The mirrors and fenders of cars are gleaming from the sunlight in the first row of a parking lot. Your car has made it to the beach in Miami but all the parking spaces seem to be occupied. One quick look at the license plates and your frustration has found its scapegoat, dozens of cars from Quebec, Canada. These Quebecers in mini-vans flock to Florida for the warmth all while speaking in their strong native accents. And overhearing them while sipping a lemonade on the beach is not the same as on the French Riviera. Or is it? Historical linguistics, the study of a language’s development and origins, can help determine if Quebec French is a langue d’oc or a langue d’oïl language. The first language is originally from the Occitan region, extending from where the Riviera is located all the way to the Pyrenees in the South. The second is a collection of dialects from Western France. Since this last region laid within the original boundaries of France, modern French more closely resembles langue d’oïl where “oïl” is a reference to how they say “yes”. The Occitan territories were conquered during the late Middle Ages and their assimilation into modern French culture was more difficult.
Returning to Canada, Quebec French seems, at first glance, the descendent of langue d’oïl. The settlers of North America were from the same stock as the sailors and explorers, suggesting they too originated in Western France where ships left port. These regions or localities include Brittany, Normandy, Anjou, Poitou, Charentes, Saintes, and Picardie, and the languages include Breton, Gallo, Normand, Angevin, Poitevin, Charentais, Saintongeais, and Picard, the last six classifiable as langue d’oïl languages. However, there was also significant Parisian influence, especially through the King’s Daughters program which sent 842 young women to marry settlers in New France, 314 of which were from Ile-de-France (greater Paris). This points to a medley of French, what linguists call a koiné, instead of merely langue d’oïl.
In terms of vocabulary, many words in Canadian French are related to fishing, hunting, or agricultural due to the occupations of the first settlers and their need to fill lexical gaps, a result of their poor education in France. These archaic words offer the best phonetic clues relating Quebec French and Metropolitan regions because more modern lexicon would have been heavily influenced by English and isolated language development. One example, among many, is a random horse-breeding term from Western France, bottiau, recorded to have been pronounced in Quebec as [bɔto], closer to Parisian French than Poitevin. Meanwhile, Academic Pierre de Coubertin states that [pum] (pomme) for apple in 19th century Quebecois is directly related to country peasant speech from Normandy. Yves-Charles Morin refutes this stating that [pum] had disappeared from Norman long beforehand and was actually a characteristic of southern langue d’oil. Not only is langue d’oc closer than previously thought on the map, words are difficult to assign to particular regions.
Another reference to Poitevin, the most influential of Western French dialects, is important. There is historical use of Occitan language in Poitevin with linguist Pierre Bonnaud going so far as to say “Someone that chose to carefully pick and choose his words from poitevin-saintongeais could practically be speaking in Occitan with langue d’oil phonetics” (translated). Nous in French is nous-autres in the Poitevin dialect similar to the Spanish nosotros which demonstrates the southern roots and connections to Occitan (nosautres in Languedocien). The term Nous autres also has its own webpage on the Office quebecois de la langue francaise site which gives examples of how to employ Quebec French words. Another example from Quebec is how they say “dinner” (souper). While this was indeed the Old French designating an evening meal before the change to disner in 1747, Poitevin retained soupàe similar to Quebec’s version and similar to sopar in Occitan, the same word that is believed to have turned into souper in French. Not many words in French are derived from –ar verb endings (bander, emparer, tabasser are but they are also of Occitan origin). The occasional pronunciation of the “t” when it is the final letter of word, especially lit (“bed” in English) reminds us of the Italian “letto” which did not influence Occitan but remains closer to this last language than langue d’oil, i.e. gatto (Italian for “cat”), gata (Occitan for “cat”). (Also nuit = notte).
What is being made apparent is that Quebec French was also influenced by langue d’oc from the South and thus the Riviera (before it was touristy). In fact, grouped with the Parisian influence and obvious ties to Western dialects, Quebec French was actually a good representation of French as a whole in the 17th & 18th centuries when colonization occurred. The affrication of the dentals, the diphthongization of certain vowels, and other phonological differences between Modern French and Quebec French do not point to any specific region being the source of so much peculiarity. Instead, historical linguistics show that the evolution of both languages was different through geographic isolation. Floridians better watch out, their standard American accents may be influenced by such massive amounts of tourists exhibiting “Je me souviens” license plates!
1. Bonnaud, Pierre. 1972. Correspondances phonétiques, morphologiques et lexicales entre le poitevin-saintongeais et l’occitan. Bulletin de la SEFCO: Sept. 1972.
2. Caron-Leclerc, Marie-France. Les témoignages anciens sur le français du Canada (du XVIIe siècle au XIXe siècle. Québec: Université Laval. 1998.
3. Dulong, Gaston and Gaston Bergeron. Le parler populaire du Québec et de ses régions voisines. Atlas linguistique de l’est du Canada. Québec: Gouvernement du Québec. 1980.
4. Lanctot, Gustave. Filles de Joie ou Filles du Roi. Montréal: Chanticler. 1952.
5. Morin, Yves–Charles. Les premiers immigrants et la prononciation du français au Québec Revue québécoise de linguistique. Vol. 31, no. 1. 2002.
6. Wittman, Henri. Grammaire compare des vareties colonials du francais populaire de Paris du 17ieme siècle et origines du francais Quebecois. Revue Quebecoise de linguistique T&A 12. 1995.
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