Canadian French

Canadian French (French: français canadien) is the French language as it is spoken in Canada. It includes multiple varieties, the most prominent being Quebec French. Formerly Canadian French referred solely to Quebec French and the closely related varieties of Ontario (Franco-Ontarian) and Western Canada—in contrast with Acadian French, which is spoken by Acadians in New Brunswick (including the Chiac dialect) and some areas of Nova Scotia (including the dialect St. Marys Bay French). PEI and Newfoundland & Labrador have Newfoundland French.

This article is about a dialect of the French language. For the historical and sociological aspects of the French language in Canada, see French language in Canada. For the people, see French Canadians and Canadians in France.
Canadian French
Français canadien
Native toCanada (primarily Quebec, Eastern Ontario and New Brunswick, but present throughout the country); smaller numbers in emigrant communities in New England, United States
Native speakers
7,300,000 (2011 census)[1]
Early forms
Official status
Official language in
Canada

United States

Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
GlottologNone
IETFfr-CA
Canadian French distribution in the United States and Canada
  Regions where Canadian French is the main language
  Regions where Canadian French is an official language but not a majority native language
  Regions where Canadian French is a minority language

In 2011, the total number of native French speakers in Canada was around 7.3 million (22% of the entire population), while another 2 million spoke it as a second language. At the federal level, it has official status alongside Canadian English. At the provincial level, French is the sole official language of Quebec as well as one of two official languages of New Brunswick and jointly official (derived from its federal legal status) in Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Government services are offered in French at select localities in Manitoba, Ontario (through the French Language Services Act) and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in the country, depending largely on the proximity to Quebec and/or French Canadian influence on any given region. In New Brunswick, all government services must be available in both official languages.

New England French (a dialect spoken in northern New England) is essentially a variety of Canadian French and exhibits no particular differences from the Canadian dialects, unlike Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole.[2]

Dialects and varieties

Quebec French is spoken in Quebec. Closely related varieties are spoken by francophone communities in Ontario, Western Canada and the New England region of the United States, differing only from Quebec French primarily by their greater conservatism. The term Laurentian French has limited applications as a collective label for all these varieties, and Quebec French has also been used for the entire dialect group. The overwhelming majority of francophone Canadians speak this dialect.

Acadian French is spoken by over 350,000 Acadians in parts of the Maritime Provinces, Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands, the Lower North Shore and the Gaspé peninsula.[3] St. Marys Bay French is a variety of Acadian French spoken in Nova Scotia.

Métis French is spoken in Manitoba and Western Canada by the Métis, descendants of First Nations mothers and voyageur fathers during the fur trade. Many Métis spoke Cree in addition to French, and over the years they developed a unique mixed language called Michif by combining Métis French nouns, numerals, articles and adjectives with Cree verbs, demonstratives, postpositions, interrogatives and pronouns. Both the Michif language and the Métis dialect of French are severely endangered.

Newfoundland French is spoken by a small population on the Port-au-Port Peninsula of Newfoundland. It is endangered—both Quebec French and Acadian French are now more widely spoken among Newfoundland francophones than the distinctive peninsular dialect.

Brayon French is spoken in the area around Edmundston, New Brunswick, and, to a lesser extent, Madawaska, Maine, and Beauce of Quebec. Although superficially a phonological descendant of Acadian French, analysis reveals it is morphosyntactically identical to Quebec French.[4] It is believed to have resulted from a localized levelling of contact dialects between Québécois and Acadian settlers.

New England French is spoken in parts of New England in the United States. Essentially a local variant of Quebec French, it is one of three major forms of French that developed in what is now the United States, the others being Louisiana French and the nearly-extinct Missouri French. It is endangered, though its use is supported by bilingual education programs in place since 1987.[2]

Sub-varieties

There are two main sub-varieties of Canadian French. Joual is an informal variety of French spoken in working-class neighbourhoods in Quebec. Chiac is a blending of Acadian French syntax and vocabulary with numerous lexical borrowings from English.

Historical usage

The term "Canadian French" was formerly used to refer specifically to Quebec French and the closely related varieties of Ontario and Western Canada descended from it.[5] This is presumably because Canada and Acadia were distinct parts of New France, and also of British North America, until 1867. The term is no longer usually deemed to exclude Acadian French.

Phylogenetically, Quebec French, Métis French and Brayon French are representatives of koiné French in the Americas whereas Acadian French, Cajun French, and Newfoundland French are derivatives of non-koiné local dialects in France.[6]

Use of anglicisms

The term anglicism (Anglicisme) is related to the linguistic concepts of loanwords, barbarism, diglossia or the macaronic mixture of the French (français) and English (anglais) languages

According to some, French spoken in Canada includes many anglicisms. The "Banque de dépannage linguistique" (Language Troubleshooting Database) by the office québécois de la langue française[7] distinguishes between different kinds of anglicisms:[8]

  • The entire anglicisms are words or groups of loan words from the English language. The form is often exactly the same as in English, e.g. : "glamour", "short" and "sweet", but sometimes there is a slight adjustment to the French language, e.g.: "drabe", which comes from the English word "drab".
  • The hybrid anglicisms, which are new words, a combination of an English word to which a French element is added. This element (a suffix, for instance) sometimes replaces a similar element of the English word. "Booster" is an example of hybrid anglicism: it is made up of the English verb "to boost", to which the French suffix –er is added.
  • Plenty of anglicisms are semantic anglicisms: they are French words used in a sense which exists in English, but not in French. Ajourner ("postpone") in the sense of "to have a break", pathétique in the sense of "miserable" or "pitiful", plancher ("floor/surface") in the sense of "floor" (level of a building) and préjudice ("harm/injury") in the sense of "(unfavorable) opinion".
  • The syntactic anglicisms are those relating to the word order of a sentence and the use of prepositions and conjunctions. The expression "un bon dix minutes" ("a good ten minutes"), for instance, comes from the English language; the more conventional French wording would be "dix bonnes minutes". The use of the preposition pour ("for") after the verbs demander ("ask [for]") and chercher ("search/look [for]") is also a syntactic anglicism.
  • The morphological anglicisms are literal translations (or calques) of the English forms. With this kind of loan words, every element comes from the French language, but what results from it as a whole reproduces, completely or partly, the image transmitted in English. The word technicalité, for instance, is formed under English influence and does not exist in standard French (which would instead use the phrasing "détail technique"). À l'année longue ("all year long"), appel conférence ("conference call") and prix de liste ("list price") are other morphological examples of anglicisms.
  • Finally, the sentencial anglicisms are loan set phrases or images peculiar to the English language. The expressions ajouter l'insulte à l'injure ("add insult to injury") and sonner une cloche ("ring a bell") are sentencial anglicisms. Law 101 could postpone the advance of the phenomenon or even prevent it.

Academic, colloquial and pejorative terms are used in Canada (such as des "sabirisation" (from sabir, "pidgin"), Franglais, Français québécois, Canadian French) to refer to the vernacular.

See also

Notes and references

Notes
  1. French (Canada) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Ammon, Ulrich; International Sociological Association (1989). Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 306–308. ISBN 0-89925-356-3. Retrieved February 1, 2012.
  3. Ethnologue report for Canada
  4. Geddes, James (1908). Study of the Acadian-French language spoken on the north shore of the Baie-des-Chaleurs. Halle: Niemeyer; Wittmann, Henri (1995) "Grammaire comparée des variétés coloniales du français populaire de Paris du 17e siècle et origines du français québécois." in Fournier, Robert & Henri Wittmann. Le français des Amériques. Trois-Rivières: Presses universitaires de Trois-Rivières, 281–334.
  5. Francard and Latin, in Le régionalisme lexical, write:
    "Le français du Québec a rayonné en Ontario et dans l'ouest du Canada, de même qu'en Nouvelle-Angleterre. [...] Le français québécois et le français acadien peuvent être regroupés sous l'appellation plus large de français canadien2, laquelle englobe aussi le français ontarien et le français de l'Ouest canadien. Ces deux derniers possèdent des traits caractéristiques qui leur sont propres aujourd'hui dans l'ensemble canadien et qui s'expliquent surtout par un phénomène de conservatisme, mais il s'agit de variétés qui sont historiquement des prolongements du français québécois.
    2Il faut noter ici que le terme de «français canadien» avait autrefois un sens plus restreint, désignant le français du Québec et les variétés qui s'y rattachent directement, d'où l'emploi à cette époque de «canadianisme» pour parler d'un trait caractéristique du français du Québec."
  6. Robert Fournier & Henri Wittmann. 1995. Le français des Amériques. Trois-Rivières: Presses universitaires de Trois-Rivières.
  7. http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/
  8. Office québécois de la langue française. "Anglicismes". Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 5 May 2011.

References

Further reading
  • Darnell, Regna, ed. (1971). Linguistic Diversity in Canadian Society, in Sociolinguistics Series, 1. Edmonton, Alta.: Linguistic Research. Without ISBN or SBN
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