I'm a Canadian living in the south of France, and after some intensive (and sometimes embarrassing) research, I've discovered major differences between our versions of French.
I grew up surrounded by at least some French, and I’d spent some time visiting Montreal in my early 20s — so I had some idea of what I was getting myself into. But when I landed in France, I realized I had not simply crossed an ocean. I had entered a parallel French universe.
I'll admit now that I was a tad overconfident about my skills. The French classes I took as a kid would help me survive everyday life, I thought. It turns out... not so much.
Of course, Québécois French and France French are the same language. Like... people from Quebec and France can understand each other, even if some may argue the contrary. But even as an anglophone, I’ve noticed some pretty big differences in the slang, vocabulary, and vibe. It’s kind of like comparing Canadian English to British English. They're obviously related, but occasionally confusing and full of moments where you're truly in awe of the other person’s word choice.
So, here are some funny differences between the versions of French that I’ve noticed so far, as a Canadian who recently moved to France.
The swear words
French people swear beautifully. They really do. A well-placed put*in (excuse my French) can communicate anger, surprise, admiration, tragedy, inconvenience, and existential despair all at once.
In France, put*in is basically punctuation. People use it everywhere. You'll hear it in the street, at cafés, on the phone, from teenagers, from adults, or from someone's grandmother. There's also merde, bordel, fait chier, and a whole menu of expressive complaints that make daily frustration sound poetic to my Anglophone ears.
Meanwhile, cussing in Quebec is a whole other thing. Québécois profanities often come from Catholic church language — tabarnak, câlice, osti, crisse (again, excuse my French!). These words are dramatic; a summoning of both rage and weather. Like... a French person saying putain is annoyed. A Québécois person saying tabarnak legit sounds like the sky might split open.
I love this difference because it says so much about history and culture. In France, swearing feels more casual, almost. In Quebec, it carries this epic, rebellious charge.
The slang words
French slang in France feels like someone took regular French, put it in a leather jacket, made it smoke outside a bar, and then flipped half the syllables around for fun.
Let me start off with verlan, which is a type of slang in France where the syllables in a word get reversed. So femme becomes meuf, fou becomes ouf, bizarre becomes zarbi… the list goes on and on. And then, to my astonishment, I discovered there's actually a verlan version of verlan (!!), so femme becomes meuf, which then becomes feumeu.
In Quebec, the slang doesn't work the same way, at least not from what I’ve observed. There are different words, though, like char for car, blonde for girlfriend, chum for boyfriend, and magasiner for shopping, which are not used in France.
In France, meanwhile, people might say bagnole for car, mec for guy, meuf for girl, or bosser for working. It sounds cool, but it's also like everyone was given a secret vocab list that I completely missed because I was too preoccupied with learning how to conjugate être and avoir (again).
So all that to say, to me, France French slang feels more chaotic, but also kind of chic? Like you have to know to know.
Québécois slang feels, well, more straightforward because I'm used to it, perhaps. Both are fun to learn, but can also make you feel like your brain is melting if you're still working on grasping basic vocabulary (hi, that's me, the girl with the melty brain).
The tone of it
This one is kind of harder to explain, but it’s something I felt the moment my feet touched French soil (France French, that is).
France French can sound expressive and animated. People interrupt each other, talk with their hands, stretch vowels, and sigh so dramatically. That being said, I've noticed it can sometimes feel more muddled to my Canadian ear. Like, there isn’t nearly as much space between each word in comparison to Quebec French. Even if it's expressive, it can also sound more monotone, especially in casual conversation. Even questions don't always rise at the end in the way my Canadian brain expects them to.
Québécois French has a whole different sensation. To me, it can sound more relaxed, nasal, and sing-songy. The vowels stretch differently, like they’re longer and wider-sounding, more elastic.
The same words can have different meanings
Something I've found particularly funny is when I use a French word (super confidently) and then realize it means something completely different depending on where you are.
In Quebec, you might hear dépanneur for a corner store. In France, a dépanneur is more like someone who comes to fix your car or your plumbing. So if you tell someone in France you’re going to the dépanneur to buy chips, they’ll look at you like, "tu fais quoi?"
In Quebec, people say souper for dinner. In France, dinner is usually dîner. In Quebec, déjeuner means breakfast, while in France, petit déjeuner is breakfast and déjeuner is lunch.
In Quebec, stationnement means parking. In France, you’re more likely to hear parking. In Quebec, people say fin de semaine for the weekend. In France, it’s often just week-end, said with a French accent so lovely it almost makes you forget English was involved.
The differences aren't huge, but they’re present enough to make me oh-so lightly question my decision to learn French in France after half-learning it in Quebec.
The accent
Before moving to France, I was used to hearing Québécois French. Even if I didn't speak it fluently, the sounds were familiar. It has its own distinct accent and vowel sounds, and once you know it, you can recognize it pretty quickly.
When I arrived in France, I had to retune my ears entirely. In France, the pronunciation can feel smoother or more clipped depending on the region (like, there are huge differences in the sound of a Marseillaise accent in comparison to Parisian French or the French spoken in Lille, but that's not something we have time to fully unpack right now).
Québécois French, by contrast, has sounds that feel more textured. It also tries to preserve older French features that can make it sound (according to my France French-speaking pals) ancient and foreign at times. But even the way people's mouths move is different. In Quebec, the mouth seems more relaxed and open. There's also more movement happening in the jaw.
In France, I've noticed mouths seem more rounded, forward, and controlled. There's a lot of lip pursing, too, with words that feel perched at the front of the mouth. Maybe that's a wild observation, but I've felt I've had to actually train the muscles in my mouth in order to sound better in France French (my Canadian mouth feels a bit lazy in comparison, but maybe that's just me).
The English influence
In Quebec, I've noticed a strong effort to protect French from English, which makes sense when you remember how dominant English is in the rest of Canada. So you'll see French versions of English words you don't really see in France — like courriel for email, magasinage for shopping, fin de semaine for weekend, maïs soufflé for popcorn.
But of course, Quebec isn't perfectly sealed in a French bubble by any means. Because so many Québécois people are bilingual, English slips in all the time (sometimes as full-on Frenglish, with so much switching between the two languages that it can give you whiplash).
In France, meanwhile, people also throw English words into conversation, but not in the same way. They’ll just use the English word like it's a French one. Un mail. Le shopping. Le week-end. Popcorn.
The irony is kind of hilarious to me. Quebec is surrounded by English and resists it, while France is much less surrounded by English and seems much more willing to borrow it when convenient.
This article was originally published on Narcity.com.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.
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