Countless times someone tell me: "I love your accent", before adding: "it's so folkloric! " Yes, a formula reminiscent of a very offbeat OSS 117 incapable of realizing the stupidity of its purpose. Other times they add something even more derogatory: "17th century French is spoken in Quebec".
As Anne-Marie Beaudouin- Bégin points out, this idea isn't only false, but also carries a deeply presumptuous value judgment that Quebec French is just a linguistic variation like any other that remain frozen in the New France era, and which would not have evolved. Quebec French would be like a relic from a distant past. But it's false.
The French spoken here has evolved. It was built throughout cultural, political, social and religious history that gives its color to our accent. To understand how it was formed, we can't separate it from the history of French developed here.
We must focus on this to understand how the accent could be formed. Let's go! Today in History will tell us: where does the Quebec accent comes from?
Where it come from? Subtitles: salvadorarmandoul@gmail. com A question is necessary before diving into the past: what is an accent?
Well, for Le Petit Robert it'd be "a set of phonetic characters considered as a deviation from the norm (in a given language)". By "norm" we could refer to general use, or for others, the frameworks settled by the French Academy. Regarding specifically to the Quebec accent, there are some typical or specific pronunciations, but these own traits must also be related to traits that existed or exist elsewhere in the French-speaking world.
The linguist Wim Remysen identifies some of its characteristics. Firstly, sibilation; i. e.
, the fact of pronouncing the occlusive consonants (T and D) with a hissing sound (ts and dz), for example in "tu dis" (you say) pronounced "tsu dzis". Secondly, relaxation of the vowels i, u, o; as in "vite", "jupe", "poule", which gives "vét", "jeupe" and "pooule". Thirdly, diphtongation that transforms "neige" (snow) into "naège" or "pâte" into "pawte".
Finally, the importance given to the nasal vowel <<an>> close to <<in>>. That said, the question remains: how did the Quebec accent develop? How?
From New France to the 21st century, French has become the avatar par excellence of collective identity, which doesn't mean that its history has been glorious or sung as the guardian of a minority culture in a predominantly English-speaking Canada. One of the elements that distinguishes Quebec French along with the vocabulary, is the accent. There we must correct: there's not just one but many Quebec accents, as there's not one but French accents.
From Gaspésie to Montreal via Saguenay or Quebec, as well as from Paris to Marseille via Lille, Lisieux, or Brest, the accents aren't the same and history allows us to understand how they anchored themselves in a place and were encouraged or discredited. But the question still remains: why do we talk like this in Quebec? Why the Quebec accent?
It was the French colonization of the territory that determined the type of French spoken in the Saint-Laurent Valley at the time of New France. To explain the accent and language developed in Quebec, some have proposed the notion of "dialect clash". It's based on the idea that France at late 16th and 17th centuries didn't have linguistic unity.
The kingdom was then strongly dialectized. In short, regional dialects were more important than the French language. It should be noted that dialects historically precede French.
In fact, French was initially one dialect among others that gradually imposed itself to detriment of the others. In other words, a large part of the French population then simply didn't speak French but rather a dialect more or less distant from French. Based on that, the idea is raised that it'd be from the clash of these different dialects or "patois", as Norman, Picard or Poitevin, that Quebec French would have emerged.
Few people today support this theory. Why? Because this idea of clash is incompatible with the reality of the first French settlers.
We must remember that before 1663 the population of the colony that would become Canada had only 2,500 inhabitants; while in 1681 it reached 10,000; and in 1700 it reached 15,000. These settlers, as we know, came mainly from French cities where regional French was spoken, and not patois. Add to this the social and professional status of the newcomers, which explains why most of them spoke French rather than patois (or were bilingual, obviously).
And since French was the common language, it logically prevailed even if some immigrants were able to speak or understand a dialect. Certainly, many of these settlers came from the countryside, but these people before embarking for America, sometimes had to stay several months in port cities like Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Rouen, or Dieppe, which were very "Frenchized" places. Thus, affirms that the inhabitants of New France, upon their arrival to the territory, took with them their "patois" is an error to the extent that the vast majority spoke French or were in sustained contact with places where French was the majority.
There were a few settlers who spoke their metropolitan dialect such as Norman, Burgundian, Lorrain or Poitevin, but their knowledge of French was great enough to allow them to integrate into the dominant language, spoken by the majority, especially by the French authorities, as the historian Marcel Trudel has repeatedly stressed. This reality is even more evident in term of selection criteria for candidates to emigrate to Canada: knowledge of French was a requirement. The language developed in New France then came directly from that spoken in the metropolis, more specifically in Paris.
Bacqueville de la Potherie, comptroller general of the Canadian Navy, wrote in 1702: "Here we speak perfectly well, without a bad accent. Although there's a mixture of almost all the provinces of France, we can't distinguish the speech of any in the Canadians". The French spoken in France and that of the New France had far more similarities than differences between late 17th century and the first half of the 18th century.
Since the first Canadians were French, the use of French spread and it must have been some time before the differences appeared. However, due to the regional origin of many settlers, certain characteristic practices established very quickly, especially regarding lexicon. The linguist Claude Poirier highlights, in both cases, pronunciations attested in documents of the French regime aren't foreign to the current Quebec accent, such as the maintenance of the sound linked to the final T in words like "bouT", "foueT", "liT", "piqueT", or "poT".
The instability of the "T" at the end of words is well attested in the history of French. The T was lost in the 16th century, but tended to reappear under the influence of spelling. In the end, established usage differs on both sides of the Atlantic: "bouT" and "liT" in Quebec, while "buT" and "aoûT" are more common in France than here.
Very early on, perhaps even from the beginning, there was a form of linguistic unity in New France. Initially, what we call "the king's French", that of the administration, civil servants, and army officers, will be established and maintained not only in Quebec, where the administrative headquarters is located, but also in the St. Lawrence Valley.
Let's remember that the governor and his entourage left Quebec in January to settle in Montreal, with relief in Neuville, Trois Rivières and Bertier, which made it possible to further expand the field of action of the King's language. Unification is also facilitated by the language predominantly French spoken by the population concentrated in the Saint-Laurent Valley, between Quebec and Montreal. This linguistic unity in the colony also promotes social and religious cohesion among the inhabitants.
The linguistic unity of the colony will also be reinforced with the arrival of the Carignan-Salières Regiment. Almost 1500 men arrived at the colony to protect the place against Iroquois threats. By the way, I made a video about it.
The colony then had barely 3000 inhabitants, which shows the importance of the military detachment. It's estimated that in 1667, 400 of these soldiers stayed and settled in the colony. Of this number, 283 will marry and have offspring, several of them with Daughters of the King.
They'll also play an important role in linguistic unity, since it's argued that these 764 young girls would have had a total of 4,500 children. According to certain specialists, it's estimated that 80% of them spoke French and almost half were Parisians, who contributed to spreading the influence of the king's French. It's said that today more than a million Canadians are descended from these girls sent to "populate the colony" and from the soldiers who came to defend New France.
However, it'd be wrong to think that the linguistic unity that was developing was accompanied by a "speech unity". Large studies dating back to the 20th century, such as those of the French-Speaking Society of Canada and those of the Linguistic Atlas of Eastern Canada, allow us to make extrapolations and determine that three large areas can be distinguished at the time of New France. Initially, the speaking of the West and the South-West, around Montreal, with Trois Rivières as transition point, an area where we feel the influence of the linguistic forms of western France.
Secondly, the Eastern speech, around Quebec city, which received proportionally more settlers from central France, particularly from Ile-de-France, which includes Paris. It was in this area where the King's French established most quickly. Finally, the last area, of Akkadian speaking, which includes the current Maritime Provinces, as well as Gaspésie.
Several settlers arrived here from western France, but also from the north-east of Poitou, which today is the department of Vienne. Here we see in part the origin of certain accents. However, we still have to go further into history to understand how the Quebec accent was distinguished from the France one and other French-speaking regions.
And as one suspects, it is not because it remained frozen in the 17th and 18th centuries! No! The Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, but even more so the Treaty of Paris, 4 years later, brought British influence into New France.
From there with the Royal Proclamation, the English king decrees the laws and borders to confirm British predominance over the territory. New France becomes the Province of Quebec, and for the new leaders English must dominate. But without considering the obstinacy of the territory's predominantly French-speaking population.
The British administration introduced the Test Oath in 1763, obliging civil servants wanting to work in the administration to recognize the authority of the British sovereign, but also to deny the Catholic religion. They want to ensure that Canadians adopt not only the language but also the British culture and religion. Ultimately, with the Quebec Act of 1774, Catholics will no longer have to abjure their faith to obtain an official position, while the Catholic Church will recover part of its past rights.
Another determining element for the transformation of the language in Quebec was the creation of the first newspaper printed in the colony: la Gazette de Québec / The Quebec Gazette in 1764, which was necessarily bilingual. The daily presence of English, first in commerce and in political life, will gradually transform the French we speak here. In addition to being isolated from the influence of France, we see words and formulas taken directly from Shakespeare's language intervene in the vocabulary.
Let's take the example of barley (l'orge) that the inhabitants grew on their land. If in the fields it kept this name, in other places they called it "soupe au barley" because it's the English word printed on the bags to package the product. There are also anglicisms adapted to French phonetics: saucepan is written "sauce-panne" and tea-pot becomes "thépot".
In 1791, the Constitutional Act adopted by the British Parliament granted what is now called Lower Canada a House of Assembly, and in December 1792 debate on the linguistic question began. Deputy John Richardson proposed that only English have force of law. But after 3 days of debate, the French-speaking deputies unanimously won.
The French will prevail. In 1793, London finally decided that English remained as the only official language of Parliament, French was recognized just as a "language of translation". Without legal value, French will continue to be used in debates or in the drafting of laws (as a translated language), at least until the adoption of the Act of Union in 1840, which will make English the only official language of the country.
At that time, a new liberal bourgeoisie was born with the firm intention of making itself heard and that acquires increasing social recognition. The French language intends to maintain itself. We can also read in the Quebec Mercury: "This province is already too much a french province for an english colony".
However, the laws don't completely explain why the Quebec accent is so different from that of France. It's precisely France where we must go to understand how the language will evolve. If the Province of Quebec, which then becomes Lower Canada, is strongly influenced by English, metropolitan France isn't stranger to this phenomenon.
In the 1750s, France was gradually affected by Anglomania: this thoughtless love, acording to some, that the French have for England. They play Whist, they drink tea, they go shopping, they wear a "redingote" (Frenchification of riding coat), they call themselves "gentleman" rather than "gentilhomme". In short, England enters France through the door of good taste and novelty.
Everything English attracts and moves. The French Revolution constitutes an era of great political, social, cultural, religious and linguistic transformation. In fact, in 1790 it was intended to offer citizens a common language extended to the entire territory.
Abbot Grégoire wrote, based solely on 49 people who responded to his questionnaire, "a report on the needs and means to put an end to the dialect and universalize the use of French. All of them invested with the will to give the people "the unique and invariable use of the language of freedom". Yes, all that based on 49 people!
It's the language and its pronunciation one of the higher categories that must now prevail. Thus, the pronunciation [wè] becomes [wa]. The pronunciation of "bouèsson" (fish) is thus changed to "boisson", and from "crouère" (believe) to "croire".
Let's add that the pronunciation [è] changes to [wa]: "dret" becomes "drwat" (right), and the pronunciation [é] changes to [è]: thus it goes from pére à père (father), mére à mère (mother), frére à frère (brother). Furthermore, there are profound difference between France and French Canada on how to say words, but also on whether or not to kept certain words. The revolution in France is therefore also a phonetic revolution.
So, if until then they said: "sus la table", "note maison", "Sarge" and "fret", as is still done in certain places in Quebec, after the French Revolution they start to say "sur la table", "notre maison", "Serge" and "froid". The fracture in the accent between France and Quebec widens even more: in the 19th century French defends the process of grammatization, and above all, linguistic purism marked by the publication of numerous works that become bestsellers, such as the Manuel des amateurs de la langue française (1813-1814) or the Annales de Grammaire (1818). In Lower Canada, the French compared to that spoken and standardized in France, has very singular characteristics quite original.
The pronunciation made here is then associated in France with popular use. Careful usage is far away from the Quebec's pronunciation. In the 19th century the idea that French had degenerated began to take hold.
Worse still: that it had been perverted by Anglicisms and barbarisms. Michel Bibau writes a column in L'Aurore entitled "Don't say, but say", which aim to lay the bases to prevent French from going astray. This didn't prevent Jacques Viget in 1810, in his Canadian Neology or Dictionary of Words Created in Canada and Now in Vogue, from noting the different linguistic influences: English, of course, but also indigenous.
However, the tendency to criticism is very strong. English colors distorts more and more the language, some say. Following the Patriot Rebellion in 1837 and 1838, Lord Durham was sent to Canada to investigate the riots and try to find solutions.
In 1839, Durham submits his report, which will lead to the Act of Union in 1840. For him, the French Canadians form "an old and backward society, a people without history and without culture who must be assimilated". Durham recommended that the British government quickly bring Englishmen to the province and that the government be entrusted to "a decidedly English assembly".
The desire to purely and simply assimilate the French Canadians is clearly established, especially since many English speakers consider the French spoken here to be nothing more than a vulgar French Canadian Patois. In his opinion, as it's not a real French, assimilation will be easier. For some, it's necessary to return to French speaking in France, be inspired by it and embrace it.
One who will punish and correct the language here is Thomas Maguire, pronounced "magwèr," like Quebec street. Maguire was born in Philadelphia and learned French from French people in France while becoming a Catholic priest. He eventually settled in Quebec and intended to purge the language of what he considered barbarisms.
In 1841, Maguire published his Manual of the most common difficulties of French, which is an attack against Canadian French. The priest denounces vicious expressions, that's, all those not found in French dictionaries. Moreover, Maguire aims to promote "a movement for careful pronunciation in public discourse".
Let's also quote Pierre Joseph Olivier Chauveau, who about ten years before becoming the first Prime Minister of Quebec in 1867, wrote: "the literate class [. . .
] doesn't always pay as much attention to pronunciation as it should". In 1896, Raoul Rinfret in his Dictionary of our faults against French language, wrote: "In general, we pronounce many words grave where it's soft. We mistakenly give the same sound to "phare" and "fort", "tard" and "tort", "vieillard" and "vieil or".
This is one of our main pronunciation faults. For Joseph Dumet, in 1905, the situation was even harsher. According to him, "it's often more pleasant to listen to an ignorant Frenchman than an educated Canadian".
We can really speak here about a linguistic rectification campaign carried out that takes several forms, starting with the publication in newspapers of a collection of language errors and corrective linguistic chronicles. Moreover, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there will be more and more manuals dedicated to diction. The idea was to return to a purer language, that of France, the only one that can "set the tone" to speak well.
Linguist Claude Poirier sees here the origins of the linguistic complex of Quebecers, what Chantal Bouchard describes as a loss of legitimacy and what Anne-Marie Baudouin Bégin calls "linguistic insecurity". However, from the second half of the 19th century, the Canadian way of speaking was criticized: it became a national defect that must be corrected by all means. Maguire's need, as for many, to "restore" the language and pronunciation is even more fundamental as English speakers consider the poor quality of French as synonymous with lack of culture.
A major gap occurs then. On the one hand, those who want to punish the language to make it resemble the one spoken and written in France; and on the other hand, those who speak the language as it is: that of the French-speaking population formed by the contributions of English but also inherited from New France, which didn't follow the transformation that the language had in France after the French Revolution. We can't fail to name the slayers of Quebec French at the end of the 19th century, notably Jean-Paul Tardivel, who stayed: "Anglicism is the enemy!
" Borrowing from English isn't only a creeping danger that corrupts the language, but it's, to use the words of Joseph Amable Manseau: "a bloodstain that show us where the claws of the British lion have gone, and these claws (who ignores it? ) torture and massacre our language while we wait for them to kill it". The idea of "faith as the guardian of the language, and the language guardian of faith" will soon be promoted.
However, the language and accent of the church are often opposed to those of the flock it claims or intends to defend. It's the beginning of a long history for the maintenance and affirmation of the French spoken in Quebec, and the recognition of its linguistic heritage and its accent that gives a color, but also a life of its own that enriches the French language. As my grandfather Gaston Dulong writes in the abridged Larousse edition of his Linguistic Atlas of Eastern Canada, and I quote him because it makes me very happy: "Our society, formerly predominantly agricultural, has become predominantly urban after the industrialization carried out by the English and then the Americans.
. . This led to a massive invasion of English technical word against which we were powerless for a long time.
However, since the early 1960s a linguistic decolonization began whose beneficial effects are already visible". During the 20th century many people in Quebec wanted to impose careful pronunciation on everyone, especially in classical colleges. To give just a few examples: in 1902, Stanislas Alfred Lortie and Abjutor Rivard founded the Francophone Society in Canada, whose role was to describe the language first and foremost.
At this time, several authors published pronunciation manuals to clearly impose an accent smoother and in line with that on the other side of the Atlantic. Since 1907, at the Lassalle Conservatory founded in Montreal by two French actors (Eugène Lassalle and his wife Louice Larcey, her real name was Louice Landreau), diction classes were taught to the vast majority of actors and actresses, but also to radio and then television announcers. Radio station CKAC opened its doors in 1922, while Radio Canada was launched in 1936, and television began to broadcast in 1952.
Yvonne Audet, who also trained at the Lassalle Conservatoire, opened a theater school on rue Saint-Hubert in Montreal in 1933, where she welcomed children from all backgrounds. Five years later, in 1938, she published Les Monologues du Petit-Monde, whose aim was to offer children a pronunciation manual. In the 1940s there were about forty diction schools with nearly 175 branches throughout the province.
The Radio Canada Company, aware of its role in the public space, wanted to become a reference and will adopt very precise linguistic practices. In 1939, Radio Canada published a guide: Clinique de mots, which established pronunciation rules. We see a so-called "French Canadian radio" spreads and establishing throughout the province.
Its goal is to be international and pursues the ideal of achieve a standard to speak well. Then comes the "Joual", which I talk about in my book: "History will tell us", which will lastingly change the relationship with language in Quebec. This is how, through a long process of transformation, the accent and language have acquired a strong and plural identity on Canadian soil.
It's over for today. I hope you liked it. I'm Laurent Turcot from History will tell us.
And I'll see you next time!
