General Chat

Rollo .............

thank you!

Joy ........

I don't see any need to remove the thread now that reading it is back to normal!!


My French is now basically non-existent. I can say please, thank you, good day, good night, and all such courtesies .......... and most French and Quebecois people that I have met have very appreciative of that, and then have patience with me.

I can also read a menu, understand what is on offer and make an attempt to order in French ..... and that is when the French and Quebecois have shown THEIR courtesy!


But then, I always knew that my German was better than my French ;-)

I'm guessing that the Quebecois could be compared with Parisians, Sylvia. ;-)

well, Parisians tend to look down their nose at Quebecois ............. Quebecois French has evolved from the French spoken in the 16th Century slightly differently than Parisian French has evolved.

Each claims that theirs is the "pure" French ;-)

My French is probably 'bad' as is my German, Spanish and Welsh. My failing? verb tenses and sometimes reflexive verbs.

That has never really been problematic as people know what I am saying with the correct nouns...lolol

I was understood perfectly well in Guatemala although my Spanish is European.

I honestly believe that providing you try and interact in the local language people are very willing to help.

When Welsh is pronounced on TV by a 'foreigner' you sometimes find yourself trying to figure out what place they are referring to!

No tourists should be dissuaded from attempting conversation, far better than shouting loudly in English!

There are two major French communities in Quebec and they are not especially fond of each other. That is why Quebec today is not an independent state Ottawa played the two groups off against each other. (*) There is also a French remnant community in Newfoundland. The French even have a couple of (inhabited) small islands in the Gulf of St Laurence which make a living out of EU subsidies and smuggling.

Quebec French, to a French ear, has a sort of sing song sound a bit like the way Welsh English sounds to most English. It is archaic with all sorts of recondite grammar, vocabulary and of course lots and lots of N American English words. It is not at all easy to understand.

After Qubecers have been in France for a year or so they can generally make themselves well understood despite the weird accent. It does help that most of them are seriously good fun and work very hard. Paris does anything it can to make them happy - good relationships with Quebec are a top French priority whether or not it annoys Ottawa or Brussels. A this time Paris relationships with Ottawa are the best they have been in ages..

( Contrast this with the difficulties that the UK Home Office creates for Canadians, Australians and Kiwis.)

I cannot see any parallel between the Quebecois and Parisiennes. That said personal and business links are far stronger than they were 30 years ago. On my one and only winter visit to Montreal I thought it was the bees knees.

(*) Ottawa played similar games to keep BC and the west within the federation. So long as all Canadians agree on only one thing these strategies will go on succeeding. That one thing is not wanting to be an American. Donald Trump is a miracle incarnate for Canadian unity.

fwiw French news makes no attempt whatsoever to use foreign place names as they are preferring instead traditional French usage. Sometimes this can be very bizarre and even cause diplomatic incidents.

Londres, Pekin, Moscou, la Manche for example rather than London, Bejing, Moskva, English Channel. (Manche means sleeve).

Getting back to rivers the London Thames is pronounced "Temses".

The French are nearly as bad at getting a grip on foreign languages as the English and like the English are getting worse. One upside of this is that French language telly has improved no end it used to be dire. Macron has French education inc modern languages top of his to do list. Mandarin Chinese is the big deal not English or German.

Can you be French ?
If you can pronounce la grue (crane) and la grenouille (frog) you may well have French roots.

Rollo


thank you very much fro the dissertation on French in Canada.

I really did not know any of that after almost 50 years of living here :-P

I presume you also know about the Acadian French, the Louisiana French, the Manitoba / New Brunswick / First Nations / Saskatchewan / Albertan / BC versions

all different from each other .............. just as there are all the dialects in the UK.


I really did NOT start this thread for this kind of b***s**t and am disgusted by it.

well actually yes

it was strange how what I thought v different things came togther ....
Louisiana jazz and wonderful food, rellies in the British Army, brutal deportations, the last battle Canada v USA
and more
Of course you know all this (and lots more ) but the others may not

I would say that Quebec French is far enough away from French in the hexagon that it is a distinct language not a dialect. Trying to understand it is much harder than dealing with, say, the Chettis from NE France or Belgians. It is true that Parisiennes , though friendly, make zero effort to understand their Canadia cousins leaving them to get up to speed on what the Parisiennes consider modern French.

Then there is the French of the Paris slums, a patois full of street Arabic and North African tonal colors.

Not understanding the subjunctive mood in Romance languages is not to understand them at all except for basic transactional purposes. Language is not about trading it is about mood colour and feeling. English does not have a subjunctive mood. In that lies a big chunk of why the English speaking peoples find it so hard to get along with everybody else. Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese do not have this limitation.

The songs of some Canadian singers such as Joni Mitchell nevertheless succeed in touching souls.

Dissertation.......or diatribe? :-S

Going back to Hilary's post.

The River Nene is called the Nen west of Thrapston and the A14 trunk road. Neen if you are to the east. We are in Peterborough so call it the Neen.

Work colleagues from Northampton though we were mad as it was always the Nen to them.

Another one I remember is Shrewsbury, which is how the local say it. Those outsiders who think they know better pronounce it Shrowsbury.

We have always called it Shrewsbury, and we called it the Neen when we lived in Bedfordrshire.

Sylvia, Actually to be fair, I found Rollo's thread interesting as I didn't know some of it.

Ask a true local round Nottingham or Newark for-

Southwell.

*you mean suth,all,, me duck*

:-D.

I wish I could speak as clearly as Jacob Rees-Mogg when dealing with unruly ruffians.

So basically, it's all down to dialect, no matter what the language :-D

Diction is vital in any language.

I envy those who speak up & say something unexpectedly refreshing.