魁省的法语和法语大同小异
Overview of the relation to European French

Not simply slang or an archaic dialect, Quebec French resembles all other regional varieties of French in two basic respects. First, as with any regional variety, Quebec French shows a range of internal variation according to register and other social factors. Second, although all registers of Quebec French exhibit marked lexical and phonetic differences with respect to European French, formal Quebec French uses essentially the same orthography and grammar as Standard French, with few exceptions.[1]

Despite the high degree of similarity in the spelling and grammar of their formal varieties, Quebec French and French French have their own regionalisms, pronunciations and sets of sociolects or slangs (Joual in east-end Montreal; Verlan, Javanais, Louchebem, etc. in Paris).

[edit] Spelling and grammar

[edit] Formal language

A notable difference in grammar which received considerable attention in France during the 1990s is the feminine form of many professions which traditionally did not have a feminine form.[2] In Quebec, one writes nearly universally une chercheure "a researcher", whereas in France, un chercheur and, more recently, une chercheur and une chercheuse, are used.

There are other, sporadic spelling differences. For example, the Office québécois de la langue française recommends the spelling tofou for what is in France tofu "tofu". In grammar, the adjective inuit "Inuit" is invariable in France but, according to official recommendations in Quebec, has regular feminine and plural forms.[3]

[edit] Informal language

Grammatical differences between informal spoken Quebec French and the formal language abound. Some of these, such as omission of the negative particle ne, are present in the informal language of speakers of standard European French, while other features, such as use of the interrogative particle -tu, are either peculiar to Quebec or Canadian French or restricted to nonstandard varieties of European French. For further informaton, see the sections "Syntax", "Pronouns" and "Verbs" below.

[edit] Sociolects

Quebec and European accents are readily distinguishable. Over time, European French has exerted a strong influence on Quebec French. and the phonological features traditionally distinguishing informal Quebec French and formal European French have acquired varying sociolinguistic status.

Sociolinguistic studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s showed that Quebecers generally rated speakers of European French heard in recordings higher than speakers of Quebec French in many positive traits, including expected intelligence, education, ambition, friendliness and physical strength.[4] The researchers were surprised by the greater friendliness rating for Europeans,[5] since one of the primary reasons usually advanced to explain the retention of low-status language varieties is social solidarity with members of one's linguistic group. François Labelle cites the efforts at that time by the Office de la langue française "to impose as French a standard as possible"[6] as one of the reasons for the negative view Quebecers had of their language variety.

Since the 1970s, the official position on Quebec French has shifted dramatically. An oft-cited turning point was the 1977 declaration of the Association québécoise des professeurs et professeurs de français defining thus the language to be taught in classrooms: "Standard Quebec French [le français standard d'ici, literally, 'the Standard French of here'] is the socially favoured variety of French which the majority of Francophone Quebecers tend to use in situations of formal communication."[7] According to Ostiguy and Tousignant, it is doubtful that Quebecers would today still have the same negative attitudes towards their own variety of French that they did in the 1970s. They argue that negative social attitudes have focused instead on a subset of the characteristics of Quebec French relative to European French, and particularly some traits of informal Quebec French.[8] Some characteristics of European French are even judged negatively when imitated by Quebecers.[9]

Thus, the various phonological features traditionally distinguishing informal Quebec French from formal European French have acquired differing sociolinguistic status. For examples, see the section "Sociolinguistic status of selected phonological traits" below.

[edit] Lexis

[edit] Words inherited from France, now rare or no longer in use there

[edit] Quebec French lexical innovations

[edit] Anglicisms

One characteristic of major sociological importance distinguishing Quebec French from European French is the relatively greater number of borrowings from English, especially in the informal spoken language.[10] However, Quebecers show a stronger aversion to the use of anglicisms in formal contexts than do European francophones, largely because of what the influence of English on their language is held to reveal about the historically superior position of Anglophones in Canadian society. [11] According to Cajolet-Laganière and Martel,[12] out of 4,216 "criticized borrowings from English" in Quebec French that they were able to identify, some 93% have "extremely low frequency" and 60% are obsolete. However, the prevalence of anglicisms in Quebec French has often been exaggerated. French spoken with a number of anglicisms viewed as excessive may be disparagingly termed franglais. According to Chantal Bouchard,"While the language spoken in Quebec did indeed gradually accumulate borrowings from English [between 1850 and 1960], it did not change to such an extent as to justify the extraordinarily negative discourse about it between 1940 and 1960. It is instead in the loss of social position suffered by a large proportion of Francophones since the end of the 19th century that one must seek the principal source of this degrading perception."[13]

[edit] Borrowings from Aboriginal languages

[edit] History

Main article: History of Quebec French

Quebec French is not derived, as is sometimes misstated, from Old French – a much earlier ancestor that spanned the 11th to 14th centuries and, in many ways, resembled Latin. The origins of Quebec French actually lie in the 17th and 18th century regional varieties of early Modern French, also known as Classical French, and of other Oïl languages (Norman, Picard, etc.) that French colonists brought to New France. Quebec French evolved from this language base and was shaped by the following influences (arranged according to historical period):

[edit] New France

Unlike the language of France in the 17th and 18th centuries, French in New France was fairly unified (see Barbeau's book below). It also began to borrow words, especially place names such as "Québec", "Canada" and "Hochelaga", from Amerindian languages due to contacts with First Nations peoples.

[edit] British Regime

With the onset of British rule in 1760, Quebec French became isolated from European French. In 1774, the Quebec Act guaranteed French settlers cum British subjects rights to French law, the Roman Catholic faith, and the French language. Such early yet difficult success was followed by a socio-cultural retreat, if not repression, that would later help preserve French in Canada.

[edit] Latter half of the 19th century

After Canadian Confederation, Quebec started to become industrialized and thus experienced increased contact with English speakers. Quebec business, especially with the rest of Canada and with the United States, was conducted in English. Also, communications to and within the Canadian federal government were conducted almost exclusively in English. This period included as well a sharp rise in the number of English-speaking immigrants from what are now the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. This was particularly noticeable in Montreal, which became a majority anglophone city. As a result, Quebec French began to borrow massively from both American and Canadian English to fill lexical gaps in the fields of government, law, manufacturing, business and trade.

[edit] WWI to 1959

As of World War I the majority of Quebec's population lived in urban areas. Also, from WWI to the death of Maurice Duplessis in 1959, Quebec experienced massive modernization. It is during this period that French-language radio and television broadcasting, albeit with a façade of European pronunciation, began in Canada. While Quebec French borrowed many English-language brand names during this time, Quebec's first modern terminological efforts bore a French lexicon for (ice) hockey, the national sport of Canada. Following WWII, Quebec began to receive large waves of allophone immigrants who would acquire French or English, but most commonly the latter.

[edit] 1959 to 1982

From the Quiet Revolution to the passing of Bill 101, Quebec French saw a period of validation in its varieties associated with the working class while the percentage of literate and university educated francophones grew. Laws concerning the status of French were passed both on the federal and provincial levels. The Office québécois de la langue française was established to play an essential role of support in language planning.

[edit] 1982 to present

The post-Bill 101 period is marked by an explosion in information and communications technologies in the 1980's and 1990's and Quebec's increased use of English on both North American and global scales. Nonetheless, in Quebec the rate of assimilation towards English was virtually eliminated. This period is also the beginning of sizeable exports of Quebec-French cultural products and Quebec-French terminology work particularly in technical fields.

[edit] Social perception and language policy

[edit] Standardization

Although Quebec French constitutes a coherent and standard system, it has no objective norm since the very organization mandated to establish it, the Office québécois de la langue française, believes that objectively standardizing Quebec French would lead to reduced interintelligibility with other French communities around the world, linguistically isolating Quebecers and possibly causing the extinction of the French language in the Americas.

This governmental institution has nonetheless published many dictionaries and terminological guidelines since the 1960s, effectively allowing many Québécismes (French words local to Quebec) that either describe specifically North American realities or were in use before the Conquest. It also creates new, morphologically well-formed words to describe technological evolutions to which the Académie française, the equivalent body governing French language in France, is extremely slow to react. An example is the word courriel (a contraction of courrier électronique), the Quebec French term for e-mail, which is now widely used in France.

The resulting effect, other historical factors helping, is a negative perception of Quebec French traits by some of the Quebecers themselves, coupled with a desire to improve their language by conforming it to the Metropolitan French norm. This explains why most of the differences between Quebec French and Metropolitan French documented in this article are marked as "informal" or "colloquial". Those differences that are unmarked are most likely so just because they go unnoticed by most speakers.

[edit] Interintelligibility with other variations of French

Interintelligibility of formally and informally spoken Quebec French with Metropolitan French is a matter of heated debates between linguists. If a comparison can be made, the differences between both dialects are probably larger than those between American and British English, but not as large as those between standard German and Swiss German. This being said, it is important, for monolingual English speakers especially, to understand that in many other European languages there exist veritable dialects. Francophone Canadians abroad have to modify their accent somewhat in order to be easily understood, but very few francophone Canadians are unable to communicate readily with European Francophones. European pronunciation is not at all difficult for Canadians to understand; only differences in vocabulary present any problems.

Television programmes and films from Quebec often must be subtitled for international audiences, which some Quebecers perceive as offensive, although they themselves sometimes can hardly understand European French pronunciation and slang. Recent increases in reciprocal exposure are slowly improving interintelligibility though, and even slang expressions have been crossing the ocean in both directions.

In general, European French speakers have no problems understanding newscasts or other moderately formal speech. However, they may have great difficulty understanding for example a sitcom dialogue. This is due more to idioms, slang, and vocabulary than to accent or pronunciation. European French users will also have difficulty with colloquial speech of Quebecers, for sitcom dialogue reflects everyday speech. However, when speaking to a European French speaker, a French speaker from Quebec is capable of shifting to a slightly more formal, "international" type of speech.

Quebec's culture has only recently gained exposure in Europe, especially since the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille), and the difference in dialects and culture is large enough that Quebec French speakers overwhelmingly prefer their own "home grown" television dramas or sitcoms to shows from Europe. The number of such TV shows from France shown on Quebec television is about the same as the number of British TV shows on American television: outside of obscure cable channels - essentially none at all.

Quebec French was once stigmatized, among Quebecers themselves as well as among Continental French and foreigners, as a low-class dialect, sometimes due to its use of anglicisms, sometimes simply due to its differences from "standard" European French. Another potential factor is that in Quebecois French, curse words are frequently of religious (specifically Roman Catholic origin), whereas in Metropolitan French, the words are more harmless; ex:Quebecois will say câlisse ('chalice') where the French would say merde ('shit'). Until 1968, it was unheard of for Quebec French vocabulary to be used in plays in the theatre. In that year the huge success of Michel Tremblay's play Les Belles-Sœurs proved to be a turning point. Today, francophones in Quebec have much more freedom to choose a "register" in speaking, and television characters speak "real" everyday language rather than "normative" French.

[edit] Regional variation

In the informal registers of Quebec French, regional variation lies in pronunciation and lexis (vocabulary). The regions most commonly associated with such variation are Montreal (esp. the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve Borough), the Beauce region, the Gaspé Peninsula, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, and Quebec City. It should be noted, however, that residing or having been raised in a region does not indicate how a speaker of Quebec French will sound. There are many social and individual variables that influence a person’s speech. Nonetheless, one can say that with the rise in mass media, communications, higher education levels plus increased travel and relocation among the population, instances of regional variation are on the decline.

See Quebec French pronunciation and Quebec French lexicon for examples and further information.

[edit] Linguistic structure

[edit] Phonology

Main article: Quebec French phonology

For phonological comparisons of Quebec French, Belgian French, Meridional French, and Metropolitain French, see French phonology.

[edit] Vowels

Systematic, i.e. in all unmonitored speech:

* /œ̃/ and /ɑ/ as phonemes distinct from /ɛ̃/ and from /a/ respectively
* [ɪ], [ʏ], [ʊ] are lax allophones of /i/, /y/, /u/ in closed syllables
* Under certain conditions, long vowels in final (stressed) syllables
* Drop of schwa /ə/

Observable in some but not all unmonitored speech:

* Variants for /ɛ̃/ are closed to [ẽ] or [ĩ] and [ɑ̃] is fronted into [ã]
* Diphthongs as variants to long vowels
* Standard French [wɑ] (spelled "oi") as [wa], or as [we] (spelled "oé")

[edit] Consonants

Systematic:

* /t/ and /d/ affricated to [ts] and [dz] before /i/, /y/, and their allophones [ɪ], [ʏ]
* Drop of liquids /l/ and (written as "l" and "r") in unstressed position with schwa or unstressed intervocalic position

Observable in some but not all unmonitored speech:

* Trilled "r" - [r] (a disappearing phenomenon)

For detailed information on other topics in phonology in Quebec French, such as prosody, see Quebec French pronunciation.

[edit] Sociolinguistic status of selected phonological traits

The examples below are not intended to be exhaustive, but rather to illustrate the complex influence European French has had on Quebec French pronunciation, and the range of sociolinguistic statuses that individual phonetic variables can possess. For the specific technical description of the features in question, see the phonology sections above or the article Quebec French phonology.

* The most entrenched features of Quebec pronunciation are such that their absence, even in the most formal registers, is considered an indication of foreign origin of the speaker. This is the case, for example, for the affrication of /t/ and /d/ before /i/ and /y/.[14] (This particular feature of Quebec French is, however, sometimes avoided when singing, though not always.)[15]

* The use of the lax Quebec allophones of /i/, /y/, /u/ (in the appropriate phonetic contexts) is compulsory in all but highly formal styles, and even there their use predominates. Use of the tense allophones where the lax ones would be expected can be perceived as "pedantic".[16]

* The predominant Quebec variants [ã], [ẽ] and [ɔ̃] corresponding to the European [ɑ̃], [æ̃] (conventionally transcribed [ɛ̃]) and [õ] (conventionally transcribed [ɔ̃]) are not subject to a significant negative sociolinguistic evaluation, and are used by a majority of speakers and of educated speakers in all circumstances. However, the European variants also appear occasionally in formal speech among a minority of speakers.[17] (The preceding discussion applies to stressed syllables. For reasons unrelated to their social standing, some allophones close to the European variants appear frequently in unstressed syllables.)

* The Quebec variant [ɔː] of [ɑː] in such words as espace clearly predominates in informal speech, and, according to Ostiguy and Tousignant, is likely not perceived negatively in informal situations. However, sociolinguistic research has shown that this is not the case in formal speech, where the traditional European standard [ɑː] is more common. Despite this, many speakers use [ɔː] systematically in all situations, and Ostiguy and Tousignant hypothesize that these speakers tend to be less educated.[18] It must be mentioned that a third vowel [a], though infrequent, also occurs. This is the vowel which has emerged as a new European standard in the last several decades for words in this category.[19] According to Ostiguy and Tousignant, this pronunciation is seen as "affected"[20], and Dumas writes that speakers using this pronunciation "run the risk of being accused of snobbery".[21] Entirely analogous considerations apply to the three pronunciations of such words as chat, which can

其实就算有原版的，中国也不会进口，因为要学法语，我们都是学法国的法语，不会学魁北克的，比利时的，更不可能是老挝什么的。因为官方的才是最地道的。就如同英语，我们只会去学美式和英式，而不会去关注新西兰的英语怎样怎样，新加坡的怎样怎样。
如果说你要去魁北克移民或者学习，学正式的法语（也就是法国法语），绝对没问题，只是魁北克遗法语留了法国在其殖民时期的法语的习惯，你到那里待一段时间，自然会收悉的。也不是每个人在中国学了法语到国外都万事无忧，还是要进行语言培训什么的，你去了自然而然就清楚了。