Making Sense of Canada: Quebec French

The French language spoken in Quebec is not exactly the same as the French spoken in France. That fact never ceased to shock and surprise English Canadians, in spite of the fact that they themselves do not speak the same English as their mother country. My mother, who emigrated from England to Canada as a War Bride, found this out when she arrived. The War Department had even provided them with a list of things not to say when in Canada, which included the phrase "knocked up". In England that meant a wake-up call, in Canada it was having a bun in your oven.

My first contact with a "real" French speaker was a stewardess on an Air France flight in 1969. I wanted some chewing gum, and asked for it in French, which I had no reason to believe at the time was different from French French. In Quebec it was called "Gomme a macher" which literally means gum for chewing. Apparently this phrase had about the same meaning in France as "Knocked up" and the stewardess seemed totally taken aback by my request. It didn't help at all when I pointed at my mouth. Finally, just before she called security, the penny dropped and she cried out "Le Shwing Gum!" Apparently that was the word I was looking for. After that I stuck with English in speaking to her, to her great relief.

Before the mid seventies, Quebec French had no respect or even recognition in France. Unlike Canadian English, which was so much like American English that an Englishmen would recognize it right away. After all, they have American movies and listen to American songs in England. But not so in France. Before Robert Charlebois, anyway, Quebec French was considered something of a mistake. A bastardised version of their sacred tongue. Even though in Quebec a weekend was called "fin de semaine", and in France it was called "le weekend". Actually in some ways, Quebec had retained the old Louis XIV French, while France had modernized a bit.

But just as with English Canadians, the Quebec accent varies from place to place within the province. And it varies with time, as young kids add slang words. Now that I've been out of Quebec for 29 years, I'm having a harder time to understand Quebec movies, or French movies for that matter. Until the sixties, movies tried to use a generic language, but in recent years, using slang and local accents has become more prevalent. This is true in French and English. I know the French word for email, but don't ask me to translate "Twitter".

It would be helpful if all English Canadians could understand that Quebec French is as close to French in France, as Canadian English is to English in England.

When French became an official language of the Canadian Federal bureaucracy in the sixties, English Canadians were required to take French classes in order to qualify for many federal jobs. You would think that this would be easy, as Quebec is full of French Canadians who could teach such courses. But no, the English Canadians found out that Quebec French was not "proper" French, and refused to have their minds sullied with such a corrupted language. So they looked about for the closest place where people could speak "real" French. This happened to be the Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, just off the Coast of Newfoundland. Since it was still a colony of France, English Canadians concluded that it was the best place to go to learn French, so English Canadians flew to these remote islands in great numbers to learn Real French. I wondered, what were they going to do with this "real" French if they did learn it? Teach it to the French Canadians so that everybody could understand each other, I guess. That's often how things roll in Canada.