca me fait plaisir de les faire chier le plus possibe avec leur criss de geules eu trou d'cul d'poules....c'est-tu assez Quebecois ca....!

To hear “tabarnak”, “caliss” and “osti” in this video is quite shocking for a Québecois. It has the same effect the words “fuck”, “motherfucker” and “asshole” would have on an English speaker but just slightly more shocking. Very strange. Do you mention swear words of every languages in your videos ? Do sometimes people get offended and complain ? It wouldn’t be surprising.

I HAVE LIVED HERE MOST OF MY LIFE AND I EQUATE QUEBEC FRENCH SLANG TO FRANC'S FRENCH AS CLOSE TO BRITISH OXFORD SPEECH TO ANYONE IN NORTH AMERICA SAYING I SEEN AND I AIN'T. REX HARRISON SANG IT BEST IN "MY FAIR LADY" ON THE TRACK, "WHY CAN'T THE ENGLISH LEARN TO SPEAK"!!

I learnt standard French when I was in school and can speak conversationally - still learning more. Quebec French for me is a bit challenging at times due to the accent and some phrasing differences but I quite like it ! Especially some of the unique phrases

Language laws stated in 1974 under Bourassa and the Liberals, not in 1960. Bill 22

It almost went extinct

Less and less , the french peoples speak less and less french