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Comment by helloooooooo | Hacker News Reader

Couche-Tard owns Circle-K and is looking to buy 7-Eleven. It’s literally the worlds largest dép/convenience store chain

Québec people are so creative with the French language, love it.

Why not use the standard French word for it "droguerie"? Dépanneur or Couche-tard does have a lot more charm to it though, agreed.

Why do you think that “droguerie” is the standard French word for “convenience store”?

"tabac" feels too restrictive, "Épicerie" feels more like selling fruits/vegetables, "commerce de proximité" feels like it could include things like a supermarket too.

I can think of more unsavory/xenophobic/slang terms for it, but droguerie seems more appropriate.

And on the other end for someone who never been to Québec, "Je vais au dépanneur" sounds like "I'm going to the mechanics (to fix my car)". Very creative.

this goes years back, but in the early 2000s I visited Paris and was a bit scandalized to hear the colloquial name for corner store was "l'Arabe" (!)

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabe_du_coin

I rest my case.

Maybe you are right and I should have used "already existing" instead of "standard".

I'm also curious how a convenience store is called in other francophone areas of the world.

Epicerie seems a more popular option among the “traditional” options.

For example https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9panneur says:

    Le mot dépanneur peut désigner :
    […]
    au Québec, une petite épicerie de proximité ou une supérette.
    en Suisse romande, une petite épicerie ouverte les soirs ou les week-ends.
    […]

It points to https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magasin_de_proximit%C3%A9 and https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/d%C3%A9panneur where again one finds mentions to epicerie (and none to droguerie).

Not tabagie?

Wouldn't that be a drugstore? That's not exactly the same thing as a convenience store

God forbid the language evolves independently in two regions separated by an ocean.

I find it funny that in France it’s more common to see anglicisms (parking, le weekend) whereas in Quebec more “francized” terms are more common (stationnement, fin de semaine). And then Francois Legault goes and in a speech praising the work of the French language watchdog says “faut faire la job”. Facepalm!

It’s: faut faire LE job right :)

ark

>I find it funny that in France it’s more common to see anglicisms (parking, le weekend) whereas in Quebec more “francized” terms are more common

Because Quebec culture is largely about demonizing anglophones and trying to push them out of the province.

There’s a small vocal group that thinks like that, yes.

But that’s not the reality nor majority of people who want that.

Not to mention the road stop sign screams ARRÊT

As a Québécois from Montréal, we say Drogue strictly for recreational drugs, so "droguerie" sounds like a word for a crack den.

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