History of Quebec French
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Quebec French is substantially different in pronunciation and vocabulary to the French of Europe and that of France's Second Empire colonies in Africa and Asia.
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 Conquest by Great Britain in 1759.
Although moé and toé are today considered substandard slang pronunciations (joual), these were the pronunciations of Old French 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 many pronunciations and expressions shared with modern Oïl languages such as Norman, Gallo, Picard and Poitevin-Saintongeais. Speakers of these languages of France were predominant in settlers to New France. Quebec French was also influenced by the French spoken by the King's Daughters who were of the petit-bourgeois class from the Paris area (Ile-de-France) and Normandy.
Thus, whereas it was 18th century bourgeois Parisian French that eventually became the national, standardized language of France after the French Revolution, the French of the Ancien Régime kept evolving on its own in America. Indeed, the French spoken in Quebec 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 inevitable fact that Quebec French speakers have lived alongside and among English speakers for two and a half centuries 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, whereas the often entirely different 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.
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New France
The French language established itself permanently on the American continent with the foundation of Quebec City by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. However, it was after the creation of the Sovereign Council in 1663 that the colonies of New France really started to develop.
Between 1627 and 1663, a few thousands 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, 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). 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.
Among the speakers of Norman, Picard, Aunis, Poitevin-Saintongeais and Breton, many 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 many sources, the Canadians were all speaking French natively by the end of the 17th century, long before France itself.
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 after.
According to the terms of the 1760 Articles of capitulation of Montreal, the French army was to leave the conquere territory. The ruling elite, composed of members of the French aristocratie and important merchants also left. Only the people, the catholic clergy, the little bourgeoisie, and some members of the civil administration, the majority born in Canada, stayed in the country. Those who stayed were to become British subjects. A little after the conquest, British general Jeffrey Amherst sets up a military government which was to last until 1763.
In 1763, France ceded Canada to Great Britain with the Treaty of Paris. Rapidly, the new ruling elite decided the faith of the French-speaking colonists : they were to be assimilated, that is to say, they were to be absorbed in the English-speaking and protestant society of British North America. 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 St-Lawrence river.
American revolution
Union and confederation
French as the language of the Quebec State
Quebec French Today
See also
External link
- History of French in Quebec (http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/francophonie/histfrnqc.htm) (in French)fr:Histoire du français québécois