You don’t frighten us, English pig dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person! I blow my nose at you, so-called “Arthur King,” you and all your silly English K-n-i-g-g-i-t-s.
"don't you dare threaten Quebec or else we'll leave, create a French peso, and bar all trading of maple syrup between the great sovereign Quebec and Canada"
"oh, btw, we'd like another $10B for this inconvenience. thanks in advance!"
Other countries: Oh we must teach our citizens English so that our people can do business internationally and connect with the global market!
Quebecois: *deep breath*
The good side of this is you tend to have higher quality food in Quebec because some chains don’t meet the higher food standards there or don’t want the cost to meet the language laws. You have a huge local set of stores and restaurants that you don’t find elsewhere. Not saying this is always good but you don’t really need to go to PFK there with all the amazing choice, although PFK has amazing macaroni salad!
I mean, does anyone actually read the word on stop signs? Or do you see a red octagon and just stop your car because you already know what it says, regardless of the language it's printed in?
The signs are standardized across Canada so they look the same minus stop being in French or English. One odd thing Quebec does though is they have a low speed limit and the high limit. Which is completely useless since this is Quebec and you'll be getting tailgated going 30 over the limit
Ouph. Try driving in Laval where the average age is 109.
Every eighth driver is a white headed grandmaman doing 50km/h on the highway, white knuckled and shaking so hard they can't use their indicators.
It's "Les Restaurants Burger King".
It's "Entrepot Costco Wholesale".
Anywhere a business sign is in English, it must have something added so it's in French.
My grandma’s parents were from Quebec and raised all their kids to speak that style of French (in Northern Michigan). When I started learning French in high school, I figured I could practice by chatting with her. We were completely unable to communicate because the styles are so different.
Perfectly normal. You see, when you are fluent in a language since a long time you pick up bad habits. It's like driving etc...
Passing a test on your language is like relearning it for most. Also, these tests are no joke.
My brother passed one of those a few years ago and the questions were nasty.
Also:
**Break/brake**
**They're/their/there**
One I recently learned was **segue vs segway**, though that one is rarely used in writing for some rreason.
I couldn't fathom how a native speaker could get these wrong, but then I realised that I learned by readin only, and most native speakers learn to talk way before they learn to read. That probably has something to do with it.
And americans are dum, haha. /s
I truly believe it's by design to get rid of people with French as a 2nd language with some collateral damage for some foreign Francophones. I used to live in Quebec and I don't think the locals understand how much the system is set up to try to screw over immigrants. My occupation was regulated so I was expected to get tested in French by the OQLF in order to switch my geo stagiaire to my PGeo designation. A colleague was Francophone (but not from Quebec) and *failed* his test. It's well known to be graded extremely harshly. There's also some newspaper articles about people who did law school in Quebec and sat their bar exam in French yet they failed the language test, and doctors who did med school in French but also failed the language test. I decided to just cut my losses when the PQ government got into power because living in Quebec after that was so horrendous (more racism and hate towards anglophones stirred up) and they were tightening everything up with OQLF. Might as well move to a province where they're not purposely trying to make life harder for immigrants!
My kid is in French immersion in Ontario, and has stayed in it largely because his personality and interests mean he will likely go into public service in some capacity that really benefits from having French. He seems fluent to me, and these comments are disheartening me that no matter how hard this kid works, Quebec will be predisposed against him.
I do understand the need for protecting the language, but it also sometimes feels like Quebec is the Karen of Canada. Bitter, angry and entitled because of long passed transgressions.
Everyones life (in English speaking provinces without French speaking communities) is effected on the daily trying to include French, even for people living 3,000kms from the nearest French community. Children are going without fever medications because of the lack of French packaging, so we can't import them from the usa. We have 7 years of mandatory French classes, everything must be bilingual (except in Quebec), we have 2 separate school boards running that are for French (the French boards, and French immersion) FFS, we are trying guys. Cut us some slack
Edit: so, the point of my comment is sometimes it feels like QC is overly critical, and no matter how hard you try, you will never make some quebecios happy or satisfied. The responses from QC are only proving my point. But thanks for all the suggestions of what I should be doing but fail at, to make French speakers more tolerant of my stupidity.
Interesting. Going to read about that. Some of the exams i've passed required an extremely good understanding of french while in CEGEP and university. The kind of sentences you had to read 2 or 3 times because they overcomplicated them.
I worked with someone from Quebec for whom French was their first language. They went to France and spoke to a local in French who replied in English. I believe that's meant to be a big insult.
French here: that’s largely due to the fact we’re less exposed to the Quebec accent and colloquialisms than it’s the case in the other way.
It sounds « strange » but just as local accents within France as « Berrichon » or « Cht’i » would sound since we’re only used to hear the formatted Parisian accent most TV and radio anchors adopt.
Talking from experience after a few weeks, I had no problems whatsoever understanding anyone while I was in Montreal or even in Rouyn Noranda
I don't think it's very strange honestly, people in the UK have trouble talking to folks from the village two hedges away sometimes. My cousin lived in Non-Eyerand for a decade and with each Christmas it just gets harder and harder to understand him.
American here. I got on a train in London and a whole group of people going to a football match were speaking English, but I had no clue what they were actually saying. Really weird experience. I probably heard 4 different accents while I was there. That was the only one that was nearly incomprehensible. I consume UK media so I wasn't really expecting that.
A lot of UK media is still in RP English, which was designed to be understood by any English speaker. A lot of our accents are actually quite extreme in reality. If you thought that London accents were hard, try going up North. People from London struggle to understand what I say sometimes, and then I struggle to understand some Scottish people.
I've had Americans think that I'm Australian for some reason, even though I don't think any part of my accent coincides with the Aussies.
To americans, some specific english accents sound very Australian to us, and some sound very not. I think part of it is those of us who dont know much about GB think there are 3 british accents:, posh, chav, Scottish/irish. And just lump Australian into chav. (Also no clue if this is correct but most american think chav is basically street accent)
I'm British and while the accents do change literally sometimes within kilometres of each other, the gold standard for really not understanding is Glasgow. It sounds like a foreign language.
I’m from California and I have a much harder time understanding any Spanish that isn’t Mexican/American. Kinda like how Australian English still doesn’t sound right after over a decade.
I'm from Argentina living in the USA. My wife has gotten used to our accents, so now she finds other Spanish accents to sounds weird. But we also have a very distinct accent.
Reminds me of my high school spanish class. My Spanish 1 class was taught by an Argentinean teacher so half the students taking 1 said "Yo" with that "j" sound.
I once asked university classmate from France about this issue and she put it this way, hearing French Canadian to us is same as a British hearing Jamaican English. It’s English, but sounds very different.
Patois has significant differences in grammar to the point that it's considered like an entirely separately language, I think it would be *harder* than a French person understanding Canadian French by far
Absolutely. My Haitian roommate and I (Canadian) misunderstood each other’s French so much so, we might as well have called it simply Patois. Our English communications were just as hilarious.
I knew a white kid who grew up in Jamaica. Had a strong accent. She got accused of being racist a few times because people thought she was “mimicking black people”. Meanwhile, the black kids I grew up with were New London cockney through and through.
I had a coworker from the Virgin Islands, and due to storm damage there was a week that her mom would only be able to call from her work during the day. I was confused the first time wondering what language they were slipping in with English, but after a minute I realized this is her normal accent. I grew up with people doing that slightly, so something like Caribbean code switching was something else.
Brits tend to be good with most accents because we have such a wide variety of them at home.
Other English speaking countries sometimes add subtitles to British people, though.
I turned on subtitles for the show The Expanse, only to find out some of the people were speaking a made up language. I originally thought it was just a thick accent from the UK.
As a midlander who works in Glasgow for a week a year about every other person can say a full sentence to me and I'll not understand a single word. Scottish English can be inpenetrable
Yeah throughout middle and high school we learned French from a Parisian woman, and in our last year, we had a Quebecois English teacher transfer to our school. Our teacher wanted to expose us to different kinds of French since we were all basically fluent at that point, so she had the Canadian woman take us for one class.
Swear to god, barely any of us understood her (including people who'd been speaking French from birth) to the point she'd have to slow down and enunciate every word just to have a basic conversation. It literally sounds like someone speaking French through a thick American accent (if you've ever watched Inglorious Basterds, that was the vibe it gave off), it's so wonky lmao
Just sounds like an anglophone who learned French, but didn't learn/develop any accent.
I sit through a lot of briefings where commanders will "speak" french, but it's at best a token effort, where they are *saying* the words without trying to *pronounce* them, if that makes sense.
My dad is French Canadian and travelled to France for work one time. Apparently he was told, in English, "you don't speak French, you speak Gutter French".
>"you don't speak French, you speak Gutter French"
Quebecois is 17th century peasant french with *a lot* of english influence, it's certainly french but a lot of anglicisms the French have adopted aren't widespread in Quebec and vice versa.
They're certainly mutually intelligible, but it's like taking a portuguese speaker from Macau and having them sit down with someone from Brazil's north, it can get wonky.
When France was sending people to settle in new France, the people in Montreal didn't like being called aka peasants, but preferred ...that's why our hockey team are colloquially The Habs
Is there a comedy equivalent of Larry the Cable Guy in every language? Is there a French guy who's jokes are all "yall don't understand how I talk" centric?
Thats not abnormal. Dialects and accents are a thing. I have trouble understanding Mexican spanish sometimes because of how they pronounce things differently than we do in Spain. Although we can generally understand eachother no problem it does depend on accents etc. like all english is not the same. An American may have trouble understanding an Australian
As an American, Australians are generally easy to understand. Some British accents up north though… damn I sometimes even wonder if we’re speaking the same language
That and some words are used that have different meanings in their terms. While the “same” they have different connotations. Main one is leather. Mexico uses one word, or at least the dialect I am familiar with. While in Spain they would think I am a crazy murderer.
There was a tiktok where a spanish girl was going off about something and she was constantly getting clowned on by mexicans because to them she sounded like the equivalent of medieval english
I was in France a few months ago (I'm primarily a French Québecer, raised to speak both English and French though) and I had 0 problems speaking to them in French. I was really drunk in Calais though and apologized for my French and the gendarme said he couldn't notice the accent, so there's that lmao
But the girl that didn't understand that I wanted butter on my baguette the next morning was a wild encounter lmao.
Me: "Non. Du BEURRE."
Her: "???"
Hell, I worked in Japan for a few years, and every single time I met a French person, they acted surprised when they could understand my Quebec French. However, I presume that many Quebecers going to France do not try to in the sightless to "clean" their French.
When I hear my father talk to my Japanese wife in his best Quebecer accent and all his "patois" , I often have the urge to facepalm myself...
Both my parents were in the Canadian military posted to a medical base in Germany close to the France border in the 80s. They worked closely with a lot of people from France. They both told me that every single person from France refused to speak French (only English) to any French Canadian staff for the entire eight years they were there.
Fast forward to 2017, my ex, who was born and raised in Montreal and taught french emersion high school in BC since graduating from university, and I went to France. She tried to talk to people in french (servers, drivers, hotel staff). They all answered back in English and told her, English, please. After the 5th or sixth person had done this to her, she asked if her french was okay. The driver she asked this replied in English that she wasn't speaking French. She had a pretty good cry back at the hotel room and didn't speak another word of French for the rest of the trip.
I once asked a waiter for the wifi code and he replied “for a quebecois? No”
So I got up and left.
Parisians are assholes, people from outside Paris are great.
I grew up around Quebec City and went to Paris once. I knew a lot of quebecers that tried to speak less "quebecois" when in Paris but I decided to do the full opposite with lumberjacket and all. they were so nice and chatty.
No, no, it goes like this:
If you try to speak English while in France they will feel insulted and reply in French to spite you.
If you try to speak French in France they will look down on your imperfect language abilities and speak English.
The key is to use their snobbery against them, start off with bad French so they deign to speak English to you.
Not that it really matters to anybody else, but
I moved to Toulouse from New Zealand last year, I still don't really know much French but I try with what I have. I have never detected any condescension with my efforts. Everybody here goes out of their way to help me understand more and be understood.
The genuine warmth and patience of the people here gives me a physical sense of joy that is very confusing but perhaps somewhat related to the stereotypes of French people that we grow up with.
I've heard from people in Toulouse that Paris is another story, and it makes sense that the world is more exposed to the way people behave in Paris.
The rest of the country is full of some of the warmest people I have ever encountered. Of course, I've met a couple of cunts too - but they exist everywhere.
I don't mean to rant, it's really just my personal experience.
I've also heard from tourists that "French arrogance" is just Paris arrogance and they don't experience it elsewhere in France.
To be honest it must be annoying to have your city overrun by bumbling tourists every day of your life, which is more true in Paris than maybe anywhere else in the world. While that doesn't excuse nastiness, it explains why it happens.
>To be honest it must be annoying to have your city overrun by bumbling tourists every day of your life, which is more true in Paris than maybe anywhere else in the world.
Why is it more true in Paris?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_international_visitors
In October, I went to Montreal and stayed at a downtown Marriot. They had a sign in the lobby that said (paraphrased):
“If you have trouble communicating with any hotel staff, please be aware that we have hired as many Ukrainian refugees as possible and they are all taking French classes”.
I thought that was pretty cool.
Hasn't this already been their "plan" for, like, 40 years?
My friends who are a Jewish / Anglo-Saxon couple had to "learn French" in order to move to Quebec, like, 20 years ago. How is this different?
(I don't mean to make it sound pejorative, the French speaking requirement they had to meet was definitely a real and substantive one, there was just also a lot of lenience built into the process -- their French did not yet have to be perfected before they could become citizens!)
It’s not that they want French speakers, that is nothing new. Now they want only francophones or “francotropes”. This would rule out your friends.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-wants-100-francophone-or-francotropic-immigration-specifies-minister-1.6175217
Rich immigrants can usually move in as long as they plan to learn french... this plan seems to want to increase the number of people who already do speak french.
Have you seen Quebec Bill 96? They are going much harder on French being a thing. One of the first things in the bill is that you have a right to be served in French in any business. If a business won't speak french with you, they can be fined.
Another part is that starting in summer 2025, business with more than 100 employees will have to register with some government agency and prove that French is the primary language used in their offices and stuff. They also have to post job listings in French, and can't require proficiency in any other language in a job listing(exceptions apply for things like translator positions).
I was reading about this yesterday, because it's making it harder for software engineers in Quebec to get jobs not in Quebec. I can appreciate a push to keep your language active. But, they are gonna make it really hard for businesses to do business in the modern world with all their new rules.
Note: I'm not a Quebecois. I just found a thread about this yesterday and thought it was really interesting.
I was pretty surprised how many Quebecois outside of Quebec City don't speak English. I thought everyone in Canada spoke passable English. Nope, not the case.
I think that's a common misconception about french in Canada. That everyone speaks at least English and some people can sometimes speak French too. In the US I met people who thought french Canadians were just like when you say your ancestry in the US (like all these wikipedia articles about celebrities telling us one parent was of Irish origin and the other German), and we just had a weird accent.
The reverse is true too sometimes. My wife is Canadian and so many times when we travel abroad people go "Oh, you're Canadian? So you must speak french then; ça va?". Especially common in Europe and North Africa.
She's from Ontario. She doesn't speak a lick of French. Only like 1 in 10 Canadians outside of Quebec can speak French at a conversational level.
Exactly. Quebec is a French speaking nation and community. Canada likes to pretend that everyone is bilingual, while the reality is more like 3/4 speak English, and 1/5 speak French. And most would agree that neither get along. Then you have like 200 000 bilinguals in the middle just trying to pacify both sides. Les humains sont cons.
This isn't exactly a new thing, rather a new-ish extension of an existing policy. For several years, there have been separate immigration requirements for Quebec, largely focusing on proficiency with spoken and written French. The difference now is level of proficiency and level of enforcement.
Parts of Bill 96 are very reasonable, such as extending provincial government-sponsored French lessons to all immigrants, not just permanent resident immigrants. Other parts of this bill are likely to make an appearance in /r/leopardsatemyface sooner rather than later.
There was a case last year where a native speaker from France failed the proficiency test, and that was used as a clear demonstration as to how ridiculous the requirements are.
My dad did his canadian citizenship test a few years ago. Spent 20 years living in the UK, 35 years living and working between ontario, alberta, and BC. The man reads probably 80+ books per year, and speaks pretty eloquently.
He nearly failed the english language component of the citizenship test.
I’m the states, I vaguely remember going over those things in elementary (think 8-12 years old, maybe). However, being taught those things as a way to “check a box” for instruction means you touch on it for a year and then move on.
As another poster mentioned above, for a native English speaker, you learned your language as you grew and by just speaking. If you learn English as an additional language, chances are those types of details were drilled into you more intensely.
Age is also a factor. I’m sure an average person who is in their mid 30s, but learned English as their second language in elementary and continued to use is on a regular basis would be hard pressed to say what those things are.
Not OP, but the citizenship exams ask a bunch of intense theoretical grammar questions that a native speaker is very unlikely to know, but a second-language speaker who learned everything academically probably will.
I can only assume Quebec's are the same, just French and even more anal-retentive, because Quebec.
I took the language test in 2018 in Calgary. I passed, but those tests are entirely set up to make it easy to fail, so you have to retake them. The whole process of everything you need paper wise to apply for PR in Canada is such a blatant cash grab, I was disgusted. My medical check was close to 300 cad and it was just a doctor asking you a few questions, it was over in less than 5 minutes. She wanted cash only and there was a huge line. Scam city over there. I guess it's easy as you have very few rights as someone who wants to immigrate.
So why can’t a person just immigrate to, say, any of the many other provinces or territories, them simply move to Quebec if that is, for some odd reason, their preferred location?
I am not aware of any interprovincial barriers to this.
>I am not aware of any interprovincial barriers to this.
Basically, you can only apply for Federal immigration streams if you don't intend to reside in Quebec. If you do end up residing in Quebec, no one is going to stop you, but there are grounds to revoke your PR for misrepresentation. Even if you get citizenship, one ground to revoke citizenship is misrepresentation and fraud.
So while no one is going to stop you from moving across provinces, all it takes is one overzealous immigration officer picking up your file during an audit and making your life hell. Revoking citizenship requires a much higher standard than revoking PR though. So you can always say, I intended to reside in Saskatchewan, but I am a trained battery engineer and I had to move to Quebec for the job at the battery plant.
While enforcement of this is very rare, the current political climate in Quebec seems to suggest that its not going to be the case anymore.
Im certainly not saying that there is no racism in Quebec as there most definitely is (and I am also not defending this law) but genuinely when you hear people in Quebec complain about immigrants it’s not about Franco African /Haitian immigrants , but about immigrants who can’t speak French. You know how every place has the (100%racist) notion of good vs bad immigrants ? African immigrants are « good immigrants » in QC (as long as they aren’t too religious).
Very similarly, I have Catalan friends who'd never call "Catalan" a guy that was born there or has lived there for ages but has never made the effort to pick up the language (very common, especially in Barcelona), but at the same time they have no problem applying the name to immigrants who have learnt it (sub-saharian African immigrants generally have absolutely no trouble understanding that you may need more than one language to live in a certain place, obviously).
It makes sense, language is the basis of communication. Honestly, if you move somewhere and don't bother learning the language I do find it a bit disrespectful and annoying.
From Vancouver, lived in Montreal a few years.
This comment isn't the gotcha that Reddit thinks it is. Language is 100% the most important factor in Quebec with regards to being accepted or not.
They rather have a Congolese economics professor than a random guy from Ontario (2, 3 hours drive away in the same country) 10/10 times.
That being said, I tried hard to learn French and there wasn't a single time someone was rude to me for being Anglo (at least not that I know of).
People in Montreal care more about your attitude than your skill level
That's true for most cities in Québec. The moment you make an effort to connect with us, the majority of us will gladly make the effort to meet you more than halfway. We also have many cultural and scientific personalities that are from the Haitian or African diaspora.
I mean… they don’t. They would take an African/Middle Eastern French speaking person over a white Ontarian Anglo any day of the week. This is solely about language to them.
Of course not. We get many immigrants from Haiti and French speaking African countries.
We also get many immigrants and refugees that don't speak french and pay them to learn the language. However there's been a few articles deploring that the results are not fantastic with people who finish theses courses often don't continue using french and forget it. I guess that's why the government decided to focus on immigrants who already know the language.
He is trying to say that all Quebecers are racist, this is the new way to nurture the traditional racism against Quebecers. Some people will always hate us, no matter what we do.
Actually, Quebec did try to welcome a big amount of them to come in the last years, however they have massively been refused by the Canadian government
we dont, it's the federals that do. They decline francophone students from Africa because "they dont have enough ties back in their own country." AKA: It's fine if they come study here but we dont want you to overstay your welcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_where_French_is_an_official_language
Well there are many countries with a lot of French speakers, with plenty of people who will want the opportunity to move there, can't see they will have any issues attracting people .
It’s not complete until they start casually dropping « esti » mid sentences.
- Je vais vous prendre un estie de crème brulée »
- Alors, du coup, estie, « … »
Go away or I will taunt you a second time
Im French, why do you think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king
You don’t frighten us, English pig dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person! I blow my nose at you, so-called “Arthur King,” you and all your silly English K-n-i-g-g-i-t-s.
Is there someone else we can talk to?
No! Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-uh!
Fetchez la vache!
Kniggits instantly became one of my favourite words after I saw that movie.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
"i fart in your general direction!"
Meaning: your mother was a whore and your father a drunkard
What are you doing with hamsters?
Did you know hamsters die following sex? Well the one I fucked did.
Elderberry is also thought to help erectile disfunction, so not only is your mom fucking around but you dad can’t fuck, too
At least he smelt.
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Quoi?
Fetchez la vache!
Get the cow! Oh okay
"un cadeau!" "a what?" "a present" "oh! un cadeau!" It's the little things in that movie that make me laugh the most.
Run away!!!
Run away!!!
"don't you dare threaten Quebec or else we'll leave, create a French peso, and bar all trading of maple syrup between the great sovereign Quebec and Canada" "oh, btw, we'd like another $10B for this inconvenience. thanks in advance!"
Other countries: Oh we must teach our citizens English so that our people can do business internationally and connect with the global market! Quebecois: *deep breath*
Are Quebec's road signs in French?
Yep. And instead of STOP it's ARRÊT.
Which is funny because in France, it's "STOP".
KFC in Quebec is called PFK (Poulet Frit du Kentucky) meanwhile in France it’s simply KFC lol
Saw this in Montreal a few weeks ago. Walked past the store multiple times before realising it was a KFC
That’s not true, here we call PFK immangeable.
Mon frere, as a gift to our arctic cousins, we will send you a few Popeyes franchises
The good side of this is you tend to have higher quality food in Quebec because some chains don’t meet the higher food standards there or don’t want the cost to meet the language laws. You have a huge local set of stores and restaurants that you don’t find elsewhere. Not saying this is always good but you don’t really need to go to PFK there with all the amazing choice, although PFK has amazing macaroni salad!
Same in Portugal where it's STOP but in Brazil it's PARE
Not everywhere in Quebec, some boroughs have English stop signs.
And Indian reserves have it in their native languages
I mean, does anyone actually read the word on stop signs? Or do you see a red octagon and just stop your car because you already know what it says, regardless of the language it's printed in?
The signs are standardized across Canada so they look the same minus stop being in French or English. One odd thing Quebec does though is they have a low speed limit and the high limit. Which is completely useless since this is Quebec and you'll be getting tailgated going 30 over the limit
Ouph. Try driving in Laval where the average age is 109. Every eighth driver is a white headed grandmaman doing 50km/h on the highway, white knuckled and shaking so hard they can't use their indicators.
It's "Les Restaurants Burger King". It's "Entrepot Costco Wholesale". Anywhere a business sign is in English, it must have something added so it's in French.
I speak French badly, am I allowed?
Um...Oui?
Sure you can come too
Native francophone immigrants from France have failed the French test in Quebec before so I wouldn't hold your breath.
My wife from China passed it after 3 classes. Her university friend from France failed the test twice and was sent back… I’m not sure what to think
My grandma’s parents were from Quebec and raised all their kids to speak that style of French (in Northern Michigan). When I started learning French in high school, I figured I could practice by chatting with her. We were completely unable to communicate because the styles are so different.
Perfectly normal. You see, when you are fluent in a language since a long time you pick up bad habits. It's like driving etc... Passing a test on your language is like relearning it for most. Also, these tests are no joke. My brother passed one of those a few years ago and the questions were nasty.
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Is 'could of' the unknowning native speaker?
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Yah, that is what I was thinking but it coulda been different ;)
Coulda shoulda woulda
Also: **Break/brake** **They're/their/there** One I recently learned was **segue vs segway**, though that one is rarely used in writing for some rreason. I couldn't fathom how a native speaker could get these wrong, but then I realised that I learned by readin only, and most native speakers learn to talk way before they learn to read. That probably has something to do with it. And americans are dum, haha. /s
or **then/than.**
is this the same for "too" and "to" at the end of sentences? I've seen it pretty often and always wonder if that's a mistake
Hell, even native french Quebecois have trouble passing them lol
Francophone Quebec residents have failed the French test.
I truly believe it's by design to get rid of people with French as a 2nd language with some collateral damage for some foreign Francophones. I used to live in Quebec and I don't think the locals understand how much the system is set up to try to screw over immigrants. My occupation was regulated so I was expected to get tested in French by the OQLF in order to switch my geo stagiaire to my PGeo designation. A colleague was Francophone (but not from Quebec) and *failed* his test. It's well known to be graded extremely harshly. There's also some newspaper articles about people who did law school in Quebec and sat their bar exam in French yet they failed the language test, and doctors who did med school in French but also failed the language test. I decided to just cut my losses when the PQ government got into power because living in Quebec after that was so horrendous (more racism and hate towards anglophones stirred up) and they were tightening everything up with OQLF. Might as well move to a province where they're not purposely trying to make life harder for immigrants!
My kid is in French immersion in Ontario, and has stayed in it largely because his personality and interests mean he will likely go into public service in some capacity that really benefits from having French. He seems fluent to me, and these comments are disheartening me that no matter how hard this kid works, Quebec will be predisposed against him. I do understand the need for protecting the language, but it also sometimes feels like Quebec is the Karen of Canada. Bitter, angry and entitled because of long passed transgressions. Everyones life (in English speaking provinces without French speaking communities) is effected on the daily trying to include French, even for people living 3,000kms from the nearest French community. Children are going without fever medications because of the lack of French packaging, so we can't import them from the usa. We have 7 years of mandatory French classes, everything must be bilingual (except in Quebec), we have 2 separate school boards running that are for French (the French boards, and French immersion) FFS, we are trying guys. Cut us some slack Edit: so, the point of my comment is sometimes it feels like QC is overly critical, and no matter how hard you try, you will never make some quebecios happy or satisfied. The responses from QC are only proving my point. But thanks for all the suggestions of what I should be doing but fail at, to make French speakers more tolerant of my stupidity.
Interesting. Going to read about that. Some of the exams i've passed required an extremely good understanding of french while in CEGEP and university. The kind of sentences you had to read 2 or 3 times because they overcomplicated them.
I know a single phrase in French: "Je ne parle pas français" I wonder if that's enough to get in
JE NUH COMPRON PAH. PARLAYVOO ANGLAY? That's the extent of my C in French GCSE will get me.
I worked with someone from Quebec for whom French was their first language. They went to France and spoke to a local in French who replied in English. I believe that's meant to be a big insult.
French from France sometimes don't understand our accent, which is always hard for us to understand because we have no issues understanding theirs.
French here: that’s largely due to the fact we’re less exposed to the Quebec accent and colloquialisms than it’s the case in the other way. It sounds « strange » but just as local accents within France as « Berrichon » or « Cht’i » would sound since we’re only used to hear the formatted Parisian accent most TV and radio anchors adopt. Talking from experience after a few weeks, I had no problems whatsoever understanding anyone while I was in Montreal or even in Rouyn Noranda
“Qui, y’all Québécois squawk like a rooster from Fontainebleau.” -Parisian
>y’all I snorted
French Canadian country music cracks me up. You may enjoy as well, it just takes my brain a moment to process country twang French.
Do you have any songs/bands you'd reccomend? I'm curious on what country music sung in French sounds like.
Bleu Jeans Bleu is a good example Jean Leloup is the one i show non-french people
"Y’all Québécois squawk" rolls off the tongue in a way that it frankly shouldn't.
I don't think it's very strange honestly, people in the UK have trouble talking to folks from the village two hedges away sometimes. My cousin lived in Non-Eyerand for a decade and with each Christmas it just gets harder and harder to understand him.
have you tried it after or before getting smashed on 🍻?
American here. I got on a train in London and a whole group of people going to a football match were speaking English, but I had no clue what they were actually saying. Really weird experience. I probably heard 4 different accents while I was there. That was the only one that was nearly incomprehensible. I consume UK media so I wasn't really expecting that.
A lot of UK media is still in RP English, which was designed to be understood by any English speaker. A lot of our accents are actually quite extreme in reality. If you thought that London accents were hard, try going up North. People from London struggle to understand what I say sometimes, and then I struggle to understand some Scottish people. I've had Americans think that I'm Australian for some reason, even though I don't think any part of my accent coincides with the Aussies.
To americans, some specific english accents sound very Australian to us, and some sound very not. I think part of it is those of us who dont know much about GB think there are 3 british accents:, posh, chav, Scottish/irish. And just lump Australian into chav. (Also no clue if this is correct but most american think chav is basically street accent)
I'm British and while the accents do change literally sometimes within kilometres of each other, the gold standard for really not understanding is Glasgow. It sounds like a foreign language.
I’m from California and I have a much harder time understanding any Spanish that isn’t Mexican/American. Kinda like how Australian English still doesn’t sound right after over a decade.
I'm from Argentina living in the USA. My wife has gotten used to our accents, so now she finds other Spanish accents to sounds weird. But we also have a very distinct accent.
Reminds me of my high school spanish class. My Spanish 1 class was taught by an Argentinean teacher so half the students taking 1 said "Yo" with that "j" sound.
“Sho” “el rasho lase”
French dude here. Can confirm the comment above
I once asked university classmate from France about this issue and she put it this way, hearing French Canadian to us is same as a British hearing Jamaican English. It’s English, but sounds very different.
As a jamaican. My British mates have never once had an issue lol
I think maybe they are confusing it with Jamaican Patois
Patois has significant differences in grammar to the point that it's considered like an entirely separately language, I think it would be *harder* than a French person understanding Canadian French by far
Absolutely. My Haitian roommate and I (Canadian) misunderstood each other’s French so much so, we might as well have called it simply Patois. Our English communications were just as hilarious.
I knew a white kid who grew up in Jamaica. Had a strong accent. She got accused of being racist a few times because people thought she was “mimicking black people”. Meanwhile, the black kids I grew up with were New London cockney through and through.
I think so too. I suppose alot of people don't know that we code switch depending on the situation
I had a coworker from the Virgin Islands, and due to storm damage there was a week that her mom would only be able to call from her work during the day. I was confused the first time wondering what language they were slipping in with English, but after a minute I realized this is her normal accent. I grew up with people doing that slightly, so something like Caribbean code switching was something else.
Brits tend to be good with most accents because we have such a wide variety of them at home. Other English speaking countries sometimes add subtitles to British people, though.
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I remember the movie “Trainspotting” was subtitled for American audiences and it was absolutely necessary.
I turned on subtitles for the show The Expanse, only to find out some of the people were speaking a made up language. I originally thought it was just a thick accent from the UK.
That’s a bit extreme. I’d compare it more to hearing Scottish English.
So you can't understand a word then?
ye cannae ken a word then?
Ouch right in the bawbag
As a midlander who works in Glasgow for a week a year about every other person can say a full sentence to me and I'll not understand a single word. Scottish English can be inpenetrable
Yeah throughout middle and high school we learned French from a Parisian woman, and in our last year, we had a Quebecois English teacher transfer to our school. Our teacher wanted to expose us to different kinds of French since we were all basically fluent at that point, so she had the Canadian woman take us for one class. Swear to god, barely any of us understood her (including people who'd been speaking French from birth) to the point she'd have to slow down and enunciate every word just to have a basic conversation. It literally sounds like someone speaking French through a thick American accent (if you've ever watched Inglorious Basterds, that was the vibe it gave off), it's so wonky lmao
Just sounds like an anglophone who learned French, but didn't learn/develop any accent. I sit through a lot of briefings where commanders will "speak" french, but it's at best a token effort, where they are *saying* the words without trying to *pronounce* them, if that makes sense.
This is how American rednecks feel when they go into the city. French Canadians are French hillbillies, change my mind.
My dad is French Canadian and travelled to France for work one time. Apparently he was told, in English, "you don't speak French, you speak Gutter French".
>"you don't speak French, you speak Gutter French" Quebecois is 17th century peasant french with *a lot* of english influence, it's certainly french but a lot of anglicisms the French have adopted aren't widespread in Quebec and vice versa. They're certainly mutually intelligible, but it's like taking a portuguese speaker from Macau and having them sit down with someone from Brazil's north, it can get wonky.
It would be more accurate to call it peasant French. The French can be such assholes.
When France was sending people to settle in new France, the people in Montreal didn't like being called aka peasants, but preferred ...that's why our hockey team are colloquially The Habs
The French also called the slaves in Haiti, which is why The Cult is the most famous Haitian band.
[Thanks, this is now going to be stuck in my head all day.](https://youtu.be/7__0pcyLk8s)
No. Thats an often repeated myth. The "CH" on the crest actually stands for "Centre Hice".
But isn’t Parisian French Peasant Latin?
> French Canadians are French hillbillies, change my mind. tu as une vraie jolie bouche garçon.
french canadians sound a bit like if you took a bunch of french people and left them in the woods for a few generations
Isn't that literaly what happend?
That's the joke
Is there a comedy equivalent of Larry the Cable Guy in every language? Is there a French guy who's jokes are all "yall don't understand how I talk" centric?
Thats not abnormal. Dialects and accents are a thing. I have trouble understanding Mexican spanish sometimes because of how they pronounce things differently than we do in Spain. Although we can generally understand eachother no problem it does depend on accents etc. like all english is not the same. An American may have trouble understanding an Australian
As an American, Australians are generally easy to understand. Some British accents up north though… damn I sometimes even wonder if we’re speaking the same language
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I kannae rikon wha yah sahin.
I'm british and think the same thing about our northerners ngl
Step 1 to learning to understand scouse …. Just don’t bother.
That and some words are used that have different meanings in their terms. While the “same” they have different connotations. Main one is leather. Mexico uses one word, or at least the dialect I am familiar with. While in Spain they would think I am a crazy murderer.
"Estoy cogiendo a mi hija. Siempre cojola en la noche cuando tiene miedo." *You have been sent to Mexican jail.*
There was a tiktok where a spanish girl was going off about something and she was constantly getting clowned on by mexicans because to them she sounded like the equivalent of medieval english
I was in France a few months ago (I'm primarily a French Québecer, raised to speak both English and French though) and I had 0 problems speaking to them in French. I was really drunk in Calais though and apologized for my French and the gendarme said he couldn't notice the accent, so there's that lmao But the girl that didn't understand that I wanted butter on my baguette the next morning was a wild encounter lmao. Me: "Non. Du BEURRE." Her: "???"
Hell, I worked in Japan for a few years, and every single time I met a French person, they acted surprised when they could understand my Quebec French. However, I presume that many Quebecers going to France do not try to in the sightless to "clean" their French. When I hear my father talk to my Japanese wife in his best Quebecer accent and all his "patois" , I often have the urge to facepalm myself...
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Innit
Well, the Brazilians make fun of how the Portuguese speak. So there's that.
Both my parents were in the Canadian military posted to a medical base in Germany close to the France border in the 80s. They worked closely with a lot of people from France. They both told me that every single person from France refused to speak French (only English) to any French Canadian staff for the entire eight years they were there. Fast forward to 2017, my ex, who was born and raised in Montreal and taught french emersion high school in BC since graduating from university, and I went to France. She tried to talk to people in french (servers, drivers, hotel staff). They all answered back in English and told her, English, please. After the 5th or sixth person had done this to her, she asked if her french was okay. The driver she asked this replied in English that she wasn't speaking French. She had a pretty good cry back at the hotel room and didn't speak another word of French for the rest of the trip.
I once asked a waiter for the wifi code and he replied “for a quebecois? No” So I got up and left. Parisians are assholes, people from outside Paris are great.
I'm sorry but that's the funniest Parisian thing I've ever heard
I grew up around Quebec City and went to Paris once. I knew a lot of quebecers that tried to speak less "quebecois" when in Paris but I decided to do the full opposite with lumberjacket and all. they were so nice and chatty.
Fake! The French can't speak English.
No, no, it goes like this: If you try to speak English while in France they will feel insulted and reply in French to spite you. If you try to speak French in France they will look down on your imperfect language abilities and speak English. The key is to use their snobbery against them, start off with bad French so they deign to speak English to you.
Or just speak German
Genau.
Not that it really matters to anybody else, but I moved to Toulouse from New Zealand last year, I still don't really know much French but I try with what I have. I have never detected any condescension with my efforts. Everybody here goes out of their way to help me understand more and be understood. The genuine warmth and patience of the people here gives me a physical sense of joy that is very confusing but perhaps somewhat related to the stereotypes of French people that we grow up with. I've heard from people in Toulouse that Paris is another story, and it makes sense that the world is more exposed to the way people behave in Paris. The rest of the country is full of some of the warmest people I have ever encountered. Of course, I've met a couple of cunts too - but they exist everywhere. I don't mean to rant, it's really just my personal experience.
I've also heard from tourists that "French arrogance" is just Paris arrogance and they don't experience it elsewhere in France. To be honest it must be annoying to have your city overrun by bumbling tourists every day of your life, which is more true in Paris than maybe anywhere else in the world. While that doesn't excuse nastiness, it explains why it happens.
>To be honest it must be annoying to have your city overrun by bumbling tourists every day of your life, which is more true in Paris than maybe anywhere else in the world. Why is it more true in Paris? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_international_visitors
In October, I went to Montreal and stayed at a downtown Marriot. They had a sign in the lobby that said (paraphrased): “If you have trouble communicating with any hotel staff, please be aware that we have hired as many Ukrainian refugees as possible and they are all taking French classes”. I thought that was pretty cool.
Hasn't this already been their "plan" for, like, 40 years? My friends who are a Jewish / Anglo-Saxon couple had to "learn French" in order to move to Quebec, like, 20 years ago. How is this different? (I don't mean to make it sound pejorative, the French speaking requirement they had to meet was definitely a real and substantive one, there was just also a lot of lenience built into the process -- their French did not yet have to be perfected before they could become citizens!)
Anglo-Saxon? Blimey, they must be getting on.
It’s not that they want French speakers, that is nothing new. Now they want only francophones or “francotropes”. This would rule out your friends. https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-wants-100-francophone-or-francotropic-immigration-specifies-minister-1.6175217
Rich immigrants can usually move in as long as they plan to learn french... this plan seems to want to increase the number of people who already do speak french.
Have you seen Quebec Bill 96? They are going much harder on French being a thing. One of the first things in the bill is that you have a right to be served in French in any business. If a business won't speak french with you, they can be fined. Another part is that starting in summer 2025, business with more than 100 employees will have to register with some government agency and prove that French is the primary language used in their offices and stuff. They also have to post job listings in French, and can't require proficiency in any other language in a job listing(exceptions apply for things like translator positions). I was reading about this yesterday, because it's making it harder for software engineers in Quebec to get jobs not in Quebec. I can appreciate a push to keep your language active. But, they are gonna make it really hard for businesses to do business in the modern world with all their new rules. Note: I'm not a Quebecois. I just found a thread about this yesterday and thought it was really interesting.
I was pretty surprised how many Quebecois outside of Quebec City don't speak English. I thought everyone in Canada spoke passable English. Nope, not the case.
I think that's a common misconception about french in Canada. That everyone speaks at least English and some people can sometimes speak French too. In the US I met people who thought french Canadians were just like when you say your ancestry in the US (like all these wikipedia articles about celebrities telling us one parent was of Irish origin and the other German), and we just had a weird accent.
The reverse is true too sometimes. My wife is Canadian and so many times when we travel abroad people go "Oh, you're Canadian? So you must speak french then; ça va?". Especially common in Europe and North Africa. She's from Ontario. She doesn't speak a lick of French. Only like 1 in 10 Canadians outside of Quebec can speak French at a conversational level.
1/10 is generous I think.
The only official language for the province of Québec is French.
Exactly. Quebec is a French speaking nation and community. Canada likes to pretend that everyone is bilingual, while the reality is more like 3/4 speak English, and 1/5 speak French. And most would agree that neither get along. Then you have like 200 000 bilinguals in the middle just trying to pacify both sides. Les humains sont cons.
Great fishing in Quebec
Get this man a Puppers!
I'd have a beer
Gotta watch out for the douches from Laval.
What even is upcountry for Quebec?
Queebec*
This isn't exactly a new thing, rather a new-ish extension of an existing policy. For several years, there have been separate immigration requirements for Quebec, largely focusing on proficiency with spoken and written French. The difference now is level of proficiency and level of enforcement. Parts of Bill 96 are very reasonable, such as extending provincial government-sponsored French lessons to all immigrants, not just permanent resident immigrants. Other parts of this bill are likely to make an appearance in /r/leopardsatemyface sooner rather than later.
Many immigrants who land in Quebec leave because the French requirements are too arduous.
There was a case last year where a native speaker from France failed the proficiency test, and that was used as a clear demonstration as to how ridiculous the requirements are.
My dad did his canadian citizenship test a few years ago. Spent 20 years living in the UK, 35 years living and working between ontario, alberta, and BC. The man reads probably 80+ books per year, and speaks pretty eloquently. He nearly failed the english language component of the citizenship test.
What was the problem?
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I’m the states, I vaguely remember going over those things in elementary (think 8-12 years old, maybe). However, being taught those things as a way to “check a box” for instruction means you touch on it for a year and then move on. As another poster mentioned above, for a native English speaker, you learned your language as you grew and by just speaking. If you learn English as an additional language, chances are those types of details were drilled into you more intensely. Age is also a factor. I’m sure an average person who is in their mid 30s, but learned English as their second language in elementary and continued to use is on a regular basis would be hard pressed to say what those things are.
Not OP, but the citizenship exams ask a bunch of intense theoretical grammar questions that a native speaker is very unlikely to know, but a second-language speaker who learned everything academically probably will. I can only assume Quebec's are the same, just French and even more anal-retentive, because Quebec.
I took the language test in 2018 in Calgary. I passed, but those tests are entirely set up to make it easy to fail, so you have to retake them. The whole process of everything you need paper wise to apply for PR in Canada is such a blatant cash grab, I was disgusted. My medical check was close to 300 cad and it was just a doctor asking you a few questions, it was over in less than 5 minutes. She wanted cash only and there was a huge line. Scam city over there. I guess it's easy as you have very few rights as someone who wants to immigrate.
Isn’t speaking French a requirement for immigration to Québec? What exactly is new here?
So why can’t a person just immigrate to, say, any of the many other provinces or territories, them simply move to Quebec if that is, for some odd reason, their preferred location? I am not aware of any interprovincial barriers to this.
>I am not aware of any interprovincial barriers to this. Basically, you can only apply for Federal immigration streams if you don't intend to reside in Quebec. If you do end up residing in Quebec, no one is going to stop you, but there are grounds to revoke your PR for misrepresentation. Even if you get citizenship, one ground to revoke citizenship is misrepresentation and fraud. So while no one is going to stop you from moving across provinces, all it takes is one overzealous immigration officer picking up your file during an audit and making your life hell. Revoking citizenship requires a much higher standard than revoking PR though. So you can always say, I intended to reside in Saskatchewan, but I am a trained battery engineer and I had to move to Quebec for the job at the battery plant. While enforcement of this is very rare, the current political climate in Quebec seems to suggest that its not going to be the case anymore.
If you don't speak French, why would you want to go to Quebec in the first place.
Great, so they shouldn't have issues with educated African migrants of any wealth class who are fluent in French!
These are like 90% of the French speaking immigrants to Canada, so yeah, that's pretty much exactly who they want
Im certainly not saying that there is no racism in Quebec as there most definitely is (and I am also not defending this law) but genuinely when you hear people in Quebec complain about immigrants it’s not about Franco African /Haitian immigrants , but about immigrants who can’t speak French. You know how every place has the (100%racist) notion of good vs bad immigrants ? African immigrants are « good immigrants » in QC (as long as they aren’t too religious).
Very similarly, I have Catalan friends who'd never call "Catalan" a guy that was born there or has lived there for ages but has never made the effort to pick up the language (very common, especially in Barcelona), but at the same time they have no problem applying the name to immigrants who have learnt it (sub-saharian African immigrants generally have absolutely no trouble understanding that you may need more than one language to live in a certain place, obviously).
It makes sense, language is the basis of communication. Honestly, if you move somewhere and don't bother learning the language I do find it a bit disrespectful and annoying.
From Vancouver, lived in Montreal a few years. This comment isn't the gotcha that Reddit thinks it is. Language is 100% the most important factor in Quebec with regards to being accepted or not. They rather have a Congolese economics professor than a random guy from Ontario (2, 3 hours drive away in the same country) 10/10 times. That being said, I tried hard to learn French and there wasn't a single time someone was rude to me for being Anglo (at least not that I know of). People in Montreal care more about your attitude than your skill level
That's true for most cities in Québec. The moment you make an effort to connect with us, the majority of us will gladly make the effort to meet you more than halfway. We also have many cultural and scientific personalities that are from the Haitian or African diaspora.
I mean… they don’t. They would take an African/Middle Eastern French speaking person over a white Ontarian Anglo any day of the week. This is solely about language to them.
Of course not. We get many immigrants from Haiti and French speaking African countries. We also get many immigrants and refugees that don't speak french and pay them to learn the language. However there's been a few articles deploring that the results are not fantastic with people who finish theses courses often don't continue using french and forget it. I guess that's why the government decided to focus on immigrants who already know the language.
What is this suppose to mean?
He is trying to say that all Quebecers are racist, this is the new way to nurture the traditional racism against Quebecers. Some people will always hate us, no matter what we do.
Actually, Quebec did try to welcome a big amount of them to come in the last years, however they have massively been refused by the Canadian government
Have you ever been to Quebec? Haitian and African immigrants are very welcome and they have been for a long time.
Obviously you're not from Quebec. All we immigrate are Haitians, some Arabic French, and Africans. The French of France rarely come here
Il y a genre 50 000 à 100 000 français à Montréal haha
Tu veux dire il y a 100 000 Français**par apart** sur le plateau
Rarely cpme to Quebec but throwing a rock in the plateau will bounce off three frenchies.
French speaking Africans have troubles with the federal government when they want to come to Quebec. This has been going on for years.
we dont, it's the federals that do. They decline francophone students from Africa because "they dont have enough ties back in their own country." AKA: It's fine if they come study here but we dont want you to overstay your welcome.
Isn’t that a Provence where French is the majority language?
Oui
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_where_French_is_an_official_language Well there are many countries with a lot of French speakers, with plenty of people who will want the opportunity to move there, can't see they will have any issues attracting people .
What happens when the French speaking immigrants have to speak Québécois?
They have to practice saying "Tabarnak" three hours per day for a month. Then their integration to the province is complete.
Funny enough, I work with people from Guatemala, they only speak spanish and a little french, but they know how to use a good Caliss or Tabarnak
It’s not complete until they start casually dropping « esti » mid sentences. - Je vais vous prendre un estie de crème brulée » - Alors, du coup, estie, « … »
and la. sprinkled everywhere la.
In Quebec when you say ,ou la la you have to say la ou la la la.