User talk:Soulscanner

Québécois is a native word not french... It was created by the Aboriginals-French decedents that created Canada-Quebec… How else would you call this people? Do you think boatloads of French people just came here? LOL thy would have died with-out Native help and the only way to get this country started was to marry into Native culture…That’s why France sent prisoner here to get the population going… I know because my grate grand father was one of them… Even if families did come they married with people from Native backgrounds… Why do you think we won the war of 1812 we all fought together…Natives from south and north, Meti from the west the Quebecois + some French and the English…

Great job...

on the shortening of the History section. Regards, -- Jeff3000 05:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian French

Hi, I noticed your edit of Canadian French. Unfortunately, the word Canadian French is ambiguous. In some cases it means Quebec French (even if spoken in Ontario or western Canada, but not by Acadians), and in other cases it means "the French of Canada", including Acadia. The meaning of Canadian French excluding Acadian French tends to be restricted to linguists, and most of them nevertheless use Quebec French these days. It is likely to cause confusion in some cases to use the ambiguous Canadian French when "Quebec French" is meant. I think Quebec French should be kept in at least some instances , and the article's title should be changed to "French in Canada", which more accrately describes the content of the article. Sentences like this: Canadian French is so dominant in Canada that it is considered one and the same with Acadian and Newfoundland French are extremely difficult to understand, even for me. Joeldl 07:53, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only valid encyclopedic reference given in the article refers to Canadian French, and does not mention Quebec French. It clearly refers to Canadian French as that spoken by French Candians. So do dictionaries of Candian French. They all refer to it as such.

I agree that there should be an umbrella article describing French in Canada, but there should be an article on Canadian French too, with Quebec French redirected to that page. The fabrication of the term Quebec French seems to be mostly politicized.

Quebec French is ambiguous too, as Acadian French is spoken in parts of Quebec too, as is Newfoundland French (in the Lower North Shore). Since this is an article on a specific dialect, it is the linguistic term that should be used. --Soulscanner 08:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that Acadian French is also spoken in Quebec is a minor point that muddies the waters here. Even authors who generally use "Canadian French" to refer to Quebec-style French, (which I will call Quebec French), use Quebec French when not doing so would be confusing. The fact that the phrase "Quebec French" is commonly used is beyond doubt. For example, here are a couple of article titles:

*Dumas, D. 1976. "Quebec French high vowel harmony: the progression of a phonological rule."

*Kemp, W. and M. Yaeger-Dror. 1981. Between [----] and [----]: changes in the realization of -ation in Quebec French. Paper presented at the 10th NWAVE Conference, Philadelphia (phonetic characters omitted).

Joeldl 08:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These are somewhat obscure references. Here are some links to linguistic departments at major Canadian Universities. You will note that all refer to studies of Canadian, and not Quebec, French. This indicates that the overall consensus in Canada is to refer to the dialect of French Canadians as Canadian French.

* Simon Fraser University [1]

* University of Ottawa [2]

So when refering to the dialect of French spoken by French Canadians and most Quebecois, the consensus term is Canadian French.

I do agree though that this page could be renamed "French in Canada"; however, Quebec French should be referred to as "Canadian French". As I said, Quebec French is just as ambiguous since Canadian French, Metropolitain french, Newfoundland French and Acadian French are all spoken in Quebec. Similarly, Franco-Ontarians would not refer to their language as Quebec French.--Soulscanner 09:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, I don't want to get into a discussion about "Canadian French" versus "Quebec French" in general, but it is absolutely wrong to say that the phrase Quebec French is rare. Google scholar gives 2,490 hits for "Canadian French", 1,290 for "Quebec French", 251 for "français canadien", and 549 for "français québécois". In any case, I think that was settled when it was decided to give the linguistic coverage of what you call "Canadian French" in the article Quebec French, as the vast majority of what is there applies to all non-Acadian French in Canada.

What I am saying is that even those who generally write "Canadian French" usually only do it when they are not specifically talking about it in opposition to Acadian French. A phrase like "the dominance of Canadian French in Canada" is extremely confusing. "Quebec French" would be better here and in similar cases. When the distinction is not particularly important, which one you choose is a matter of taste. (Many people make statements about American English, even when they could say the same thing about North American English.) What's more, even those who prefer "Canadian French" will use "Quebec French" occasionally where either would do. For example, Douglas Walker writes this in The Pronunciation of Canadian French: "To an exemplification and a discussion of such regularities in Quebec French phonology, we now cast our attention, following a brief survey of the Standard French background." Here he is not referring to anything more specific than in the title, since he is referring to the following chapters of the book in general. Joeldl 09:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Saying that Franco-Ontarians speak Quebec French is just as confusing. Moreover, no francophone outside Quebec would refer to their mother tongue as such. Again, your google hits clearly show that Canadian French is used five times more than Quebec French. Usually, Quebec French is used when refering to the French spoken in Quebec, and Canadian French when refered to outside of the province.

In that vein, I also think you are misrepresenting the context in your reference [3] (see p. 16). Walker is refuting value judgements passed on french as it is spoken in Quebec in a La Presse article and a TV show (“La langue au Québec”). Clearly he is refering to French as it is spoken in the province.

Indeed, he refers to Quebec French only in this geographical context. I will list the instances:

- p. 14 "But Canadian French is no less immune to the diversification that touches every speech community. Even leaving aside the speech of Western Canada or of the Maritimes, it is evident that the French of Quebec is highly diversified. (Dulong and Bergeron 1980 indicate this in geographical terms, while much of the work dealing with the Sankoff-Cedergren corpus demonstrates the social stratification of Quebec French.)"

- p.109 "In the present context, it is worth nothing that there is not unanimity of opinion regarding the intonational structure of CF. In part, this diversity may be traced to differences of style in the samples studied (formal - popular, written - spoken) or even to regional differences within Canada (Ontario versus Quebec French27)."

- p.135 "joual: a spoken variety of Quebec French, often stigmatized, identified with the lower-classspeech of urban areas (especially Montreal) and characterized by a great extent of phonetic reduction."

- p.141 Deshaies-Lafontaine, D. 1974. A Socio-phonetic Study of a Quebec French Community: Trois-Rivieres. Ph.D. Thesis, U. of London.

So for clarity sake, Walker uses Quebec French to distinquish between how Canadian French is used in different provinces. So you are citing a source that in fact refutes your claim. You will need to find a reference that refers to the French spoken outside Quebec as Quebec French to back up your claim. --Soulscanner 07:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Canadian French" is used twice (not five times) as often in English according to the Google Scholar search I did, and half as often in French, demonstrating that the language of the author strongly influences the choice. There is no consensus one way or the other, as Wikipedia should not reflect the biases of either Anglophone or Francophone authors. There are two issues here:

1. Whether to use "Quebec French" or "Canadian French" in cases where either would be correct. I have argued that there is no consensus here. A Briton might well write, "In American English, the word for "lift" is elevator," instead of "in North American English". Either one is correct, and the choice will be based on matters of emphasis, taste, and perhaps politics. I no more need to demonstrate that "Quebec French" can be used to refer to French as spoken in Alberta than you need to demonstrate that the phrase "American English" can be used to refer to the English spoken there, because the question is what the most relevant territorial unit is. However, because Franco-Albertans are descendants of immigrants from Quebec (contrary to Acadians), it is not strictly speaking incorrect to refer to their French as "Quebec French", though this would of course be absurd if a specific comparison to the French of Quebec were being made.

By the way, I am not misrepresenting waht Walker says. There are occasions when he specifically compares Quebec French to the French of other provinces, and in those cases he correctly refers to "Quebec French". However, the citation I gave was not in that context, because the sentence was intended as a presentation of the rest of the book. Even if the foregoing discussion had related to French in Ottawa, and then he had turned to a presentation of the rest of the book, he would not have referred to the rest of the book as a "discussion of such regularities in Ontario French phonology", because Ontario French is not prototypical of Canadian French the way Quebec French is. Since joual refers to a variety of Montreal French, one could in any case decide to call it "Quebec French" or "Canadian French", and to the extent that the text does not deal solely with joual, there is nothing specific to the French of Quebec to make one think that he means something different than what's in the title of the book. The context was this:

These judgements, moreover, are often more symptomatic of the attitude of the evaluator than of any inherent property of the language in question. In other contexts, however, certain pronouncements about the nature of Canadian French demonstrate a profound ignorance of the inherent properties of language. Such is the case with claims that “Le soi-disant québécois est un langage sans vocabulaire arrêté, sans règles grammaticales, sans syntaxe, sans exigences d’aucune sorte” (“Manifeste contre le joual,” La Presse, Feb. 9, 1973) or “Parler joual c’est parler franglais, c’est parler un français qui ne se tient pas, qui est sans syntaxe, sans phonétique, sans grammaire, sans règles” (Television broadcast “La langue au Québec”). Such statements mistake differences in rules for absence of rules, and ignore the incredibly rich structures, processes and relations that are part and parcel of Quebec French, as they are of any language. In fact, the spontaneous, unmonitored level of speech may be more regular than formal styles, as Labov et al. 1972 note in their major study of sound change in progress: “this vernacular [the linguistic style or register in which the minimum degree of attention is paid to speech] is the most systematic form of language, and… more formal styles produce in most speakers irregular and unpredictable distributions…” (1972:3). To an exemplification and a discussion of such regularities in Quebec French phonology, we now cast our attention, following a brief survey of the Standard French background.

Since there is no consensus on this politically charged issue, it should have been anticipated that changes had to be discussed on the talk page of the article.

2. Whether it is appropriate to compare "Canadian French" and "Acadian French". I maintain that explicitly opposing these varieties under these names is nowadays a marginal usage, and is at best confusing. Here is what Le régionalisme lexical by Francard and Latin says:

Le français du Québec a rayonné en Ontario et dans l'ouest du Canada, de même qu'en Nouvelle-Angleterre. [...] Le français québécois et le français acadien peuvent être regroupés sous l'appellation plus large de français canadien², laquelle englobe aussi le français ontarien et le français de l'Ouest canadien. Ces deux derniers possèdent des traits caractéristiques qui leur sont propres aujourd'hui dans l'ensemble canadien et qui s'expliquent surtout par un phénomène de conservatisme, mais il s'agit de variétés qui sont historiquement des prolongements du français québécois.
(Footnote) ² Il faut noter ici que le terme de français canadien avait autrefois un sens plus restreint, désignant le français du Québec et les variétés qui s'y rattachent directement, d'où l'emploi à cette époque de canadianisme pour parler d'un trait caractéristique du français du Québec. (Emphasis added.) Joeldl 11:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unbelievable. There is no such consensus like the one SoulScanner is literally making up. Now references to Web pages of universities outisde Quebec are less "obscure" and judged the proof of a consensus because SoulScanner decides so. After pretending to be a physicist, are you now a linguist SoulScanner? Do you know what happens to Wikipedia users who claim to be academic authorities when they are not? Do you want me to list all references to Quebec French that exist if one is not so closed-minded as to limit himself to English language material? -- Mathieugp 14:22, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian french is just used more often. You jut don;t like the word "Canadian" for political reasons. Quebec French is generally used in a territorial, and not ethnic French. Linguists use Quebec French as a Variety of Candian French to contrast certain regional usages between other provinces. If you can find an instance of a linguist describing Quebec French being used by, say, franco-Albertans, I would love to see it. --Soulscanner 07:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

English-speaking Quebecer

Soulscanner, on the talk page of that article, you have broken up what I wrote. I know it is slightly more complicated to respond to what I wrote without breaking it up, but ultimately nobody else will be able to read it this way. Could you please reorganize your reply and restore what I wrote? Joeldl 19:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't bother, I've done it. Please don't break up my comments. Joeldl 20:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Soulscanner, you've messed up the order of comments again. I responded to Mathieugp, so I indented once more than he had. You were also responding to him, therefore you needed to respond below my comments and indent them the same as mine. Joeldl 09:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know. These talk pages are being abused by us anyways, They're getting way too long. It's just too unwieldy. Feel free to shift things around if you don't like the format. Just don't delete anything.--Soulscanner 04:40, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't break up other people's comments. That way, nobody will need to move them around. Joeldl 15:40, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Proposed move of Canadian French

Greetings! Would you care to weigh in on this proposed move? There's been a lot of discussion, and I apologise in advance for prolixity. :) Merci! Corticopia 12:08, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]