Parlez-vous Francais?

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Yes your spoken french is alittle different than my grandmother's. I think also, there are different dialects of french in Canada which might make it harder to understand. Am I right on this Frenchie?
 
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Frenchie

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Yup. Much more variety than english...

When I was 19, I spent a summer tree-planting (reforesting); the crew was from all over Quebec, and we used to laugh at each other's accents a lot... but we could understand each other, mostly.

The exception was the guys from the Lac-St-Jean region, I never could understand a word they said when they were speaking amongst themselves.

The other truly "different" dialect is Acadian french - spoken in the maritime provinces. It's a weird mix of perfectly preserved 16th century forms (there's no singular/plural forms for the verbs), and a whole lot of english loan words & sentence structure... "J'allions back" instead of "je retourne". Cajuns from Louisiana understand it, though.
 

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What about Newfoundland? I think they have their own also, don't they?
 

Frenchie

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...but my geography teacher would be completely disappointed. You meant StPierre et Miquelon, didn't you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Pierre_et_Miquelon

Not part of Canada, still part of France... they were never isolated from France the way we were for 300 years, so they pretty much speak french French.


...I find it strange that we have this Academie Francaise that determines what is & isn't "correct" French; instead of letting it evolve naturally like other languages. You'd think it would make the language less varied? But it does the opposite. Everybody winds up speaking 2 dialects: the French they learn in school, and whatever the local version is.

I had this friend from Paris, a few years back. We could understand each other fine (both speaking the French we learned in school); but if he was on the phone to his friends in Paris, or I was on the phone to Montreal... forget it. We could hardly even follow what the topic was.
 

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I'm confused. Is there a post missing from this thread or something?

- how come seobeglobal's handle looks so different from everyone else's? Can't click on it to get profile, previous posts, or anything...

- hahaha, how come who knows french? Huh?

- Cookie: horoscopes?
 

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ha ha ha ha, you are sane Frenchie. Yes, a post has been deleted, lol. Makes me look alittle foolish, too. :) The post had a tag on it about horoscopes.
 

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Did you read today where France gets a 5 week vacation and works only 35 hours a week? :)
 

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No, but there isn't much news, there. Europe's had short work weeks & long holidays for decades - they decided they'd rather have more people working less, than less people working more - partly because their unions are a lot stronger than ours.

Even in Canada, 4-6 weeks a year is pretty standard. Nobody takes as few holidays as Americans.
 

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Biensure que je sais la langue francaise. Quand j’etais a l’ecole je faisait francais, je me rappelle un peu.
 
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