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The most realistic possible future of the French language can be seen in shows like Star Trek and Futurama.
The secret is that french isnt a culture, its a neurological disorder in a trench coat. Cigarettes arent food, wine is not a suitable substitute for water, and incest is wrong no matter how much land you want your family to own. Sorry to burst your collective bubble.
I hear you québécois in the comments, you have French words we dont have and I do think it’s great. And when I watched your TV it seemed to be mostly French.
But when I listen to podcasts it’s English words in every sentence.
Same is happening I France now, but we suck at English so it doesn’t sound good. “Cette chanson est un ban-guhrr”
Also everybody started using “du coup” 10 years ago. Ainsi, donc, apres quoi, puis, car, puisque, etc… - > du coup
So a little historical context. The French originally started in both manatoba and Quebec. But over the years the French culture started dying out. To combat this .gov started to instill mandatory French language across the country and promote French culture.
I’d say they originally started out in France, but I don’t know much about history.
Nope, french caandians started in NA.
Is this a Mormon thing?
No that’s more a new York thing. Think more maples syrup and war crimes.
On niaise pas avec le francais chez nous, tokebekicitte.
Tabernacle!
Okay, (funny) story time.
I’m French and live in France. Many years ago I met a girl from Quebec (Chicoutimi), and in our discussion she told me that when she arrived in France, her first night the heating was off in her flat and it was very cold. She tried to sleep in what she referred to as her “slip” (French for panties), but even though it was a Canadian slip that was very warm that she used in her cabin in Northern Canada, she was too cold to sleep.
After a good 5 minutes of thinking “that story doesn’t make sense, if she’s hitting on me it’s too obvious and weird”, she saw my confusion and asked me if I knew what she meant by “slip” (panties in French).
It turns out she was referring to her sleep, short for sleeping bag in English. In French we use the French word “sac de couchage”. The pronunciations are identical.
So both French and Québécois has a lot of borrowed word, just not the same ones.
Slip from slipinne bague. Did you at some point offer her to meet your “gosses”
I didn’t get the part about gosses?
Gosses en France, les enfants. Gosses au Québec, les testicules.
Ohhh, TIL
Je suis du sud du Québec et je l’aurais pas compris. J’ai jamais entendu sleep de ma vie pour désigner un sac de couchage.
Je suis du sud du Québec et j’ai toujours entendu ça… C’est pas juste au Saguenay, en tout cas.
J’ai entendu “sleeping” très souvent, mais pas juste “sleep”. J’aurais été confus moi aussi.
Le monde est bizarre. Comme ceux qui disent coton ouaté pour désigner un kangourou. /s
pourquoi?
Love the idea of extra warm Canadian panties
Yeah I was already picturing the fur.
Mmhhhh
So both French and Québécois
I like how you think your language is “French” and hers isn’t.
That must have been a challenge to dub. In the original Bart is speaking English, not Quebecois French. So, when Bart is speaking Quebecois French he must have really leaned into the accent to make it believable that the policeman didn’t understand.
Here’s the original for comparison:
https://youtu.be/EUSGPubsxcM?t=93
It’s funny because in the original the policeman is the only character in the scene with a decent French accent. The two criminals sound absolutely horrible.
Fair point I guess I should have said French from France or from the metropole? Pretty sure the term dialect can’t be applied here.
In France nowadays French is a relatively homogeneous because of radio and TV, but when I was a child (40 years ago) old people in the alp valley I grew up in still used the local dialect, and it is way more difficult to understand to other French than Québécois is. It’s closer to modern Italian but still far from it.
It’s pretty dead now. I only know a few sentences and child songs.
Even with radio and TV, and easier travel, there are still a lot of interesting dialects, maybe not within France itself, but Belgian French is different, so is Swiss French. Sub-Saharan African French is really interesting because it has a vocabulary that’s more similar to France French, but some of the pronunciation is more different than Quebecois French. And then there’s Haiti where they speak a Creole that has a lot of French-sounding words in it, but can’t really be understood by French speakers.
When I played Cyberpunk 2077 and realized the voodoo boys spoke creole I was totally hyped and really wanted to join them. As the missions with them are early in the game I imagined there was a possibility to choose a gang (you can’t). Because of that every time they tried to get rid of me, and you are really disposable to them, I always choose dialog lines to play it down, saying it was okay.
That made me roleplay the most naïve and dumb person of the world in a universe that really don’t call for that.
Even if you’re trying to go for something that the devs didn’t intend to be possible, those are still memorable moments in games. I like it best when devs allow for something unusual like that, but even if they don’t, a game that feels immersive enough that that might be possible is fun.
Ha I enjoyed that tale. What happened after?
We didn’t date but became friends. One or two years after we met, with a group of friends we went to Quebec with her and stayed at her family cabin that was very far north of Chicoutimi, near a small lake, and it was breathtaking.
There was another confusion though. She referred to going on the lake on the “ponton” (pier in French from the metropole). But we saw the lake and there was no pier on it. She was in fact referring to the kind of boat they have to chill on the lake. It was more some kind of draft : square, flat, with a lot of room to chill and no focus on going un a particular direction, which makes sense. It looks more like a pier than a boat, it was just not on the water when she talked about it.
Ah interesting. I think that’s what we call a “pontoon” which is just a floating…platform, that you move with an oar. Well, the barrel things under it keeping it afloat are the pontoons.
Languages. Funny things.
A pontoon has two hulls (stacks of barrels). If it has three, it’s a tri-toon 🤓
How deep can this language hole take us!
We call them pontoon boats in English.
Great, now I’m imagining a warm French slip.
Combines à grand-manches
Stop signs in France say “STOP” but in Quebec they say “ARRÊT”
And you can tell where someone is from in Quebec with how they pronounce “ARRÊT”
I’ll have to ask my wife if she can do that
That’s because France is part of the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals
They also translate “parking” as “stationnement” and “weekend” as “fin de semaine” while the French just lamely use the English words
Fin de semaine in France means end of the work week (Thursday Friday) whereas fin de semaine in Quebec means weekend.
I like to dunk on Quebec as much as the next guy but that’s actually based.
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I think it has spilled into the rest of Canada too. I just spent a week in Alberta and every little thing that said “stop” also said “arrêt”. But the only obvious French speakers I encountered were either tourists or government officials being intentionally accommodating.
On a more serious note I think Canadian bilingualism might exaggerate this effect. Every sign and product package is printed in both languages so in a way or makes sense to spell things out in full English and full French. i.e. It would be kinda weird to print English alongside some kind of nonstandard Franglish.
In Eastern Ontario you’ll see these signs along the highway that spell some safety message. They’ll have sometimes 2 or 3 in a row to fully tell you the thing in english. Then you’ll get the same signs again explaining it in french.
I kind of liked how they handle it in Ottawa with the highway signs having the English and French above and below street names on highways, wherever it made sense. I didn’t remember seeing that in Toronto on that trip, but I was in Toronto at the start of this week and noticed a lot of signs like that, at least on the 400 highways. I found that a little surprising given Toronto’s distance from Quebec, but I guess with the sheer population size of Toronto and its role as a transportation hub it makes sense.
Packaging having both languages on it is a federal level legal requirement, since we are bilingual. However, the stop signs are more a regional thing. If there is a francophone population in the area, and you’re not in Quebec, you might see both on a sign. In my home province, we have the dual language signs wherever the French speaking population is large enough to warrant it, but everywhere else has English only.
Yes that was my understanding. That’s precisely why I shared my experience in Alberta, where I did not expect any substantial francophone population. Maybe that assumption was just wrong?
In general, I’d say you’re right that Alberta wouldn’t have a large population of francophones. But, especially in anglophone provinces, French speakers tend to live in French communities.
Like in my province, you could carve out ~80% of the land and have about 97% English speakers to 3% French speakers. But the remaining 20% is nearly 90% French speakers.
Common sense:
Surely no one could be more up their own ass about being French than the French.Quebec, for some reason:
Tabernac!
Did you mean for this to resemble a polar bear up its own ass, or was that just lucky coincidence? Either way, it’s a perfect use of the meme.
Honestly, lucky coincidence. I just thought it was funny the bear was speaking French.
Is KFC called that in France? It’s specifically called KFC in the states and not ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’ because the chicken is not actually from Kentucky.
Colonel Sanders was not a real Colonel, but he was in the Army. He was a cook at Fort Lewis in Washington state during WWII. To feed the massive groups of soldiers, they needed to make food faster, so they engineered up new industrial scale pressure cookers to make a huge amount of fried chicken at once. After the war he was able to get a bunch of the machines, and move back to Kentucky and start a business. The “colonel’s secret recipe” was literally just using this Army surplus tech from WWII to start a bunch of chicken restaurants. My point is, really it ought to be called Washington Fried Chicken.
Wasn’t the first KFC in Utah though?
The cooking style is “Kentucky Fried” not that the chickens are from Kentucky.
Correct, outside Kentucky it’s just “Glistening Fried Poultry”
Yeah, it’s just the logo, no one uses the full name.
Duolingo only has Brazilian Portuguese
Brazil has more people than Portugal (213 million v 11 million). France has more population than Quebec (69 million (66 million for Metropolitan France) v 9 million)
It’s funny from afar, but not fun to be in. They have what essentially amounts to a language police that enforces absurd and IMO human rights infringing laws. They regularly land in the news for things like threatening to fine a restaurant for using the word “pasta” on their menus.
Human Rights infringing?!? Everything all right up there on your kilometer-high horse?
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Nom shit There s a great documentary about it. https://youtu.be/M1p52z6XEmI
Having received warnings from the OQLF for stuff, they have always been courteous, patient and open to accommodations. Honestly, if you don’t throw a hissy fit it always works out fine and any penalty is easily avoidable.
The unfortunate reality is they have to investigate every complaint even if it’s spurious.
They also have cool guides on vocabulary for stuff you might only have english words for. People need to move on from 1976 lol.
The only people who stand to benefit slacking on enforcement are big American companies who want to save a tiny expense. The same who are pressuring us in current trade talks. So no, I don’t accept this constant malicious framing of reasonable enforcement of the law.
a government body won’t prosecute you if you don’t throw a hissy fit about their human rights abuses. I never had problems with it, and they even have cool guides for you to avoid violations. We need to move on from that discussion
Yeah, no, that’s not an argument. It doesn’t change that the system is unacceptable.
And no, it’s not just big American companies who are affected - in fact, they’re affected the least. They have the deep pockets that small, local businesses don’t have. And none of it changes the fact that the government has absolutely no fucking business telling anyone which languages they are and aren’t allowed to speak.
You are quoting me having modified my words, so you are not engaging with this in good faith.
Signage laws are not human rights abuses.
The right to work in French is not a human right abuse.
Making a strawman of it doesn’t change reality.
My rights as a Quebec anglophone have been better respected in the last 100 years than the rights of francophones in Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick. We should be proud of this heritage we built for ourselves in Quebec. Our cultural rights are legally protected.
Yes you are simping for American companies who have literally been pressuring the federal government for weeks/months/years to cave on every single language protection.
Small businesses have been, at worst, mildly inconvenienced in the last 50 years of signage laws existing. Society has been fine, apart from angryphones bitching now and then.
I was paraphrasing you. But OK, then we’ll play by your rules:
Signage laws are not human rights abuses.
If they restrict what I’m allowed to write in which language, that’s a restriction of my freedom of speech, which is a human right. Next.
The right to work in French is not a human right abuse.
Making a strawman of it doesn’t change reality.
I never said it was. But ah, the accusations that are actually confessions. Next.
My rights as a Quebec anglophone have been better respected in the last 100 years than the rights of francophones in Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick
Hmm, weird, I don’t recall laws forcing Francophones in Ontario to run their businesses in English, make their signage English, forcing them to go to English schools, and a whole range of other things.
Yes you are simping
Ah, another accusation that’s actually a confession. Next.
Society has been fine, apart from angryphones bitching now and then.
Yeah, when a significant portion of the province’s politics are “how can we further restrict what is allowed to be done in one language while using the excuse of protecting another language as a way to drown out any opposition”, society is not fine.
-Commercial speech is not protected speech and is highly regulated in every democratic country.
-The right to work in French is the basis of why workplace language laws exist.
-Yeah actually, read your history. French schools were banned by those provinces at different times.
👍🏻
-Commercial speech is not protected speech and is highly regulated in every democratic country.
What a cop out. They regulate things like false advertising, not the words and the language you’re allowed to put on your signs. False equivalency.
-The right to work in French is the basis of why workplace language laws exist.
That’s like saying “the right for white people to work is the basis of why segregation laws exist”. It’s absolutely unnecessary and a sorry excuse for trampling on people’s rights.
-Yeah actually, read your history. French schools were banned by those provinces at different times.
To be fair, I was thinking of more recent times, but fine, let’s go back 100 years. Manitoba had restrictions on teaching French, but that’s only an earlier part of the last hundred years. Regulation 17 in Ontario was repealed in 1927, so one of the last 100 years was affected. New Brunswick, on the contrary, even promoted french very strongly with a goal of becoming a bilingual province. So no, you can’t say that the last 100 years were generally worse for Francophones in Canada than the present is for anglophones in Quebec. And even if it were the case, what’s your point? “They suffered, so you have to suffer too”? What a pitiful argument. But it shows the hypocrisy fairly well: when it happens to Francophones in Canada: “bad, unacceptable repression”, when it happens to anglophones in Quebec: “necessary measures to protect the French language”. Give me a break.
Related “fun” fact: Quebec is the most prolific user of the Notwithstanding Clause, which allows the Parliament of Canada or any province or territory thereof to “temporarily” override parts of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (essentially Canada’s Bill of Rights). They know what they’re doing.
I’m not sure why you’re getting all the downvotes, you’re absolutely right.
With the trade war on, Quebec has been declared the good side. Whyever would you mention negative things about the good side? Are you on the bad side???
Downvote deployed, take that, evildoer!
-AverageLemming, apparently
It’s natural to have many enemies with a career as long as mine.
(I have no idea.)
I am legitimately curious what portion of the municipal budget is spent on having every fucking sign in two languages.
I am quite conflicted about it. On one hand, it’s kind of hilarious. But it’s also extremely tryhard and tedious.
It’s not even that, signs have to be mainly in French. Bar a few small exceptions, the English has to take up significantly less space than the French. Their stop signs literally say “ARRÊT” instead of “STOP” because that would be too much English influence. It’s incredibly fucking petty.
Also, they dub The Simpsons into French separately in France and Canada, and while the European French dub is content to have Homer crave «les donuts», the Québécois dub gives no quarter to creeping Anglo-Americanisation, replacing them with a French pastry
Les beignes!
So they actually spell it “donut” and not “doughnut”?
I mean presumably they don’t spell it as anything because it’s a dub.
Not a big fan of hyper-nationalist culture policing. I like the malleability of American English, because we can just make shit up, and the points don’t matter!
English is already three or four languages fighting in a trench coat. So it’s not hard to add new ones to the melee mix.
I think we should translate all the fast food place names to the local language :3 this will help nobody or serve any purpose
G’day
In France, they call it le Macdoh
In Quebec too, around here we pronounce it more like Mecdoh, but same-same.
But how do you order a quarter pounder?
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It’d be “Donken” in Sweden.
I’ve traveled the world and can highly recommend the Giardino degli Ulivi in downtown Tuscany. Best grissini I’ve ever had.
You joke, but I had a bunch of (northern) Italians recommend Pizza Hut to me. To be entirely fair, it was in Germany and it’s better there than in the USA, but it’s still not good pizza.
northern Italians, explains everthing /hj
Family owned pizza parlor in NYC’s most Italian borough. Wins awards on a regular basis.
There’s a frigging Domino’s across the street???!!!
As someone who is within a ten minute walk from Québec, that’s Québec!
It will make them sound ridiculous(er) and help all of our healths
I’d say it depends on the restaurant tbh :3 some I think sound nicer in my native language, but some are airing really close to unfortunate naming
Fun fact did you know that most French speakers are not French themselves?
The average French speaker is from one of France’s old African colonies.
Imagine losing your national identity to the people you oppressed and they don’t care about having it.
99% of English speakers aren’t English. Same thing with Spanish.
They literally went from an empire where the Sun never set to be relegated to an island smaller than Michigan… and they don’t even own the whole island, they have to share it with like 3ish other governments.
It was the British Empire, not the English Empire. The union was formed partially because Scotland was flat broke from failing to colonise what’s now Panama and needed access to the English economy while England wanted to prevent a perennial French threat on its northern border.
Also Americans are in no position to speak about imperial decline at the moment! Iran has a nasty chance of becoming their Suez unless competent leadership is restored pretty sharpish in my view.
The empire was British, not English, so those other countries that the English “share” the island with were a part of that.
What?
And it is fin de semaine and not ‘weekend’, too.
Joyeux festin, not “happy meal”.
Stationnement, not “parking”.
Course à pied, not “du footing”.
Magasinage, not “shopping”.
Téléphone intelligent, not “smartphone”.And yet Quebecois will stop you in the street and say “t’as une smoke ?”
Parce-que il a un flat tire…
On dit juste “j’ai un flat”. On sait tout de suite que tu parles d’un pneu.
Ouais c’était pas fun
Du footing?
My last flatmate said that. Took me some explanation to understand what he meant. So he had to explain to me what “running” is. Fun time.
Ngl the Quebecois one makes way more sense to me.
Téléphone intelligent, not “smartphone”.
Ordiphone, actually but it comes from one of the most shittiest french administration
https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/fiche-gdt/fiche/8360216/telephone-intelligent
Looks like ordiphone is accepted, but I honestly never heard that. Everybody simply calls that a “téléphone” in Québec, and advertisements usually use “téléphone intelligent”.Yeah, I guess. I learnt it in a project subject during college, frow a teacher insisting that it’s a bibliothèque and not a librairie for a .so
Bibliothèque is a library, librairie is a bookstore. Big difference. Bibliothèque can also refer to a bookshelf, depending on context. But you always pay for books in a librairie.
I agree, but for a .so on linux, librairie comes from liabrary and does not hurt
