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Quebec French Français québécois
Spoken in:	Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Hampshire, small minority in California
Total speakers:	5.9 million
Language family:	Indo-European  Italic   Romance    Italo-Western     Western      Gallo-Iberian       Gallo-Romance        Gallo-Rhaetian         Oïl          French           Quebec French
Official status
Official language in:	none (Quebec uses Standard French as the official form of French)
Regulated by:
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3:	fre
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Quebec French (le français québécois, le français du Québec), or less often Québécois French, is the dominant and most prevalent regional variety of the French language, in its formal and informal registers, found in Canada.

Canadian French is a frequently used umbrella term for Quebec French and varieties found in Ontario and Western Canada, but not Acadian French.^{[citation needed]} The latter is a distinct dialect of French spoken in Atlantic Canada. Thus, the term Canadian French is often considered to exclude Acadian French, and generally refers to the varieties of French used in Quebec and all provinces west of Quebec as well as in some New England communities.^{[citation needed]} The term joual is occasionally used to describe the basilect working-class slang of Montreal.^[1]

As the area (and peoples) to which Canada refers has changed, so too has the Quebec French sprachraum. Whereas the majority of those who speak Canadian French live in the province of Quebec, Canadian French is also used by sizable francophone minorities in northern, eastern and southern Ontario, as well as by smaller French-speaking communities in the Canadian Prairies and in northern New England. Jack Kerouac for example spoke Canadian French as his first language. There are also scattered speakers in significant numbers throughout Canada.

Contents 1 History 1.1 New France 1.2 British rule 1.3 Late 19th century 1.4 20th century to 1959 1.5 1959 to 1982 2 Social perception and language policy 2.1 Standardization 2.2 Mutual Intelligibility with other variations of French 2.3 Regional variation 3 Overview of the relation to European French 3.1 Spelling and grammar 3.1.1 Formal language 3.1.2 Informal language 3.2 Sociolects 3.3 Lexis 3.3.1 Quebec French lexical innovations 3.3.2 Anglicisms 3.3.3 Borrowings from Aboriginal languages 4 Linguistic structure 4.1 Phonology 4.1.1 Vowels 4.1.2 Consonants 4.1.3 Sociolinguistic status of selected phonological traits 4.2 Syntax 4.3 Pronouns 4.4 Verbs 4.5 Vocabulary (lexis) 5 Linguistic relatives and neighbours 5.1 Regional varieties of French 5.2 Mixed languages and creoles formed from French (N.A. & the Caribbean) 6 Notes 7 See also 8 External links 9 References

Main article: History of Quebec French

Canadian 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 Canadian 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. Canadian French evolved from this language base and was shaped by the following influences (arranged according to historical period):

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", and words to describe the flora and fauna such as "atoca" and "achigan" from Amerindian languages due to contacts with First Nations peoples.

The importance of the rivers and ocean as the main routes of transportation also left its imprint on Canadian French. Whereas standard French uses the verbs "monter" and "descendre" to get in and out of an automobile, Canadians tend to use "embarquer" and "débarquer", relics from their maritime heritage.

With the onset of British rule in 1760, Quebec French became isolated from European French. This led to a retention of older prononciations, such as "moé" for "moi" and expressions that later died out in France. In 1774, the Quebec Act guaranteed French settlers as 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 ensure the survival of French in Canada.

After Canadian Confederation, Quebec started to become industrialized and thus experienced increased contact between French and 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 looked like a majority anglophone city (English publicity, stores) but wasn't one. 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. A great number of French Canadians went to the US to seek employment. When they returned, they brought with them new words taken from their experiences in the New England textile mills and the northern lumber camps.

During World War I, a majority of Quebec's population lived in urban areas for the first time. From the time of the war to the death of Maurice Duplessis in 1959, the province 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 Canadian French borrowed many English-language brand names during this time, Quebec's first modern terminological efforts bore a French lexicon for (ice) hockey, one of the national sports of Canada. Following WWII, Quebec began to receive large waves of allophone immigrants who would acquire French or English, but most commonly the latter. These immigrants would enrich the French language with their cuisine by contributing words such as "bagel" and "pizza".

From the Quiet Revolution to the passing of Bill 101, French in Quebec 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. In Ontario, the first French-language public secondary schools were built in the 1960s, but not without confrontations. Sturgeon Falls, Penetanguishene and Windsor each had its own school crisis.

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 Quebeckers 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 "canadianismes" or québécismes (French words local to Canada or 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 Canadian French term for e-mail, which despite being favoured by the French Ministry of Culture, is not widely used among the French public.

The resulting effect, other historical factors helping, is a negative perception of Quebec French traits by some of the Quebeckers 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.

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. 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 shows and movies from Quebec often must be subtitled for international audiences, which some Quebeckers perceive as offensive, although they themselves sometimes can hardly understand European 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 Quebeckers, 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.

Canadian 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 Canadian French, curse words are mostly of religious (specifically Roman Catholic) origin, whereas in Metropolitan French, the words are more harmless; ex:French Canadians will say câlisse ('chalice') where the French would say merde ('shit'). Until 1968, it was unheard of for Canadian 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.

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 is not a guarantee on how a speaker of Quebec French will sound. There are many social and individual variables that also 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.

Not simply slang or an archaic dialect, Canadian French resembles all other regional varieties of French in two basic respects. First, as with any regional variety, Canadian French shows a range of internal variation according to register and other social factors. Second, although all registers of Canadian French exhibit marked lexical and phonetic differences with respect to European French, formal Canadian French uses essentially the same orthography and grammar as Standard French, with few exceptions.^[2]

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

Historically speaking, the closest relative of Canadian French is the 17th century koiné of Paris.^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5]

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 information, see the sections "Syntax", "Pronouns" and "Verbs" below.

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 Quebeckers 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.^[6] The researchers were surprised by the greater friendliness rating for Europeans,^[7] 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"^[8] as one of the reasons for the negative view Quebeckers 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 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."^[9] 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.^[10] Some characteristics of European French are even judged negatively when imitated by Quebecers.^[11]

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.

• Courriel, meaning e-mail, a contraction of "courrier electronique" (electronic mail) ^[12]
• Pourriel, meaning spam e-mail, is a contraction of "courriel poubelle" (garbage e-mail) ^[13]

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.^[14] 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.^[15] According to Cajolet-Laganière and Martel,^[16] 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."^[17]

Main article: Quebec French phonology

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

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")

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.

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/.^[18] (This particular feature of Quebec French is, however, sometimes avoided when singing, though not always.)^[19]

• 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".^[20]

• 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.^[21] (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.^[22] 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.^[23] According to Ostiguy and Tousignant, this pronunciation is seen as "affected",^[24] and Dumas writes that speakers using this pronunciation "run the risk of being accused of snobbery".^[25] Entirely analogous considerations apply to the three pronunciations of such words as chat, which can be pronounced [ʃɔ], [ʃɑ] or [ʃa].^[26]

• The diphthonged variants of such words as père (e.g., [pa^eʀ] instead of [pɜːʀ], much closer to the Parisian norm) are not used by most speakers in formal situations. They have been explicitly and extensively stigmatized, and were, according to the official Quebec educational curricula of 1959 and 1969, among those pronunciation habits to be "corrected" in pupils. In informal situations, most speakers use these forms to some extent. However, they are viewed negatively, and their frequency is higher among uneducated speakers.^[27]

• Traditional pronunciations such as [pwɛl] for poil (also [pwal], as in France; words in this category include avoine, (ils) reçoivent, noirci, etc. ) and [mwe] for moi (now usually [mwa], as in France; this category consists of moi, toi, and verb forms such as (je) bois, (on) reçoit, but excludes québécois, toit, etc. which have only ever had the pronunciation [wa]) are no longer used by many speakers, and are virtually absent from formal speech.^[28] They have long been the object of condemnation.^[29] Dumas writes that the [we] pronunciations of words in the moi category have "even become the symbol and the scapegoat of bad taste, lack of education, vulgarity, etc., no doubt because they differ quite a bit from the accepted pronunciation, which ends in [wa], [...]"^[30] On the other hand, writing in 1987, he considers [wɛ] in words in the poil group "the most common pronunciation".

• No doubt one of the most striking changes having affected Quebec French in recent decades is the displacement of the trilled r [r] by the uvular r [ʀ], originally from northern France, and similar acoustically to the Parisian velar r [ʁ]. Historically, the trilled r predominated in western Quebec, including Montreal, and the uvular r in eastern Quebec, including Quebec City, with an isogloss near Trois-Rivières. Elocution teachers and the clergy traditionally favoured the trilled r, which was nearly universal in Montreal until the 1950s and was perceived positively. But massive immigration from eastern Quebec beginning in the 1930s with the Great Depression, participation of soldiers in the Second World War, travel to Europe after the war, and especially use of the uvular r in radio and then television broadcasts, quickly reversed perceptions and favoured the spread of the uvular r. Trilled r is today in rapid decline. According to Ostiguy and Tousignant, this change has occurred within a single generation.^[31] The Parisian uvular r is also present in Quebec, and its use is positively correlated with socio-economic status.^[32]

Main article: Quebec French syntax

There are increasing differences between the syntax used in spoken Quebec French from the syntax of other regional dialects of French.^[33] In French-speaking Canada, however, the characteristic differences of Quebec French syntax are not considered standard despite their high-frequency in everyday, relaxed speech.

One far-reaching difference is the weakening of the syntaxic role of the specifiers (both verbal and nominal), which results in many syntaxic changes:

• Positioning of the subject in an isolated phrase at the beginning or end of a sentence, with pronouns often in apposition to the noun:

Mon frère, il est dans la police. (Mon frère est dans la police.) My brother works for the police.

Il a l'air fâché, le chien. (Le chien a l'air fâché.) The dog looks angry.

• Extensive use of complex sentences with main or dependent clauses using demonstratives:

Mon rêve, c'est de partir en Afrique. (Mon rêve est de partir en Afrique.) My dream is to go to Africa.

• Relative clauses (1) using "que" as an all-purpose relative pronoun, or (2) embedding interrogative pronouns instead of relative pronouns:

(1) J'ai trouvé le document que j'ai besoin. (J'ai trouvé le document dont j'ai besoin.) I found / I've found the document I need.

(2) Je comprends qu'est-ce que tu veux dire. (Je comprends ce que tu veux dire.) I understand what you mean.

• Omission of the prepositions that collocate with certain verbs:

J'ai un enfant à m'occuper. (Standard French: s'occuper de; Je dois m'occuper d'un enfant.) I have a child (I need) to take care of.

Ça débouche (Standard French: déboucher sur; Ça débouche sur une rue.)

• Plural conditioned by semantics:

La plupart du monde sont tannés des taxes. (La plupart du monde est tannée des taxes.) Most everyone is fed up with taxes.

• A phenomenon throughout the Francophonie, dropping the "ne" of the double negative is accompanied, in Quebec French, by a change in word order (1), and (2) postcliticisation of direct pronouns (3) along with non-standard liaisons to avoid vowel hiatus:

(1) Donne-moi-le pas maintenant. (Ne me le donne pas maintenant.) Don't give it to me now.

(2) Dis-moi pas de m'en aller! (Ne me dis pas de m'en aller) Don't tell me I have to go.

(3) Donne-moi-z-en pas ! (Ne m'en donne pas!) Don't give me any!

Other notable syntactic changes in Quebec French include the following:

• Use of non-standard verbal periphrasis:

J'étais pour te le dire. (J'allais te le dire. / J'étais sur le point de te dire.) I was going/about to tell you about it.

Avoir su, j'aurais... (Si j'avais su, j'aurais...) Had I known, I would have...

J'étais après travailler quand ils sont arrivés. (J'étais en train de travailler quand ils sont arrivés.) I'd been working when they came.

M'as le faire. (Je vais le faire. / Je le ferai.); akin to "ahma" /?m?/ in Southern American English - I'm a do it. (I'm going to do it.)

• Particle -tu used (1) to form tag questions, (2) sometimes to express exclamatative sentences) and (3) on other times it's used with excess, simply for its sound:

C'est-tu prêt? (Est-ce prêt? / C'est prêt? / Est-ce que c'est prêt?) Is it ready?

On a-tu bien mangé! (Qu'est-ce qu'on a bien mangé!) We ate well, didn't we?

T'as-tu pris tes pillules? (Est-ce que tu as pris tes médicaments?) Have you taken your medications?

This particle is -ti in most varieties of North American French outside Quebec as well as in European varieties of français populaire as already noted by Gaston Paris.^[34] It is also found in the none-creole speech on the island of Saint-Barthelemy in the Caribbean.

• Extensive use of litotes:

C'est pas chaud! (C'est frais!) It's not all too warm out!

C'est pas laid pantoute! (Ce n'est pas laid du tout!) Isn't this nice! (literally: This is not ugly at all).

However, these features are common to all the basilectal varieties of français populaire descended from the 17th century koiné of Paris.

• Use of diminutives:

Prendrais-tu un p'ti café? Une p'tite bière? Would you like to have a coffee? A beer? The use of the contaction p'ti/p'tite to replace petite/petite (small) acts as the terminaison -ito/-ita would in spanish (ex. cafecito = coffee, in a familiar way). It shows how familiar you are with the subject. Quebecois have a cultural tendency to refer to things as small, as a mean of showing either their appreciation, how familiar, or just how trivial someone/something is to them. The context tells you.

In daily use, Quebec French speakers usually use a substantially different set of subjective pronouns in the nominative case than those traditionally used in standardized French:

je/ tu/ y [i], a/ on/ vous/ y [i] (instead of je/ tu/ il, elle/ nous/ vous/ il(s), elle(s))

with [a] --> [?] when used with the verb and copula être

• In common with the rest of the Francophonie, there is a shift from nous to on in all registers. In post-Quiet Revolution Quebec, the use of informal tu has become widespread in many situations that normally call for semantically singular vous. While some schools are trying to re-introduce this use of vous, which is absent from most youths' speech, the shift from nous to on goes relatively unnoticed.

• The traditional use of on, in turn, is usually replaced by different use of pronouns or paraphrases, like in the rest of the Francophonie. The second person (tu, té) is usually used by speakers when referring to experiences that can happen in one's life:

Quand té ben tranquille chez vous, à te mêler de tes affaires ...

Other paraphrases using le monde, les gens are more employed when referring to overgeneralisations:

Le monde aime pas voyager dans un autobus plein.

• As in the rest of la Francophonie, the sound [l] is disappearing in il, ils among informal registers and rapid speech. More particular to Quebec is the transformation of elle to [a] and less often [?] written a and è or 'est in eye dialect. See more in Quebec French pronunciation.

• Absence of elles - For a majority of Quebec French speakers, elles is not used for the 3rd person plural pronoun, at least in the nominative case; it is replaced with the subject pronoun ils[i] or the stress/tonic pronoun eux(-autres). However, elles is still used in other cases (ce sont elles qui vont payer le prix).

• -autres In informal registers, the stress/tonic pronouns for the plural subject pronouns have the suffix –autres, pronounced /o:t/ and written –aut’ in eye dialect. Nous-autres, vous-autres, and eux-autres are comparable to the Spanish forms nos(otros/as) and vos(otros/as), yet the usage and meanings are different. Note that elles-autres does not exist.

In their syntax and morphology, Quebec French verbs differ very little from the verbs of other regional dialects of French, both formal and informal. The distinctive characteristics of Quebec French verbs are restricted mainly to:

• Regularization

1. In the present indicative, the forms of aller (to go) are regularized as /v?/ in all singular persons: je vas, tu vas, il/elle va. Note that in 17th century French, what is today's international standard /v?/ in je vais was considered substandard while je vas was the prestige form.

2. In the present subjunctive of aller, the root is regularized as all- /al/ for all persons. Examples: que j'alle, que tu alles, qu'ils allent, etc. The majority of French verbs, regardless of dialect or standardization, display the same regularization. They therefore use the same root for both the imperfect and the present subjunctive: que je finisse vs. je finissais.

3. Colloquially, in haïr (to hate), in the present indicative singular forms, the hiatus is found between two different vowels instead of at the onset of the verb's first syllable. This results in the forms: j'haïs, tu haïs, il/elle haït, written with a diaeresis and all pronounced with two syllables: /a.i/. The "h" in these forms is silent and does not indicate a hiatus; as a result, je elides with haïs forming j'haïs. All the other forms, tenses, and moods of haïr contain the same hiatus regardless of register. However, in Metropolitan French and in more formal Quebec French, especially in the media, the present indicative singular forms are pronounced as one syllable /.?/ and written without a diaresis: je hais, tu hais, il/elle hait.

• Differentiation

1. In the present indicative of both formal and informal Quebec French, (s')asseoir (to sit/seat) only uses the vowel /wa/ in stressed roots and /e/ in unstressed roots: je m'assois, tu t'assois, il s'assoit, ils s'assoient but nous nous asseyons, vous vous asseyez. In Metropolitain French, stressed /wa/ and /je/ are in free variation as are unstressed /wa/ and /e/. Note that in informal Quebec French, (s')asseoir is often said as (s')assire.

2. Quebec French has retained the /?/ ending for je/tu/il-elle/ils in the imperfect (the ending is written as -ais, -ait, -aient). In most other dialects, the ending is pronounced, instead, as a neutralized sound between /e/ and /?/.

3. Informal ils jousent (they play) is often heard for ils jouent and is most likely due to an old anology with ils cousent (they sew).

See Quebec French lexicon for more examples and further explanation.

The distinctive features of the Quebec French lexis are:

• lexical items formerly common to both France and New France and that are today unique only to Quebec French; (This includes expressions and word forms that have the same form elsewhere in La Francophonie, yet have a different denotation or connotation.)

• borrowings from Amerindian languages, esp. place names;

• les sacres - Quebec French profanity (see separate article);

• many loanwords, calques and other borrowings from English in the 19th and 20th centuries, whether such borrowings are considered standard French or not;

• starting in the latter half of the 20th century, an enormous store of French neologisms (coinages) and re-introduced words via terminological work by professionals, translators, and the OLF; some of this terminology is "exported" to the rest of la Francophonie;

• feminized job titles and gender-inclusive language;

• morphological processes that have been more productive:

1. suffixes: -eux/euse, -age, -able, and -oune

2. reduplication (as in the international French word guéguerre): bibite, cacanne, gogauche, etc.

3. reduplication plus -oune: chouchoune, doudoune, foufounes, gougounes, moumoune, nounoune, poupoune, toutoune.

• Acadian French - spoken mainly in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada

• Cajun French - spoken in Louisiana, USA

• Metropolitan French - spoken mainly in Metropolitan France

• Chiac - (Fr. + English) spoken in New Brunswick, Canada

• Michif - (Fr. + Cree + Ojibwe + English) spoken in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada

• Haitian Creole - (Fr. + West African languages) spoken in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora

• Antillean Creole - (same origins as Haitian Creole) spoken in Dominica, St. Lucia, and the DOMs of Martinique and Guadeloupe

• Louisiana Creole - (same origins as Haitian Creole) spoken in Louisiana, USA

• French language
• Standard French
• French phonology
• History of the French language
• French in Canada
• Ontarian French
• Quebec French lexicon
• Quebec French profanity
• Gender-neutral language in French
• Joual
• Magoua
• French in the Gaspé
• Saguenay French
• Acadian French

• (French) Denis Dumas (1987). Nos façons de parler. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l'Université du Québec. ISBN 276050445X. 

• (French) Pierre Martel, Hélène Cajolet-Laganière (1996). Le français québécois : Usages, standard et aménagement. Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval. ISBN 978-2892242614. 

• (French) Michel Plourde, ed. (2000). Le français au Québec : 400 ans d'histoire et de vie. Montreal: Éditions Fides/Publications du Québec. ISBN 2762122813. 

• (French) Robert Fournier & Henri Wittmann, ed. (1995). Le français des Amériques. Trois-Rivières: Presses Universitaires de Trois-Rivières. ISBN 2-9802307-2-3. 

• (French) Philippe Barbeau (1984). Le Choc des patois en Nouvelle-France: Essai sur l'histoire de la francisation au Canada. Montreal: Presses de l'Université du Québec. ISBN 2-7605-0330-5. : research on the early development of French in New France.

• (French) Lionel Meney (1999). Dictionnaire Québécois Français. Montreal: Guérin. ISBN 2-7601-5482-3. : a comprehensive reference dictionary defining Québécois French usage for speakers of European French

• (French) Jean-Marcel Léard (1995). Grammaire québécoise d'aujourd'hui: Comprendre les québécismes. Montreal: Guérin Universitaire. ISBN 2-7601-3930-1. : a detailed analysis of some grammatical differences between France and Quebec French.

• (French) Raymond Mougeon, Édouard Beniak (1994). Les Origines du français québécois. Québec, Les Presses de l'Université Laval. ISBN 2-7637-7354-0. 

• (French) Luc Ostiguy, Claude Tousignant (1993). Le français québécois: normes et usages. Montreal: Guérin Universitaire. ISBN 2-7601-3330-3. : Analysis of some particularities of pronunciations in regard to the Quebec and European norms and language registers.

• Léandre Bergeron, The Québécois Dictionary (Toronto, James Lorimer & Co, 1982)

• History of the French Language in Quebec

• (French) History of French in Quebec

• (French) Trésor de la langue française au Québec

• (French) Grand dictionnaire terminologique (Office québécois de la langue française)

• The Alternative Québécois Dictionary

v • d • e  Languages of Quebec
Official languages French
Non-official languages Quebec English · Algonquin · Atikamekw · Abenaki · Cree · Mi'kmaq · Innu-aimun · Inuktitut

v • d • e Dialects of the French language
Europe	(France) Meridional French · (Belgium) Belgian French · (Switzerland) Swiss French · (Italy) Aostan French · (Channel Islands) Jersey Legal French
North America	(Canada) Canadian French - Quebec French · Acadian French · Newfoundland French · (USA) Cajun French · Colonial Louisiana French
Africa	African French (Maghreb French)
Asia	(Levant) Lebanese French · (India) Indian French · (Indochina) Southeast Asian French – Cambodian French · Lao French · Vietnamese French
Oceania	New Caledonian French · Polynesian French