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I'm not surprised. I'm from Quebec. I am more comfortable speaking English with anyone than I am speaking French around French people. They just can't get over

• carlmr 3y ago
  Quebec French is very different though. It's like Swiss German and German, the Swiss understand the Germans, but not the other way around. It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.
  • Bayart 3y ago
    Hardly. Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages, despite what the name would lead you to think. Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. There's as much different as there is between say RP English and Scottish English.
    • 4ggr0 3y ago
      As a Swiss who's mother tongue is swiss-german, but also talks french, AND has a French-Canadian co-worker - Disagree.
    • BSDobelix 3y ago
      >Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages Not a different language but a dialect-group within high german called Alemanic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German Also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages
      • ffgjgf1 3y ago
        Based on that definition Dutch also wouldn’t be a different language but a dialect within High German called Franconian. Now try telling Dutch people that they don’t actually have their own language and are all speaking Low Country German and see what happens… Most distinctions between dialects and languages are socio-political and not linguistic. There is a similar continuum between North/Low German and Frisian. Yet you cross a border and just like Dutch/Franconian it’s no longer a dialect but a different language.
        • BSDobelix 3y ago
          Let's see what happens if you tell them that we all talk Indo-European ;) Except Hungary, Finnland and Estland
        • acjohnson55 3y ago
          According to Wikipedia, Franconian is split between Low Franconian dialects, including Dutch, and the others, which underwent the same consonant shift as the High German languages. But I agree that the boundaries of languages are not purely linguistic.
      • acjohnson55 3y ago
        I don't think you have that quite right. Alemannic does not include Standard High German. Alemannic is a group of High German dialects in the southwestern German-speaking areas.
        • BSDobelix 3y ago
          >>dialect-group within high german
        • BSDobelix 3y ago
          >Alemannic does not include Standard High German. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages >>The High German languages (German: hochdeutsche Mundarten, i.e. High German dialects), or simply High German (Hochdeutsch) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German"
    • ffgjgf1 3y ago
      To be fair Scots was/is an actual language. Scottish English isn’t it but it certainly was heavily influenced by Scots. In all the three cases you’ve mentioned it’s a spectrum. The distinction between a language and a dialect is not clear at all. e.g. while it wouldn’t be correct to call Swiss-German a dialect of standard German both languages are German Dialects. > Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. Yes it’s a dialect of French, it’s not a dialect or accent of standard French. There is nothing special about Standard German or French besides the fact that they are dialects which have outcompeted all other dialects of those languages to a less or more successful degree due to entirely political and economical reasons.
      • FeloniousHam 3y ago
        ""A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" is a phrase attributed to Max Weinreich, a Yiddish scholar and sociolinguist. Weinreich is said to have heard the phrase from an audience member at one of his lectures in the 1940s. "
  • musha68k 3y ago
    Native German speaker from Austria here who has been living in Quebec for many years. I had to study and pass my exams in standard French with a Parisian institution. This is made obligatory by the Quebec government for immigrants if they want to stay and apply for a PR. Anyways, the insight I want to share here is that Quebecois French is much closer to Austrian or Bavarian German vs Standard German. Both share a similar trajectory with their standard counterparts, diverging over centuries but in the end remaining more comprehensible compared to Swiss German. Quebecois, evolving since the 17th century from settlers' French and Austrian/Bavarian dialects, shaped since the 6th century's “Lautverschiebung” are also old but less divergent branches. Swiss German, though also rooted in the High German shift, has veered more distinctly. Watching Swiss TV (SRF), I only get about 80-90% due to that deeper linguistic forking. Standard Quebecois has not been much harder for me to understand than standard French. Like in Austrian German there are certain “quirks” but again much easier to parse from context than with Swiss German. Of course there might be the case where a heavy local dialect becomes even harder to understand than say Swiss German even. German language learners could test their comprehension of Swiss vs going to a pub in Wien Ottakring or into a deep recess of the Tyrollean alps. I’d guess some encounters would be minimum as hard to understand if not harder. Same for rural Quebec etc. Then again the underlying grammar even can be really different in fundamental ways with Swiss German which is not the case for Quebecois. TL;DR standard Quebecois is easier to understand and much closer to standard French than standard Swiss German is to standard German. IMHO: France has just been very steadfast about language standardization up to this day and across its zone of influence. E.g. there even is obligatory standard French language learning in Quebec for immigrants and possibly public schools as well. So for some people from France they often don’t have developed the “muscle” for even slight derivations. In addition not much proficiency in “foreign languages” in general especially for older generations.
  • loufe 3y ago
    It's more from ignorance than anything. I speak Quebec French and had little trouble being understood in France in the two times I've visited. I have folks from France, French Africa, and Haïti here at my job. It's more just ignorance about the accent than a lack of actual experience not being able to understand it. It's certainly not analagous Californian English to Shetlandish Scots, far from it.
• mk89 3y ago
  I am not French but I heard good things from some colleagues from Quebec (exactly like you, surprisingly) that speak French to native French colleagues as soon as they get a chance to, because they like to do so and don't feel mocked at all. Of course they are aware of the accents, but you can still have fun and talk to each other. Then, of course, if the French mock them behind their back when they are alone, I will probably never know.
• n0n0n4t0r 3y ago
  Now that you say it: some decades ago there was a racist tendency in France where people where having fun of others accent. They where having fun of the southern marseillais accent, but also of the northern ch'ti accent, they also had extra fun of African or Quebec's accent indeed. I, as a child, did imitated those accent for fun. I now regret it, bit it's still in the roots of a lot of people. I sometimes fear that racism is predominant in french society.
  • baby 3y ago
    ^ this. French people make fun of every accents. Racism and discrimination is about what society deem acceptable and what minorities or weaker communities we find OK to mistreat. I’d say discrimination in France is much worse than in America.
  • nicoco 3y ago
    Without denying at all that racism exists, I believe it is also possible to imitate accents outside racism. I'm from the south of France, and my accent kicks in when I speak with elderly family members that themselves always have the southern accent when they speak. Despite that, sometimes I make jokes imitating the southern accent, does that make me a "self-racist"? Clarification in case it's needed: I absolutely agree that making fun of someone's accent when they come to you is a best inappropriate, and more often than not utter bigotry. But I'm concerned about criminalising humour. This might not be a widely-shared idea (especially in the anglosaxon world?), but I even believe that racist jokes can be tools against racism, decredibilising racism and not actually oppressing the minority in question. Of course, again, context matters. (clarification #2: I don't believe "cancel culture" is a thing, if you do racist jokes in the public sphere and someone calls you out for saying something racist, I don't believe anyone has been "cancelled")
  • GlobalFrog 3y ago
    Actually, all French speakers for a very long time have mocked other accents, especially from France, therefore they have a kind of specialty of mocking themselves. Parisian have always mocked regional accents, every region was mocking other regional accents, and even accents from two cities 50 km apart are mocked from both sides. Other accents are just mocked the same as french people make fun of other french people regional accents. I would say that the accent mocking in France is less about racism than about the structure of french society, which is extremely centralized historically, and regions have always been very defensive about their specificities, like the local dialects, languages and the accent is part of that. Some regional languages were even forbidden in some places not so long ago. Racism in France being looked by the accent prism is a foreign worlview with a very low relevance level. It avoids the real and problematic issues of racism that exists. But indeed there is a link: racism flourishes when you do not see or hear people different from yourself. This can happen everywhere and mocking other accents is just using one parameter to insulate your own social group from the rest of the world and diminish/blame/mock the others. If you live in a country where regional accents are not a thing, you will find another parameter and anyone can say through the prism of this local parameter that racism is worse in this country compared to another. My point here is that racism can be everywhere, and has first to be fought on its causes, because symptoms can be very different from places to places and fighting them might help, but not solve.
• palata 3y ago
  I am not French but it is my mothertongue. In my country we just absolutely love the Quebecois accent, it's sounds really really nice and friendly :-).
• davidguetta 3y ago
  I'm french and I think you are mistaking several things: - Mocking Quebec accent is not 'superiority': it just happens that your accent kind of sounds funny for some reason that I have no other reality behind, probably some specific sounds bites make it 'funny'. I've always thought it's in good fun and certainly not disparaging. All french people I've met including myself have stellar opinion of people from quebec (even more than of their fellow french). - I've never ever head someone making fun of another non-native french speaker accent. In fact we're happy when someone likes french Sorry you feel that way.
  • red-iron-pine 3y ago
    I live in Canada, and the folks I know who live in France (direct blood relatives) have mentioned that Quebec French sounds like a weird mix of Russian and Valley Girl, with a few weird terms mixed in. The English equivalent would be something like a deep Northern England accent which sounds goofy to my N. American ears.
• mrfumier 3y ago
  Do you realize that, we are used to hear Quebec french only through singers and comedians you send us to France? Send us serious people instead, and it will stop sounding funny.
• dghughes 3y ago
  I'm in Canada but English. Years ago a French co-worker from New Brunswick went to northern France on vacation. He's Acadian French for those non-Canadian or non-French reading this that's different than Quebec, how? I'm not sure. But the guy told me the people the people there were amazed by his accent. Apparently it wasn't like Quebec accent it was more old French but I guess not the slang of Quebec French? Not sure but I guess it was a hoot and he had fun. From what I know Acadians originally emigrated from northern France area. So maybe Acadian French is closer match to Parisian standard French than Quebec French?
  • loufe 3y ago
    I would say Acadian is probably as far from France French as Québecois is, but it certainly has some fascinating qualities. They use old French words there that have changed everywhere else French is spoken (aside maybe Louisianna French). My favourite anecdotal example (though I couldn't find any proof looking it up) is that "to kill" it's "killer".
  • mikrl 3y ago
    Acadians were an earlier emigrant wave from France, so their French sounds like that from the 18th century plus developments. The Québécois were about 100 years later, so their French is like the 19th century plus developments. African French dates from the colonial period, so it sounds more like early 20th century French plus developments. That’s how I understand it to be.
• loufe 3y ago
  There are obviously going to be some cases of that. I remember hearing through a friend that their university roommate from France dropped a class at UQAM because they couldn't take their lecturer's accent seriously. You have elitist people elsewhere. When visiting France I had one experience where I felt like I was a zoo animal, like that. Walking around a public site a woman got very excited like she found the answer to a tricky riddle and yelled "Québec, Québec" at me. She was so sweet though and it was harmless so I didn't take it even the slightest bit poorly. Most people in France knew better than to make a stink about it. I talked with plenty of people and occaisionally it popped up but more as a passing curiosity, I didn't feel like it wasn't outside of natural curiosity. Things like "pas pire" raised eyebrows "stationner mon char" rather than "parker mon auto" sometimes took people a minute to comprehend. All to say, there are some rude people everywhere, but my own experience in French with a Québec accent was great.
• JodieBenitez 3y ago
  > They just can't get over the accent French here, with an anecdote: More than 20 years ago I visited Montréal. It was difficult to participate in discussions with french-speaking people because I could understand some participants very well and others not at all, just because there are different degrees of accent. In constrast, it was easy to understand any english-speaking person. > There are so many YouTube videos of French people mocking us. It's not curiosity but a distinctly French superiority complex. Nope, we also mock our own accents. There are many of them across our country. It's just for fun, we still like you.
  • allarm 3y ago
    Yeah, I remember how I tried to order coffee in a restaurant in Paris. Even though coffee sounds almost exactly the same both in French and in English the dude refused to understand what I need. Probably it was just for fun, but this type of fun is what stops me from visiting Paris ever again.
• trgn 3y ago
  It's a european thing, not just french. Same in other languages. People are highly attuned to accents and geographical differences they imply. It's frustrating as a non-native speaker. English is "neutral" ground. Americans too are in general really patient with other people's accents, so just less used to that sort of provincialism.
  • biomcgary 3y ago
    People from the US generally find accents from other English speaking countries fairly charming (source I'm from the US) rather than a source of amusement or derision. I think attitudes about accents from non-English speakers vary more widely and regionally.
    • trgn 3y ago
      > find accents from other English speaking countries fairly charming Agreed. In addition, I feel like Americans give out more of an "A for effort" vibe in response, whereas Europeans are more like "nice try n00b".