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Subject:LOCALISATION & Quebecois From:John -dot- Cornellier -at- PARIS -dot- IE -dot- PHILIPS -dot- COM Date:Thu, 14 Aug 1997 12:07:45 +0200
Formal written French (ie what you'd use for tech writing) in Quebec is _not_ a
different language from what's used in France.
Re. localisation: remember the golden rule that you have it done by native
speakers of the language/dialect/whatever.
At the risk of being off topic, I cannot let stand uncorrected a previous
statement re. origins and nature of the French spoken in Canada.
The French spoken in Quebec is called Quebecois, not Franglais, as suggested in
an earlier post. Franglais describes the (unwelcome) presence of English in
French, whether in France, Quebec, Belgium, whatever.
The idea that Quebecois is a "bastardized" version of Parisian French is as
wrong as the suggestion that American is a bastardisation of London English. The
reason Quebecois is different from the France French is that French immigration
to Canada stopped dead in the late 18th century. Language on both sides of the
Atlantic continued to develop - but in different directions. And, yes,
Quebecois, particularly colloquial Qebecois, has imported a lot of English.
For the record, the explanation for the diffrences between US & UK English is
identical. Shakespeare said "fall", and not "autumn". Shakespeare enunciated his
Rs. Shakespeare took a "bath" and not a "baawth". The difference in the accents
is mostly due to changes in pronounciation on the UK side of the pond, & not
vice versa as is commonly supposed. There's an isolated village (in the
Appalachians I think) where the accent is considered to be the closest thing to
Shakespeare's English in the world today.
mailto:john -dot- cornellier -at- paris -dot- ie -dot- philips -dot- com
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