Canadian French: why is it so unusual?
Why is French weird in Canada? What influenced him? ⠀
I finished reading the book by linguist E. Referovskaya. I'll try to answer.
The French began settling in Canada more than 400 years ago, and the settlers didn’t all speak the same way. People came to ‘New France’, as Canada was once called, from many different French provinces, bringing their dialects with them.
Different dialects were mixed with the language of the Indians already living in the new lands, plus they were enriched with unusual words.
For example, the familiar “mocassin” once meant soft Indian shoes. And the very name “Canada” means “village”.
Two centuries later, the divergences with the language of France increased so much that there was no talk of its “purity.”
By the 20th century, as industrialization progressed, more and more French Canadians were moving to cities to work in factories. At the time, these were mostly owned by English Canadians, so workers had to learn English. Arriving immigrants reinforced this trend: knowing English made it easier to find work. This was a kind of forced bilingualism, and a one-sided one at that. English Canadians did not seek to learn French; they simply had no need to.
Plus, other languages also influenced French through intermediaries - immigrants of other nationalities - Spaniards, Portuguese, Brazilians.
This is how, for example, the word for “potato” entered Canadian French as “patate”, from a mixture of an Indigenous language and Spanish — batate. ⠀
Now in Canada there are two official and, by the way, equal languages. But they are unevenly distributed. Quebec remains the most “French” province. In it, 80% of the population of French origin are French Canadians. In other provinces English predominates, but there are also many “former French” there. By the way, they are called differently – “Acadians”.
According to philologists, the French of French Canadians and Acadians is also different. The “neighbors” influenced the second even more.
In general, God forbid, the language mess in Canada is brewed. I outlined only the main points. But even from them it is clear that in such conditions it was impossible for the language to survive in its original form. Despite the isolated life of its carriers. Somehow I immediately wanted to embrace French.
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