I'm a Montreal-born-and-raised french-speaker and I'll have to disagree with you on a small part: French speakers from France do use a lot of english expressions and words. For instance, in Quebec if we're talking about ''chewing gum'', we'll use the words ''gomme à mâcher''. In France, they say ''chewing gum''. Same goes for many words such as Baby-sitter (gardienne in Quebec), parking (stationnement in Quebec), etc. The most logical explanation to me would be the fact that Quebec has had to fight to preserve its language and so it would make sense that Quebecer would have found words in french to describe things around them instead of borrowing from their english-speaking neighbours (a matter of pride in a way).
The main difference between the Quebec use of english-ed french and France-french use of english-ed expressions is that in Quebec, our syntax will be most affected whilst in France, it's a vocabulary thing. Because Quebecers always have been surrounded by english-speakers, it's the way we formulate our sentences, some expressions, etc. that will be influenced in their form by English, but rarely is our vocabulary ''english''.
I will however point out that the way the people spoke in the film is (as far as I'm concerned) a very MONTREAL way of speaking. More so than in the rest of Quebec (apart from the towns close to the Ontario border for example), Montrealers grow up surrounded and literally bathing in an english-speaking community with which we interact a lot. A great majority of Montrealers are fluent in English and French and therefore, we tend to take the best of both languages if I may say so :) we mix up english words in french sentences and use french words (even English-speakers) to describes certain things. For instance, no Montreal says a Drugstore: we say a Dep or Depanneur (from the french word Dépanneur), nor do we say the Subway. It's the Metro whether you're french or english :P etc. And therefore, one shouldn't be surprised to hear a french speaker say: Mon dieu, j'ai *beep* faim. lollll :P (I actually remember this time when I was in Italy, I was talking with my friend in Franglais like we always do and Americans actually asked us what language we were speaking because they didn't have a clue (they recognized english but had no idea what the rest was :P)!!
So yes, hope this helped a bit decipher our strange way with speech! If you get a chance, come and visit Montreal :)!!
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cetaylor3
12 years ago
I've lived in France and spent a little time in Montreal, and I share your view of the relative degree of English used in France vs. Montreal.
However, as one curious (and imho humorous) exception, I recall living in Maine in 1978 -- which was, i think it's safe to say, the height of a Separatist era of Quebecois consciousness? -- and reading a story there about a town in Quebec (not Montreal, a smaller town) which was honoring the Separatist spirit by having the town council review all their bilingual signs and ruling for only 1 language instead of 2 and the general guideline was to remove the English and only keep the French. Which went unsurprisingly until they got to choosing between "Stop" and "Arret" on the stop signs. They decided the "Stop" was the more French word to use and they dropped the "Arret" from the signs. (In that one instance, they were adopting something of a French-in-France spirit since "Stop" is widely used in France.)
A droll anecdote that has stayed with me ever since ...
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myosis
9 years ago
I grew up in the 80's where these signs were mostly bilingual ("Arrêt Stop").
All signs have been changed to all French over 20 years ago.
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