Canadian French - Wikipedia

Variety of French language 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.

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Canadian French
Français canadien
Pronunciation	[fʁãˈsɛkanaˈd͡zjɛ̃]
Native to	Canada (primarily Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, but present throughout the country); smaller numbers in emigrant communities in New England (especially Maine and Vermont), United States
Native speakers	7,300,000 (2011 census)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latinic Romance Italo-Western Western Gallo-Iberian[2] Gallo-Romance Gallo-Rhaetian?[3] Arpitan–Oïl Oïl Francien zone French Canadian French
Early forms	Old Latin Vulgar Latin Proto-Romance Old French Middle French
Dialects	Newfoundland Peninsular Ontario Métis Acadian Québécois New England Detroit River
Writing system	Latin script (French alphabet)French Braille
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
IETF	fr-CA

Canadian French (French: français canadien, [fʁãˈsɛkanaˈd͡zjɛ̃]) is the French language as it is spoken in Canada. It includes multiple varieties, the most prominent of which is Québécois (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), Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland & Labrador (where Newfoundland French is also spoken).

Dialects and varieties

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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 linguistic 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.[4] St. Marys Bay French is a variety of Acadian French spoken in Nova Scotia.

Brayon French is spoken in Madawaska County, New Brunswick, and, to a lesser extent, Aroostook County, Maine, and Beauce of Quebec. Although superficially a phonological descendant of Acadian French, analysis reveals it is morphosyntactically identical to Quebec French.[5] It is believed to have resulted from a localized levelling of contact dialects between Québécois and Acadian settlers.

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 distinct from their French dialect 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.

Sub-varieties

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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

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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.[6] 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.[which?][7]

Use of anglicisms

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The term anglicism (anglicisme) is related to the linguistic concepts of loanwords, barbarism, diglossia, and the macaronic mixture of the French and English 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[8] distinguishes between different kinds of anglicisms:[9]

• Complete 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").
• Hybrid anglicisms are new words, formed by the addition of a French element to an English word. 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.
• Semantic anglicisms are French words used in a sense which exists in English but not in French. Examples include 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".
• 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.
• Morphological anglicisms are literal translations (or calques) of the English forms. With this kind of borrowing, every element comes from French, 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, sentencial anglicisms are loan idioms 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.

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

See also

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• Official bilingualism in Canada
• French language in Canada
• Association québécoise de linguistique
• History of French
• Languages of Canada
• Quebec French lexicon
• French language in the United States
• CSA keyboard – the official keyboard layout of Canada
• Canadian Language Museum
• Maillardville
• French colonization of the Americas

Notes and references

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Notes

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1. ^ French (Canada) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2022-05-24). "Glottolog 4.8 - Shifted Western Romance". Glottolog. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on 2023-11-27. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
3. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2022-05-24). "Glottolog 4.8 - Oil". Glottolog. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on 2023-11-11. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
4. ^ Ethnologue report for Canada
5. ^ 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.[1]
6. ^ 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."
7. ^ Robert Fournier & Henri Wittmann. 1995. Le français des Amériques. Trois-Rivières: Presses universitaires de Trois-Rivières.
8. ^ "Banque de dépannage linguistique - Office québécois de la langue française". Archived from the original on 2020-05-14. Retrieved 2020-05-18.
9. ^ Office québécois de la langue française. "Anglicismes". Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 5 May 2011.

References

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• The lexical basis of grammatical borrowing: a Prince Edward Island French
• Language in Canada. Edwards, John R.
• Canadian French for better travel. Montreal: Ulysses Travel Guides. 2004. ISBN 2-89464-720-4. Archived from the original on October 19, 2021.

Further reading

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

External links

[edit] Look up Canadian French in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Audio example of Canadian French Archived 2017-10-10 at the Wayback Machine

v t e Languages of Canada
Official languages	English Black Afro-Nova Scotian Cascadian Franglais Chiac Indigenous Lunenburg Maritime Newfoundland Ottawa Valley Québec Toronto French Acadian Brayon Chaouin Franglais Chiac Joual Magoua Métis Newfoundland Ontarois Québec
Indigenous languages	Algonquian Abenaki Algonquin Blackfoot Cree Innu Maliseet-Passamaquoddy Miꞌkmaq Munsee Naskapi Ojibwe Ottawa Potawatomi Inuit Inuinnaqtun Inuktitut Inupiaq Inuvialuktun Iroquoian Cayuga Mohawk Oneida Onondaga Seneca Tuscarora † Wyandot † Na-Dene Babine-Witsuwitʼen Carrier Chipewyan Dogrib Gwichʼin Hän Kaska Nicola † Sekani Slavey Tagish † Tahltan Tlingit Tsetsaut † Tsilhqotʼin Tsuutʼina Tutchone Salishan Comox Halkomelem Lillooet Nuxalk Okanagan Pentlatch † Saanich Shíshálh Shuswap Squamish Thompson Siouan Stoney Sioux Assiniboine Tsimshian Coast Gitxsan Nisga'a Southern † Wakashan Ditidaht Haisla Heiltsuk-Oowekyala Kwakʼwala Nuu-chah-nulth other Beothuk † Haida Kutenai
Pidgins, creoles and mixed	Algonquian–Basque pidgin Broken Slavey Bungee Chinook Jargon Labrador Inuit Pidgin French Michif
Minority languages	Canadian Gaelic Newfoundland Irish Spanish Portuguese Italian German Pennsylvania Hutterite Plautdietsch Polish Ukrainian Russian Doukhobor Arabic Persian Hindustani Punjabi Tamil Mandarin Cantonese Korean Vietnamese Tagalog
Sign languages	American Sign Language Black American Sign Language Protactile Hand Talk Oneida Sign Language Plateau Sign Language Inuit Sign Language Maritime Sign Language Quebec Sign Language
Canadian style guides - Canadian dictionaries ‎

v t e Varieties of the French language
Standard French
African	Maghrebi African
Asian	Cambodian Indian Laotian Vietnamese Lebanese
European	French Meridional Belgian Jersey Legal Law (England, Wales and Ireland) Swiss Aostan
North American	Canadian Quebec Joual Magoua Brayon Acadian Chiac Newfoundland Métis Ontario United States Houma Frenchville Louisiana Métis Missouri Muskrat New England Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Pierre and Miquelon Caribbean Haitian Saint-Barthélemy
Related	French-based creole languages Michif
Signed	French Sign Language French Belgian Sign Language Quebec Sign Language

v t e Gallo-Romance languages and dialects
Areal groups	Canadian French*
Langues d'oïl	Antillean Creole Dominican Grenadian Saint Lucian Bourbonnais Creoles Agalega Chagossian Mauritian Réunion Rodriguan Seychellois French* Acadian Chiac St. Marys Bay African* Abidjan Kinshasa Aostan Belgian Métis New England Québécois* Joual Magoua Cambodian Francien Frenchville Haitian Houma French Indian Jersey Legal Laotian Middle French Meridional Metropolitan* Missouri Muskrat Newfoundland Ontarian Saint-Barthélemy Saint Pierre and Miquelon Standard Swiss Vietnamese Norman Anglo-Norman Augeron Auregnais Cauchois Cotentinais Guernésiais Jèrriais Law French Old Norman Sercquiais Others Angevin Berrichon Bolze Bourbonnais Burgundian Burundi Pidgin Camfranglais Champenois Frainc-Comtou Gallo Guianese Haitian Creole* Karipúna Creole Labrador Inuit Pidgin Lorrain Welche Louisiana Creole Louisiana French Michif Moselle Romance Nouchi Old French Orléanais Petit nègre Picard Poitevin-Saintongeais Poitevin Saintongeais Tayo Tây Bồi Walloon Wisconsin Walloon Zarphatic
Francoprovencalic	Faetar-Cigliàje Franco-Provençal/Arpitan Mâconês Savoyard Valdôtain Vâlsoanin
Italics indicate extinct languages or dialects A star (*) indicates varieties with more than 5 million speakers Languages between parentheses are varieties of the language on their left.

v t e Romance languages (classification)
Major branches	Eastern Italo-Western Italo-Dalmatian Western Southern
Eastern	Aromanian Istro-Romanian Megleno-Romanian Daco-Romanian dialects Banat Bukovinian Crișana Maramureș Moldavian Oltenian Transylvanian Wallachian
Italo-Dalmatian	Central Central Italian Central Marchigiano Ancona Fabriano Macerata Central−Northern Latian Romanesco Sabino Corsican Gallurese Italian Italo-Australian Maltese Italian Regional Italian Swiss Italian Sassarese Tuscan Florentine Southern Extreme Southern Italian Central−Southern Calabrian Salentino Manduriano Sicilian Pantesco Neapolitan–Calabrese Neapolitan Barese Benevento Castelmezzano Cilentan Irpinian Arianese Molisan Southern Latian Tarantino Vastese Northern Calabrian Others Dalmatian Romance Dalmatian Istriot Judeo-Italian
Western	Gallo-Italic Emilian–Romagnol Emilian Bolognese Judeo-Mantuan Parmigiano Romagnol Forlivese Old Romagnol Sammarinese Ferrarese Gallo-Italic of Basilicata Gallo-Italic of Sicily Ligurian Brigasc Genoese Intemelio Monégasque Royasc Tabarchino Judeo-Italian Lombard Eastern Bergamasque Cremish Old Lombard Western Brianzöö Canzés Bustocco–Legnanese Legnanese Comasco–Lecchese Comasco Laghée Lecchese Vallassinese Milanese Ossolano Southwestern Cremunés Novarese Pavese Ticinese Varesino Piedmontese Judeo-Piedmontese Gallo-Romance Languesd'oïl Angevin Berrichon Bourbonnais Burgundian Champenois Frainc-Comtou Gallo French Jersey Legal Meridional North American dialects Canadian Acadian Chiac St. Marys Bay French Brayon Newfoundland Quebec Joual Magoua Franco-Ontarian Métis Muskrat New England Frenchville Louisiana Missouri Creoles Lorrain Welche Moselle Romance Norman Anglo-Norman Auregnais Guernésiais Jèrriais Sercquiais Law French Augeron Cauchois Cotentinais Orléanais Picard Poitevin–Saintongeais Poitevin Saintongeais Walloon Wisconsin Walloon Fraco-Provençal/Arpitan Faetar–Cigliàje Mâconês Savoyard Valdôtain Vâlsoanin Old Gallo-Romance Ibero-Romance(WestIberian) Asturo–Portuguese Asturleonese Asturian Eastern Western Cantabrian Extremaduran Leonese Bercian Paḷḷuezu Palra Riberan Riunorese Mirandese Old Leonese Galician–Portuguese Fala Galician Eonavian Portuguese dialects African Angolan Asian Brazilian Amazofonia Caipira Florianopolitan Gaúcho Mineiro Northeastern Paulistano European Alentejan Oliventine Estremenho Minderico Northern Uruguayan Creoles Portugis Papiamento Judeo-Portuguese Castilian Judeo-Spanish Haketia Tetuani Spanish dialects Equatoguinean Latin American Argentinian Bolivian Chilean Chilote Colombian Ecuadorian Mexican Paraguayan Peruvian Peruvian Ribereño Rioplatense Uruguayan Venezuelan Peninsular Andalusian Llanito Castilian Castrapo Castúo Murcian Philippine Saharan Creoles Old Spanish Pyrenean–Mozarabic Mozarabian Navarro-Aragonese Aragonese Central Eastern Ribagorçan Benasquese Judeo-Aragonese Southern Somontanés Navalese Western Aisinian Ansó Aragüés Hecho Community of Villages Aragonese Ebro Valley Aragonese Navarrese Old Riojan Valencian Aragonese Others Barranquenho (mixed Portuguese–Spanish) Caló (mixed Romani–Ibero- and Occitano-Romance) Occitano-Romance Catalan dialects Eastern Algherese Balearic Menorcan Central Northern Judeo-Catalan Patuet Western Ribagorçan Valencian Occitan Auvergnat Gascon Aranese Béarnese Aas whistled Landese Judeo-Gascon Judeo-Provençal Languedocien Limousin Provençal Niçard Vivaro-Alpine Gardiol Mentonasc Old Occitan Old Catalan Rhaeto-Romance Friulian Fornes Ladin Cadorino Nones Romansh Jauer Putèr Surmiran Sursilvan Tuatschin Sutsilvan Vallader Others Franco-Italian Mediterranean Lingua Franca (Western Romance-based pidgin) Venetian (unknown further classification) Chipilo Fiuman Judeo-Venetian Paduan Talian Triestine
Others	British Latin Pannonian Latin Southern Romance African Romance Sardinian Campidanese Logudorese Dialects of Latin
Reconstructed	Proto-Romance Proto-Eastern Romance
Italics indicate extinct languages Bold indicates languages with more than 5 million speakers Languages between parentheses are varieties of the language on their left.

Authority control databases
International	GND
National	France BnF data Latvia
Other	Yale LUX