Re: French -ois (jara: YAC: Widse -- a conlang based on Ygyde)

En réponse à "Douglas Koller, Latin & French" <latinfrench@...>:

>
> My exposure to Québecois is limited (my parents' cable service
> carries the Québec channel, damn them, but then, living further
> south, I get oodles of Portuguese channels, so I guess it evens out),
> but I don't recall hearing petits pois /pwE/, roi /rwE/, or québecois
> /kebEkwE/ (and I live in Woonsocket, Rhode Island -- an enclave for
> Quebeckers now in the blue rinse set). I *do* notice that "point" is
> pronounced more like /pwe~/ rather than /pwE~/. That, beyond certain
> word choices (i.e. fin de semaine vs. week-end; maïs éclaté vs.
> popcorn; chien-chaud vs. hot dog), says "Québec" to me.
>
The Québécois seem to have a bit of an inferiority complex, and on TV you hear
a Québécois watered down to sound like Parisian French with Québécois accent
(with indeed the [e~] where standard French has [E~]). But the highering of
vowels that you hear from the example you gave affects a lot of sounds, and I
have enough correspondents in Quebec (and heard enough our Québécois stars like
Céline Dion or Isabelle Boulay) to know that pronouncing |oi| as [wa] is
definitely an attempt at speaking "like the Europeans" (and is thus considered
high-level). The most common pronunciation of |oi| in Quebec stays [wE] (maybe
sometimes going down to [w&]). The "Club des Fans Francophones de Sailor Moon"
with which I participate is mainly Quebecois, so I know what I'm talking
about ;))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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