Québec has language laws that prevent businesses from using English in their advertising among other things, and some controversial rulings have come from it. One such ruling was the use of “le week-end”. Québec was punishing businesses who used this term instead of “la fin de semaine”. There was an interview done with an official from the language police where the interviewer had a dictionary from France which showed “le week-end” is proper French. The Québec official said “France doesn’t decide what words are French. We do.”
L’Académie française disagrees
Prescriptivist jerks. Let’s all dress up in $50,000 robes, call ourselves immortals, and pretend that we can control language.
L’académie française deez nuts
Gottem
Gottem
Oh please. There isn’t a single linguist in the Académie Française.
The Académie Française is to the French language what a group of former weathermen is to climatology.
Honnêtement, tu donnes un peu trop de crédibilité à l’Académie française dans ta comparaison.
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Chill dude…
Fair enough.
TIL the French Language Police is a thing
This tracks
I’m not finding any info on this. Source?
I tried searching for it before posting but couldn’t find it. It was a radio interview likely sometime in the 80s. It’s hard to find because a search for controversial things the Québec language police have done turns up a lot of results.
Weren’t they going down the street punishing restaurants who had sandwich boards in 51(+)% English?
Ouiaboos.
I hate you so much. Here, have my upvote.
I never got this: why do people in France speak an American language instead of a European one?
See, the problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur…
French-Canadian from Quebec here: the same way an American will use a french word mid sentence to add a certain je-ne-sais-quoi…
But they tend to go way overboard with them, ending with bastardized, barely comprehensible french. And they dare correct us when we use the proper french terms instead of the ones they abuse.
I was watching a video on YouTube today where the person was demonstrating some things and kept going “voila”, but everytime he said it, he didn’t really pronounce the v, so it sounded more like moilah. One step away from moolah (slang for money).
It was bizarre.
I just couldn’t not hear it. I completely forget what the video was about.
I intentionally mispronounce voila as viola. As in the string instrument.
Be careful with this, Viola sounds close to the past perfect of the verb violer, which can mean to break a rule (violer une règle) or worse, to rape
I doubt an English listener would make that mistake, sounds nothing like “violate.”
Right, let’s hope they don’t understand french
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I don’t get it. How is French an American language? I don’t understand the meme overall either
French is spoken in France and parts of north America. Most people are very emotional about their native language so they feel every deviation of it is just wrong.
The most common and seemingly natural view is that France French is “right” and oversea French is not but honestly it’s arbitrary. OP turned it around and so I did too, eventhough I myself live in a non French European country. Well, we all hate our neighbors and the enemy is my enemy is my friend I guess.
I’ve heard Canadian French is closer to the French France Frenched a few hundred years ago.
IIRC that’s correct.
Kinda like how the American accent is closer to OG British English than the current British English pronunciation.
I think it’s souppoused to be spelled prounounciautioun
That’s a false fact. And it’s apparent, since there are dozens of accents in the US as well as umin the UK and there were dozens in the UK 200 years ago. They all developed in their own direction, being sometimes isolated sometimes cross-pollinating with other accents, but none staid the same.
motions hand above head while making airplane noises
*aeroplane
I’ve been believing this for a very long time but I’ve seen a video made by a French Canadian that proved me wrong
As a matter of fact, when first immigrants arrived in Nova Scotia, most of the French people weren’t even speaking French, but regional dialects.
What happened is that immigrants had to spend long periods of time in big ports of France before taking the boat to the new World and this is how they learned to speak French.
But English was the language mainly used for trades, and local French speakers included a lot of English words in their daily dictionary (which were then exported to France)
Then England took control of Canada and tried to eradicate the French spoken there because they thought it was impure and perverted.
French speakers were pissed, and began to protect the language with tough anti-English rules
Uh pretty sure protection of French language (and Catholicism) was agreed on from the start. Otherwise there would have been rebellions.
Language, religion, and laws. This is why Quebec is predominantly French, doesn’t use British common law like America and the rest of Canada, and was predominantly catholic at a time when a lot of places required you to follow the king’s (or queen’s) religion.
And why a Catholic school board exists in the entire country. We’re far past the point it should be allowed to exist, but afaik it’s in the constitution and hard to get rid of.
Before the moment England took control of the Canada there wasn’t any protective law because there wasn’t a need to.
Protection measures appeared after that
I’m responding to “tried to eradicate the French spoken there”. When they took over, I’m pretty sure they agreed to the French language and Catholicism from the very beginning. They didn’t try to eradicate it. Protection didn’t come from failed eradication attempts, protection was agreed to from the start.
I once was at a work function where I saw a French-Canadian and a Walloon French (Belgium) mock the French spoken by a Parisian.
And why do they speak mexican in spain?
I lived in both ‘French Canada’, and France at one point in my life.
In my experience, they all consider themselves the best thing France ever made and the other side are the equivalent of “rednecks”
To be fair, they both can be right.
To be fair if you’re used to “metropolitan” French then some Québécois accents can sound very “redneck”.
Why does that big Spain patch look like Ontario?
It is kinda interesting you can see the way it spreads around water. English with the Atlantic Ocean to the East, French with the Mississippi & Ohio rivers, and Spanish with the Gulf of Mexico and eventually hitting the Colorado River
Hence why if Quebec split they should keep the name Canada and the other provinces should vote for a new name.
Canada is home to the largest French speaking population in the world that has never surrendered to Germany.
I think that is DR Congo. More french speakers than France.
Give Canada some respect, DR Congo didn’t even exist until after WWII.
More French speakers than Quebec, New Brunswick, and a smattering here & there in other provinces? The only other thing the French in this country have is poutine. The least we can do is give them this.
11 million in Canada. 72 million in DR Congo. It’s not even close.
It’s crazy how small people think Africa is, as if it isn’t the 2nd most populous continent with Nigeria on track to overtake the US in population by 2050. Africa is projected to meet the same population as Asia by 2100 (both are likely to separately have about 3-4x the population of every other continent combined)
Of course a country in the most populous section of Africa have more people who speak the national language than in Canada! Nigeria has like 4x the amount of English speakers of Canada, and Uganda & Egypt both have around the same amount as Canada.
They made up for it by surrendering to the British and having their land sold to the Americans.
I mean, you’re not wrong, but the French in this country have made being a pain in the English-speaking population’s ass their entire raison d’être since like 1760. They’ve been fighting a resistance war for like 264 years which is why I consider it a good roadtrip if I can get from Cornwall to Edmundston without having to stop. Beautiful province but a pain in the dick to even exist in if you’re an Anglo.
I’m an American anglophone that lives in Quebec for work and uh, yeah. These people are constantly fighting a culture war that nobody else gives a shit about or signed up for. There should never be language police.
Every french speaker is delusional.
I once encountered a theory that North American english was potentially closer to historical english because it was less influenced by neighboring countries. I doubt that, now. But it’s an interesting idea.
North American French is like that
It is much more formal and traditional compared to France French (No idea about Haiti)
Because of laws preventing loan words
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As a yank who lived in the UK (East Sussex) for several years, I can share the sentiments of my mates there that they believe we Americans still speak a more traditional version of the language than they do now. Specifically pronunciation of words.
For example, Americans have retained the pronunciation of the final “r” in words like “father” and “mother,” while the UK has dropped it. Americans have maintained the “flat a” sound of cat in words like “path” and “class” whereas the UK has mostly replaced that sound with the “broad a” of “father.”
It’s not an exact science, but the rate of change in the language there has gone beyond the 18th century version we Americans still speak today and thus, it can be said American English, at least pronunciation, is more traditional.
On the class/path a: it depends where you are in the UK. In the north, it tends to be the flat a, in the south it tends to be the broad a. There’s a lot of variation in accent within the UK, to the point that you can identify pretty accurately where someone is from using something this quiz: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html.
Anecdotally, I think it is becoming a bit more uniform than it used to be, due to people moving around more than they did historically, though
https://theinternetsaysitstrue.com/2022/08/08/is-the-original-english-accent-still-alive-in-parts-of-the-united-states/ an interesting article on the subject that includes videos
Then there’s the people who say Shakespeare makes much more sense, flows better, and better play on words when spoken with an older UK accent (or Irish?), so nothing like North American.
(Lots of search results but no easy blurb to read on what it was. But I recall hearing some and it was nothing like North American accent.)
To bea or not to bea … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M
Are we talking the language? West of Quebec French is rare.
Ontario has some significant pockets of french Canadians
Ottawa comes to mind.
Yeah in Sask I’ve encountered two french speaking people (first language Quebecers)in the last decade. Both spoke English.
Both commented on how people’s expressions turn negative when they hear the accent. Which I can understand as it sounds very gutteral and unpleasant to the ear to me as well.
Plenty in Manitoba but they’ll also speak English. St Boniface is an entire neighborhood in Winnipeg where French is primary, including the arret signs. There’s a number of towns around the province where it’s the primary language as well. Bilingual of course but French is the usual spoken language.
true France is actually Cameroon
Baguette Baguette!
Tabarnac
Mother bastard
Look at stop signs in France and Quebec, then you know whats up.
I have a love/hate relationship with the people of Quebec.
It’s mostly hate…
Mon très cher « La manœuvre Picard », bien que je partage absolument votre avis ; je me dois, à mon plus amer regret, de vous informer que vous avez irrémédiablement et royalement fucked up votre carte.
Haut-vote pour l’un des seuls commentaires en français il me semble
Ahhhh the French
CUT!
