Originally posted by jonb@Jan 2 2005, 12:38 AM
I should point out that the French spoken in Canada is very archaic. Kinda like the Spanish spoken in what used to be the northern half of Mexico.
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dunno how to react at that... is our french in québec archaic in the sense that it ressembles what Louis XIV used to speak? Because that's not how we speak anymore...
For whoever cares at a little bit of history of the french language, here goes...
when france got its colony in north america up and running, france itself was only 20% french-speaking, in the greater paris area. 40% of the population in what is roughly the northern half of france spoke similar dialects so they could understand french but not speak it. the remaining 40% in the southern half of france spoke totally different dialects more similar to catalan and italian and just couldn't understand any french. even at the beginning of the 20th century, some populations in some regions of the south of france still had no functional knowledge of french.
when populating the colony of new france in what is today roughly ontario and québec, colonists came from different regions of france and spoke different dialects. in order to understand each other, the parisian or king's french was adopted as a lingua franca (common language). in an attempt to help populate new france (the british colonies already counted 1 million souls when new france only had about ten thousand), the king sent off a number of orphan girls from the greater paris area to marry with the (mostly male) new french colonists. they of course brought along their own dialect with them, the 'proper' king's french and educated their children to speak that language. almost within few generations, the entire colony spoke the same french as in paris. merchants and other visitors from france coming to new france in the middle of the 18th century marvelled at how just everybody, from mayors and landlords all the way down the the simplest servant all spoke perfect king's french.
later on in the 18th century, france lost new france to england, and at the same time had to break all contact to its former colony. less than 10 years later was the french revolution, where anything having to do with royalty was tossed out the window, including the king's french. instead, the slightly more complex french spoken by writers and philosophers was adopted as official french language. this of course, did not happen in the former new france, who probably only heard of the french revolution many years later, and who were in these regards little or not influenced by the french revolution.
the french spoken in québec and ontario still reflects some features of the original french spoken by Louis XIV, whereas the generally accepted 'real' french from france is actually another type of french. one could argue that we quebeckers are the true inheritors of the french language ;o)
both varieties of french have continued to evolve since the 18th century and aren't quite what they were back then anymore so i don't suppose one can say either one is archaic, which is the affirmation which got me started in the first place. thanks for the inspiration, this felt good ;o)
i'm open to critic!
and i know my english had gone down a bit so i apologize for any 'unenglish' things in may have written.