My friends who learned French had similar struggles in France versus elsewhere.
When visiting France I had one experience where I felt like I was a zoo animal, like that. Walking around a public site a woman got very excited like she found the answer to a tricky riddle and yelled "Québec, Québec" at me. She was so sweet though and it was harmless so I didn't take it even the slightest bit poorly.
Most people in France knew better than to make a stink about it. I talked with plenty of people and occaisionally it popped up but more as a passing curiosity, I didn't feel like it wasn't outside of natural curiosity. Things like "pas pire" raised eyebrows "stationner mon char" rather than "parker mon auto" sometimes took people a minute to comprehend.
All to say, there are some rude people everywhere, but my own experience in French with a Québec accent was great.
He's Acadian French for those non-Canadian or non-French reading this that's different than Quebec, how? I'm not sure.
But the guy told me the people the people there were amazed by his accent. Apparently it wasn't like Quebec accent it was more old French but I guess not the slang of Quebec French? Not sure but I guess it was a hoot and he had fun.
From what I know Acadians originally emigrated from northern France area. So maybe Acadian French is closer match to Parisian standard French than Quebec French?
My favourite anecdotal example (though I couldn't find any proof looking it up) is that "to kill" it's "killer".
The Québécois were about 100 years later, so their French is like the 19th century plus developments.
African French dates from the colonial period, so it sounds more like early 20th century French plus developments.
That’s how I understand it to be.
Of course they are aware of the accents, but you can still have fun and talk to each other. Then, of course, if the French mock them behind their back when they are alone, I will probably never know.
- Mocking Quebec accent is not 'superiority': it just happens that your accent kind of sounds funny for some reason that I have no other reality behind, probably some specific sounds bites make it 'funny'. I've always thought it's in good fun and certainly not disparaging. All french people I've met including myself have stellar opinion of people from quebec (even more than of their fellow french).
- I've never ever head someone making fun of another non-native french speaker accent. In fact we're happy when someone likes french
Sorry you feel that way.
The English equivalent would be something like a deep Northern England accent which sounds goofy to my N. American ears.
French here, with an anecdote:
More than 20 years ago I visited Montréal. It was difficult to participate in discussions with french-speaking people because I could understand some participants very well and others not at all, just because there are different degrees of accent. In constrast, it was easy to understand any english-speaking person.
> There are so many YouTube videos of French people mocking us. It's not curiosity but a distinctly French superiority complex.
Nope, we also mock our own accents. There are many of them across our country. It's just for fun, we still like you.
It's not just the accent, it's the choice of words, the enunciation, everything.
Not a different language but a dialect-group within high german called Alemanic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German
Also interesting:
Now try telling Dutch people that they don’t actually have their own language and are all speaking Low Country German and see what happens…
Most distinctions between dialects and languages are socio-political and not linguistic.
There is a similar continuum between North/Low German and Frisian. Yet you cross a border and just like Dutch/Franconian it’s no longer a dialect but a different language.
Except Hungary, Finnland and Estland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages
>>The High German languages (German: hochdeutsche Mundarten, i.e. High German dialects), or simply High German (Hochdeutsch) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German"
The distinction between a language and a dialect is not clear at all. e.g. while it wouldn’t be correct to call Swiss-German a dialect of standard German both languages are German Dialects.
> Quebec French is at most a dialect of French.
Yes it’s a dialect of French, it’s not a dialect or accent of standard French.
There is nothing special about Standard German or French besides the fact that they are dialects which have outcompeted all other dialects of those languages to a less or more successful degree due to entirely political and economical reasons.
I had to study and pass my exams in standard French with a Parisian institution. This is made obligatory by the Quebec government for immigrants if they want to stay and apply for a PR.
Anyways, the insight I want to share here is that Quebecois French is much closer to Austrian or Bavarian German vs Standard German.
Both share a similar trajectory with their standard counterparts, diverging over centuries but in the end remaining more comprehensible compared to Swiss German.
Quebecois, evolving since the 17th century from settlers' French and Austrian/Bavarian dialects, shaped since the 6th century's “Lautverschiebung” are also old but less divergent branches.
Swiss German, though also rooted in the High German shift, has veered more distinctly. Watching Swiss TV (SRF), I only get about 80-90% due to that deeper linguistic forking.
Standard Quebecois has not been much harder for me to understand than standard French. Like in Austrian German there are certain “quirks” but again much easier to parse from context than with Swiss German.
Of course there might be the case where a heavy local dialect becomes even harder to understand than say Swiss German even. German language learners could test their comprehension of Swiss vs going to a pub in Wien Ottakring or into a deep recess of the Tyrollean alps. I’d guess some encounters would be minimum as hard to understand if not harder. Same for rural Quebec etc. Then again the underlying grammar even can be really different in fundamental ways with Swiss German which is not the case for Quebecois.
TL;DR standard Quebecois is easier to understand and much closer to standard French than standard Swiss German is to standard German.
IMHO: France has just been very steadfast about language standardization up to this day and across its zone of influence. E.g. there even is obligatory standard French language learning in Quebec for immigrants and possibly public schools as well. So for some people from France they often don’t have developed the “muscle” for even slight derivations. In addition not much proficiency in “foreign languages” in general especially for older generations.
Agreed.
In addition, I feel like Americans give out more of an "A for effort" vibe in response, whereas Europeans are more like "nice try n00b".
They where having fun of the southern marseillais accent, but also of the northern ch'ti accent, they also had extra fun of African or Quebec's accent indeed.
I, as a child, did imitated those accent for fun. I now regret it, bit it's still in the roots of a lot of people.
I sometimes fear that racism is predominant in french society.
Clarification in case it's needed: I absolutely agree that making fun of someone's accent when they come to you is a best inappropriate, and more often than not utter bigotry. But I'm concerned about criminalising humour. This might not be a widely-shared idea (especially in the anglosaxon world?), but I even believe that racist jokes can be tools against racism, decredibilising racism and not actually oppressing the minority in question. Of course, again, context matters.
(clarification #2: I don't believe "cancel culture" is a thing, if you do racist jokes in the public sphere and someone calls you out for saying something racist, I don't believe anyone has been "cancelled")