Similar divergences took place in the Portuguese, Spanish and English language of the Americas with respect to European dialects, but in the case of French the separation was increased by the reduction of cultural contacts with France after the 1763 Treaty of Paris in which France ceded Canada to Great Britain.
Although pronunciations like moé and toé are today stigmatized (joual), they were the pronunciations of Early Modern French that were used by the kings of France, the aristocracy and the common people in many provinces of France. After the French Revolution, the standard pronunciation in France changed to that of the bourgeois class in Paris, but Quebec retained some pronunciations and expressions shared with modern Oïl languages such as Norman, Gallo, Picard, Poitevin and Saintongeais. Speakers of those languages of France predominated among the settlers of New France. Thus, they spoke a popular language that was largely shared with Paris, but they had their own habits, words and pronunciations that were not known in Paris which are now part of everyday language in Quebec.
Thus, the 18th-century bourgeois Parisian French that eventually became the national, standardized language of France after the French Revolution, but the French of the Ancien Régime kept evolving on its own in Canada. Indeed, the French spoken in Canada is closer idiomatically and phonetically to Belgian French, despite their independent evolution and the relatively small number of Belgian immigrants to Quebec (although it is to be remembered that the influence of the Walloon language in Belgium has influenced the language in the same way as the presence of the Oïl speakers in Quebec).
There is also the undeniable fact that Canadian-French speakers have lived alongside and among English speakers ever since the beginning of British administration, in 1763. Thus, anglicisms in Quebec French tend to be longstanding and part of a gradual, natural process of borrowing, but the unrelated anglicisms in European French are nearly all much more recent and sometimes driven by fads and fashions.
Some people (for instance, Léandre Bergeron, author of the Dictionnaire de la langue québécoise) have referred to Quebec French as la langue québécoise (the Québécois language); most speakers, however, would reject or even take offence to the idea that they do not speak French.
New France
The French language established itself permanently in North America with the foundation of Quebec City by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. However, it was after the creation of the Sovereign Council of New France in 1663 that the colonies really started to develop.
Between 1627 and 1663, a few thousand colonists landed in New France, either in Acadia or Canada. The provinces that contributed the most to these migrations were those in the northern and western regions of France. The migrants came from Normandy, Aunis, Aquitaine, Perche, Brittany, Paris and Île-de-France, Poitou, Maine, Saintonge, and Anjou, most of those being regions where French was seldom spoken at the time (see article Languages of France). According to Philippe Barbaud (1984), the first colonists were therefore mostly non-francophone except for the immigrants from the Paris area, who most likely spoke a popular form of French; and the following dialect clash (choc des patois) brought about the linguistic unification of Quebec. Among the speakers of Norman, Picard, Aunis, Poitevin and Saintongeais and the Celtic languageBreton, many might have understood French as a second language. Gradually, a linguistic transfer towards French occurred, leading to the linguistic unification of all the ethnic groups coming from France.
According to Henri Wittmann (1997) (based on earlier work of his), the overwhelming similarities between the different varieties of Colonial French clearly show that the linguistic unity triggering dialect clash occurred before the colonists exported their French into the colonies of the 17th and 18th centuries; and that the koiné-forming dialect clash must have occurred in Paris and other related urban centers of France.
In any event, according to contemporary sources, the Canadians were all speaking French natively by the end of the 17th century, long before France itself outside its large urban centers.[1]
British regime
On September 13, 1759, Quebec City, then the political capital of New France, was taken by the British Army. New France fell a year later. According to the terms of 1760 Articles of Capitulation of Montreal, the French Army was to leave the conquered territory. The ruling elite (French nobles and leading merchants) also left. Ordinary people, the Roman Catholic clergy, lesser merchants, and some members of the civil administration, the majority having been born in Canada, stayed in the country. Those who stayed were to become British subjects. Soon, British General Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, established a military government, which was to last until 1763.
The military occupation led to the establishment of a provisional administration. Because the fate of the country was still uncertain, no political actions were really undertaken to transform, and the status quo prevailed. Because the population was unable to understand English, it was decided that ordinances would be published in French. To do so, numerous Canadians were permitted to participate in the administration of justice[citation needed].
In 1763, France ceded Canada to Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris. Rapidly, the new ruling elite planned its future for the French-speaking colonists, who were to be absorbed into the English-speaking society of British North America, but they were to be allowed the right of Catholic worship under the terms of the treaty. On October 7, the British Royal Proclamation of 1763 set the new political conditions of Canada. The territory of the colony, renamed the Province of Quebec, was reduced to the inhabited area along the Saint Lawrence River.
James Murray was appointed governor and became responsible for enforcing the new policy concerning the colony. His tasks were to encourage British immigration; establish the official religion, Anglicanism; and the administrative and legal structures of England. Time brought the gradual establishment of anglophone British officials and colonists. Trade quickly passed on to British and British-American merchants, who migrated to Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal.
French, until then the lingua franca in all aspects of social life, was quickly relegated to the second rank in trade and government. The educated classes began French-English bilingualism by necessity.
The Quebec Act of 1774 granted many of the requests of the Canadians, who had been petitioning the British crown for the restoration of French civil laws and guarantees as to the usage of their language and faith.
American Revolution
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2019)
Union and Confederation
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2019)
↑ For a bibliography on that issue, see Dulong (1966).
Related Research Articles
Joual is an accepted name for the linguistic features of Quebec French that are associated with the French-speaking working class in Montreal which has become a symbol of national identity for some. Joual has historically been stigmatized by some, and celebrated by others. While Joual is often considered a sociolect of the Québécois working class, many feel that perception is outdated, with Joual becoming increasingly present in the arts.
Quebec French, also known as Québécois French, is the predominant variety of the French language spoken in Canada. It is the dominant language of the province of Quebec, used in everyday communication, in education, the media, and government.
The Office québécois de la langue française (Canadian French:[ɔˈfɪskebeˈkwɑdəlalãɡfʁãˈsaɪ̯z] is an agency of the Quebec provincial government charged with ensuring legislative requirements with respect to the right to use French are respected.
An anglicism is a word or construction borrowed from English by another language.
This article presents the current language demographics of the Canadian province of Quebec.
The langues d'oïl are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives historically spoken in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands. They belong to the larger category of Gallo-Romance languages, which also include the historical languages of east-central France and western Switzerland, southern France, portions of northern Italy, the Val d'Aran in Spain, and under certain acceptations those of Catalonia.
Gallo is a regional language of eastern Brittany. It is one of the langues d'oïl, a Romance sub-family that includes French. Today it is spoken only by a minority of the population, as the standard form of French now predominates in this area.
Poitevin–Saintongeais is a language spoken in the regions of the Pays de la Loire and Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Poitevin–Saintongeais is officially recognised by the French Ministry of Culture as a language with two dialects: Poitevin and Saintongeais. The language belongs to the langues d'oïl subbranch of the Gallo-Romance languages.
Articles related to Quebec include:
Francization or Francisation, also known as Frenchification, is the expansion of French language use—either through willful adoption or coercion—by more and more social groups who had not before used the language as a common means of expression in daily life. As a linguistic concept, known usually as gallicization, it is the practice of modifying foreign words, names, and phrases to make them easier to spell, pronounce, or understand in French.
French is the mother tongue of approximately 7.2 million Canadians according to the 2016 Canadian Census. Most Canadian native speakers of French live in Quebec, the only province where French is the majority and the sole official language. Of Quebec's people, 71.2 percent are native francophones and 95 percent speak French as their first or second language.
The Commission of Inquiry on the Situation of the French Language and Linguistic Rights in Quebec was established under the Union Nationale government of Jean-Jacques Bertrand on December 9, 1968.
Varieties of the French language are spoken in France and around the world. The Francophones of France generally use Metropolitan French although some also use regional dialects or varieties such as Meridional French. In Europe outside France there are Belgian French, Swiss French, and in Italy Aostan French. In Canada, French is an official language along with English; the two main dialects of French in Canada are Canadian French and Acadian French. Standard French is also commonly grouped as Canadian French. In Lebanon, French was an official language until 1941 and the main dialect spoken there is Lebanese French or Levantine French. Levantine French was also spoken by Sephardic Jews in Salonica, Istanbul and Smyrna, by Armenians and Greek bourgeois in the urban centres of Asia Minor, by Syrian Catholics and Melkites in Aleppo and Beirut.
Canadian French is the French language as it is spoken in Canada. It includes multiple varieties, the most prominent of which is Québécois. 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 and some areas of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland & Labrador.
Henri Wittmann is a Canadian linguist from Quebec. He is best known for his work on Quebec French.
Métis French is one of the traditional languages of the Métis people along with Michif and Bungi, and is the French-dialect source of Michif.
Saintongeais (séntunjhaes) is a dialect of Poitevin–Saintongeais spoken halfway down the western coast of France in the former provinces of Saintonge, Aunis and Angoumois, all of which have been incorporated into the current departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime as well as in parts of the neighbouring department of Gironde and a town in Dordogne. Although many of the same words are used in both Charente departments, they differ in what they mean or in how they are pronounced.
Poitevin (poetevin) is a dialect of Poitevin–Saintongeais, one of the regional languages of France, spoken in the historical province of Poitou, now administratively divided between Pays de la Loire and Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It is not as commonly spoken as it once was, as the standard form of French now predominates. Poitevin is now classified as one of the langues d'oïl but is distinguished by certain features adopted from Occitan.
Geneviève Massignon was a French linguist, ethnologist, musicologist and historian who studied Acadian speech, as well as dialects and linguistic communities in Brittany, in the west of France and in Corsica. She published several important works based on this research.
Marchois or Marchese is a transitional Occitan dialect between the Occitan language and the Oïl languages spoken in the historical region of La Marche, in northern Limousin and its region. Occitan and Oïl dialects meet there,.
Barbaud, Philippe (1984). Le choc des patois en Nouvelle-France, Sillery: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 204 p.
Bouchard, Chantal (2011). Méchante langue: la légitimité linguistique du français parlé au Québec (in French). Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal. ISBN978-2-7606-2284-5.
Dulong, Gaston (1966). Bibliographie linguistique du Canada français. Paris: Klincksieck, 168 p.
Leclerc, Jacques (2005). "Histoire du français au Québec" in L’aménagement linguistique dans le monde, Quebec, TLFQ, Université Laval, January 22, 2005, , (August 18, 2005)
Wittmann, Henri (1997). "Le français de Paris dans le français des Amériques." in Proceedings of the International Congress of Linguists 16.0416 (Paris, 20–25 July 1997). Oxford: Pergamon (CD edition).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
