Here is a bilingual text about the history of the Olympic Games in English and Canadian French from the Canadian Encylopedia which I think most of you will find interesting except for those of you who detest French. (That’s all right. Each to his own. I know lots of people who do including some of my friends).
French is co-offical with English in Canada and about 1/4 of the Canadian population either speaks it fluently or has some knowledge of it. Opposition to French seems to be the strongest in the Western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta where many people want it taken off of food cans and other grocery items.
Just as American English is different from British English , Canadian French is likewise a little different from European (Continental) French. It seems to have simpler grammar than its counterpart in the mother country just as American English does with regard to British English. Some of its vocabulary is different: For example, they say pavillon de ski for "ski lodge", gadue for "melting snow", carcajou for "wolverine", caribou for "caribou" and totem for "totem pole" where as in France they would say chalet, névasse, gluton, renne (canadien) and mât totémique instead.
Because English is the dominant language of North America, the future of Canadian French is in doubt. Even if Quebec had avoided annexation by the British in 1763 and remained under French control, English would still be threatening the status of French there because it is the language of the nearby United States.
—- Brian :)
(Click on sites below for French version of the article
and English version).
That sonds (reads?) interesting. Could you please give some examples? For "La défaite suscitant en eux la honte, les athlètes prient pour «la couronne ou la mort»." I would have expected some kind of subjunctive or conditional instead of ‘prient’. Would that be such an example? Or "Chaque année olympique, les hérauts traversent les cités", or is this some kind of historical present?
[quote author=brian_costello link=board=translate;num=1093242905;start=0#0 date=08/23/04 at 02:35:05] . . .
Because English is the dominant language of North America, the future of Canadian French is in doubt. Even if Quebec had avoided annexation by the British in 1763 and remained under French control, English would still be threatening the status of French there because it is the language of the nearby United States.
—- Brian :)
. . .
I think you are wrong about the future of Canadian French. With the passage of Law 101 in 1977, La Belle Province took revenge upon the anglophones. To quote from a translation of a page explaining Law 101:
It stipulates that the province of Quebec is not bilingual, but quite unilingual, and that French is his official language. This implies that all the public inscriptions must be written in French, and that if the writing of English is not prohibited, it must be twice smaller than the French version. The most constraining part of law 101 is on the school. To stop the haemorrhage, have the right to send their children to the English school only if one of the parents followed to him even his schooling in an English school of Quebec. For all the others, it is obligatory French school (disencumbered now of the catholic influence).
(Note, this is an automated translation from the original French done by Yahoo’s search engine.)
Canadian French is not Parisian French, but then, neither is that from Marseilles. Back in high school there was a French exchange student from Marseilles living with a family down the street from me. One night she helped me with my French homework, and told me I could use du, the contraction for [s]de les or of the (plural)[/s] de le or of the (masc. sing.), as the contraction for de la (of the (fem. sing.)) also. The next day, my French teacher, Père Eric (who was a dead ringer for the actor Vincent Price), said, "Non!" When I told him I had help form a French girl from Marseilles, he replied, "We are learning Parisien, not Marseilles."
Several years ago, after seeing a "60 Minutes" program about the French Language Law and how a Jewish Delicatessen was forced to change its name, I was inspired to write my own version of a bilingual sign that meets the letter of Law 101. A friend from Montréal, a native francophone, made a minor correction to it. I can’t find it at the moment, but when I do, I’ll post a link to it.
I intend to answer that when I have a little more time. Probably tonight. American English and Canadian French are both somewhat simpler than their European counterparts. A legacy of the frontier.
one infers from your third paragraph that Canadian-French is influenced by English to a greater extent than European-French… Well, I think that, as a result of the overwhelming majority of English-speakers surrounding them, the inhabitants of Québec have acquired the custom of translating even the tiniest bits of foreign names, as Stargazer’s example shows, to the extent that they say hot-dog or T-shirt, otherswise widespread in France; but rather: [I]chien-chaud[/I] and [I]camisole[/I]. These would sound to a Frenchman like a joke. I don’t doubt at all that your examples are right… But they may give an erroneus view of the situation.
On the other hand, I’m with anders… I have only glanced through that article, but I chat quite often with a French-Canadian, who was an English teacher to me back in Liverpool, and she has never made a "mistake"/simplification regarding grammar or anything of the kind. I did find something curious: "[I]c’est le propriétaire des chevaux qui reçoit les lauriers, [B]non[/B] pas le conducteur.[/I]" or "[I]pour satisfaire [B][la][/B] soif d’excitation des spectateurs.[/I]". These are nonetheless no simpler grammar, but rather ill-used one and due most likely to a careless/non-native writer.
[I]La loi 101[/I] is a tough bone, too… I hate things like "positive discrimination". To encourage the use of one language in such ways just because it has decayed seems a bit dictatorial to me. It happens with Basque in Spain and also Irish in Ireland… However, I don’t see a real problem in it… Unlike for the Western-Canadians, it would be no problem for me so long as I can still read it in my mother tongue.
Finally, just a correction: [I]du[/I] is the obliged contraction for [I]de le[/I] when it’s not before a vowel. For [I]de les[/I] we have [I]des[/I].
I ignore whether they use [I]du[/I] for [I]de la[/I] in Marseille, but I’d assure it’s not at all common anywhere else.
Here are a few examples of sentences and how they would most likely be said in Standard French verses Canadian French. Of course, not all sentences in the two variants of French would differ. In fact, there would be more phrases and sentences that were identical. However, if you look at the big picture , Canadian French shows a tendency to use fewer flexions and /or thriftier constructions than European (Continental) French.
1)"Croatian bones indicate that Neanderthals lived among modern men."
Standard French
Des ossements Croates indiquent que les Néanderthaliens auraient vécu au temps de l’homme moderne
Canadian French
Des ossements trouvés en Croatie indiquent que Néanderthaliens et homme moderne ont coexisté.
2) "Bats fly at dusk and at night."
Standard French
Les chauve-souris volent au crépuscule et la nuit.
Canadian French
Les chauve-souris ont des moeurs nocturnes
3)"The girls neither played basketball, nor did they go hiking."
Standard French
Les filles ne jouaient pas au basketball et ne faisaient pas de randonnées non plus.
Canadian French
Les filles n’ont ni joue au basketball, ni fait de radonnées.
4) "Einstein radically changed our concepts about the laws of the universe."
Standard French
Einstein a changé de façon radicale notre conception des lois de l’univers.
Canadian French
Einstein a bouleversé notre conception des lois de l’univers
Of course, the Creole French variants are the ultimate examples of simplification as in these two samples from Haitian French:
1) Liv yo nan bwat la = Les livres sont dans la boîte = The books are in the box.
2) Li soti nan dlo = Il est sorti dans l’eau = He came out of the water.
Brian, for clarification, are you stating that, as a matter of general fact, Canadian French grammar is simpler than Standard French?
Or are you saying that, in practice, Canadians generally will use simpler sentence structure than Standard French allows?
Or are you saying that, in general, Canadian French, in practice, is simpler, grammatically, than Continental French, in practice?
I’m a bit confused by your latest examples. They seem to be simply two ways of trying to say the same thing, rather than proving any paradigmatic principles.
I’m afraid that your examples are alterations of the same idea, which I’m sure one would hear on both sides of the Atlantic. As to some of them being thriftier than others…
1. Using the [I]Conditional Passé[/I] or seeking for a word like [I]coexister[/I] seems to be the difference… From the point of a proper translation I’d prefer the reportedly Canadian example, since the English original doesn’t imply a supposed "would have lived" but states "lived". Leaving that apart, do you reckon it’s easier to employ a cultivated word like [I]coexister[/I] than to put on a simple [I]vécu[/I] with the conditional tense one uses as often as anything else?
2. Exactly the same… [I]moeurs[/I] is as uncommon a word as can be [I]crépuscule[/I]. Furthermore, that’s no grammatical difference.
3. Those two have very different meanings… It’s totally unlikely that a French-speaker might interchange the [I]Imparfait[/I] and the [I]Passé Composé[/I]. Would you, albeit you admit the American English to be simpler than its British counterpart, interchange a "played" for "have played"?.
4. Again the same thing… If there’s a word that implies [I]changer de façon radicale[/I], why not use it? Once more, we speak about nuances of vocabulary.
[quote author=WonderingSpaniard link=board=translate;num=1093242905;start=0#6 date=08/31/04 at 17:35:27] . . . Well, I think that, as a result of the overwhelming majority of English-speakers surrounding them, the inhabitants of Québec have acquired the custom of translating even the tiniest bits of foreign names, as Stargazer’s example shows, to the extent that they say hot-dog or T-shirt, otherswise widespread in France; but rather: [I]chien-chaud[/I] and [I]camisole[/I]. These would sound to a Frenchman like a joke. I don’t doubt at all that your examples are right… But they may give an erroneus view of the situation.
. . .
I’m unclear on this. Are you saying that les Québécois say "hotdog" or "chien-chaud?" I once asked someone from Montréal what the French word for "bagel" was and she said "bagel." Even the French have borrowed Le Week-end from us, including the English pronunciation (but not the accent/stress).
[I]La loi 101[/I] is a tough bone, too… I hate things like "positive discrimination". To encourage the use of one language in such ways just because it has decayed seems a bit dictatorial to me. It happens with Basque in Spain and also Irish in Ireland… However, I don’t see a real problem in it… Unlike for the Western-Canadians, it would be no problem for me so long as I can still read it in my mother tongue.
I recall reading somewhere that the size restriction in Law 101 (French being twice the size of English) applies only to English, apparently as a backlash to the past two centuries. For other languages, French must be posted first. The Law poses other, more dangerous, problems, however. I once read an online story in the Montreal Gazette about a hospital that served primarily elderly Chinese-speaking patients. As I recall, the hospital was forbidden by Law 101 from requiring some workers to speak Chinese; that is, they could not post a position that required one to speak Chinese, even though they needed Chinese translators to talk to their patients. (Any Montréal native is free to disabuse me of that recollection.)
Finally, just a correction: [I]du[/I] is the obliged contraction for [I]de le[/I] when it’s not before a vowel. For [I]de les[/I] we have [I]des[/I].
I ignore whether they use [I]du[/I] for [I]de la[/I] in Marseille, but I’d assure it’s not at all common anywhere else.
. . .
Oops. The wrong part of my brain must have been functioning at that time of the morning when I wrote that. W.S. is right, of course, and I’ve amended the original post to show that. That episode, in fact, rammed home to me the difference between du and de la.
Glad you asked the question even though talking about these things on the internet is kind of difficult.
Your second question comes the closest to what I mean: "Or are you saying that, in general, Canadian French, in practice, is simpler, grammatically, than Continental French, in practice? "
The same is true also for American English vs Standard British English and for some types of Latin American Spanish vs the Castillian Spanish of Spain. I once had a book and tape cassettes on Mexican Spanish. In the introductory part the author said that the Mexican form of Spanish was one of the simplest and most lucid in the Spanish speaking world. I agree with him.
The reasons why New World varieties of European languages tend to be simpler is not totally known but it is generally agreed that the frontier had something to do with it. Life on the frontier was more simple and democratic and there were no nobilities or aristocracies.
There was also a strong religious element in the New World colonies - Jesuits in Quebec, Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Anglicans in Maryland , Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuit missionaries in Latin America. Clergies tend to preach humility and encourage the use of simpler language.
Lastly, there was also a lot of slavery in the New World colonies. People often forget that even in the northern colonies there were white indentured servants who were nearly the same thing as slaves. Child labor persisted for the longest time. It lasted in parts of the United States and Canada until the early 1900’s. It’s still a major problem in Latin America.
Slaves have a tendency to alter and simplify languages too. It was Roman slaves who shaped the modern Romance languages, especially Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. On the Caribbean Islands today, the descendents of slaves speak creole forms of English, French Spanish and Dutch.
I must say that the paragraph you quote is really messy. Let me explain: after my sources, I haven’t lived there myself, in Québec one says: [I]chien-chaud[/I] instead of hot-dog, and employs [I]camisole[/I] in lieu of T-shirt.
You’re very true about "le weekend"; but as you yourself say; that’s in France.
Brian, I don’t have the time right now to go through your points… My view is, notwithstanding, that colonial languages look just more ancient than their counterparts in the metropole and that means usually more complexity in many ways.
The reasons why New World varieties of European languages tend to be simpler is not totally known but it is generally agreed that the frontier had something to do with it. Life on the frontier was more simple and democratic and there were no nobilities or aristocracies.
Brian, it depends on what maps you are looking at, and the dates on those maps. All of the new world colonization, displacing indigenous populations, was under the control of one of the European monarchies. Some nobles emigrated to personally oversee new property, quite brutally in Spanish holdings. People who perceive native populations as a lower class of human being (or not quite human at all) are loathe to socialize with them, and certainly do not "simplify" their language to be accommodating. As late as the Wild West era, educated persons in "civilized areas" looked down their noses at frontier grammar, rather than adopting it.
There was also a strong religious element in the New World colonies - Jesuits in Quebec, Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Anglicans in Maryland , Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits missionaries in Latin America. Clergies tend to preach humility and encourage the use of simpler language.
This is another sweeping and innaccurate statement. Yes, truly humble clergy will speak in a humble manner, and it may rub off on the flock. Have you read the type of sermon actually preached during the settling of New England? People who believe that the KJV is "the literal word of God" are not apt to prune out the over-the-top courtly language that infuses it. I’ve observed several contemporary preachers emoting like mad at the cameras; their speechifying is still devoid of humility and simplicity.
Lastly, there was also a lot of slavery in the New World colonies. People often forget that even in the northern colonies there were white indentured servants who were nearly the same thing as slaves. Child labor persisted for the longest time. It lasted in parts of the United States and Canada until the early 1900’s. It’s still a major problem in Latin America.
See my comments on nobles above. Those who view themselves as the ruling class (even in a "classless society") do not adopt the speech patterns of immigrants or those they perceive as beneath them. The phenomenon of adopting ethnic slang into common speech has exploded in the last few years, due to many social factors. But this was not the case when English and French were taking taking root in this hemisphere. Many geographical features were given or retained indigenous names, but these loanwords did not effect significant changes in the grammar of the European settlers.
Thank you for your replies. I know that this is a difficult topic to dicuss on the internet but I’m glad you are trying. It is difficult for me also. It would actually be easier for us to discuss this in a tavern over a glass of beer or wine.
Continental French and Quebecois French have both borrowed from English but sometimes different words. In France we find Le Parking for "Parking lot" but Quebec has preferred to coin its own word "Terrain de stationnement". Quebecois French, however, has borrowed badloque "bad luck" from English but this word is not found in France where they use malchance for "bad luck".
A similar situation exists in Spanish as you are probably aware. Drogadición "Drug addiction" and nuclearfamília "nuclear family" are loans from American English found only in Mexico. Rufo "roof" is an anglicism found only in Puerto Rican Spanish. "El show" (The show) is mainly Venezuela. In Spain they say el programa . "Dauntaun" is used by Miami Cubans i.e ¿Donde se coge la guagua para ir al dauntaun? (Where do you catch the bus to go downtown?). Everwhere else in El Mundo Hispanohablante "downtown" is en el centro. In other words, all Spanish speaking countries have borrowed words from English but sometimes they are not the SAME words.
No one can discount the influence of religion in American history. The British philospher Bertand Russell once said that he knew of no place besides the United States where there was so much theological superstition except Spain and Portugal. Basically, he was right. He also said that the reason Sweden was not a very religious country was because all of the "Bible-thumping" Swedes immigrated to the American Midwest. Again, probably some truth to that. While religious influence has not always been good (The Salem Witchcraft Trials; the Scope Monkey Trials, for example) it has had some positive aspects. The abolitionist movement against slavery and the good public school system in America both had their origins in the country’s religiosity. By contrast, England has not had as good of a public school system.
The problem between colonists and natives was most painful in the United States despite the brutal Spanish latifundia system. This is partly because the French , Portuguese and Spanish were all more willing to intermarry with the Indians. Of all the European colonialists, the Dutch intermarried the least with native populations.
"Those who view themselves as the ruling class (even in a "classless society") do not adopt the speech patterns of immigrants or those they perceive as beneath them. "—- Gailr
I have no problem with that. Linguist William Labov has a theory related to this which I think is worthy of further study. He says that accents in a community are established by the dominant members of the community. They may be either rich, poor, upper- or lower-middle class. They may be either men or women. As new people become dominant in the community the accent will gradually change.
