Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

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CaroleR
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Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Wed Oct 26, 2022 11:05 pm

Et voilà, a log ...

So, I understand the rule to stay away from politics, but in Quebec, politics and the French language are inextricably intertwined. I'll do my best to avoid anything contentious.

I thought I'd post some of my resources first, the majority of which are native québécois. I will say that I am blessed (spoiled?) with the amount of resources we have here, Canada ostensibly being a bilingual country.

News feeds – just ledes mostly, i.e. heds and deks; sometimes I read the articles
Le Devoir – monde
La Presse – actualités
Le Journal de Montréal
Radio-Canada – mostly Quebec and Ontario
Radio-Canada – BC

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – A series of 4 texts with workbooks, encompasing levels 1-8, equivalent to A1-B2.
I'm currently on level 5-6 (B1) and have 7-8 on order. I've completed levels 1-2 (A1) and 3-4 (A2). I should point out that there are a lot of mistakes, especially in the level 3-4 text. The most egregious is a map of Canada in which they transposed two provinces. Yikes! In spite of that, I'd say that the series is worth it, for me at least. Even though it's intended for immigrants in a classroom setting, I've found it useful. There are short audio dialogues, generally under 2 minutes, that I've been transcribing and I think it's helping with my listening comprehension. I just hope some poor immigrant doesn't base a road trip on that map and go all the way to Alberta looking for Winnipeg.

Dictionary
Usito from l'Université de Sherbrooke – Excellent! I refer to it daily.

TV
Mostly Tou-TV from Radio-Canada, the French version of our national broadcaster. I have a paid subscription, although much of it is free. They have excellent subtitles. I can't stand dubbed shows so I only watch the Quebec-made ones. The site has films as well but I have a hard time just sitting and watching for much longer than 30 minutes at a time, so I don't often watch them.

YouTube – channels I watch regularly
Maprofdefrancais
Wandering French
I used to watch Inner French and Français authentique but stopped once I decided to focus on Quebec sources. They're pretty good, though.

Balados (podcasts)
Currently listening to Aujourd'hui l'histoire (via Ohdio at Radio-Canada; they have extensive write-ups on the website)
Sometimes I listen to Mâche-patate: le podcast des Urbainculteurs, but not recently. I'll pick it up again when my listening comprehension is better.

Books
Lately I've been reading translations of Louise Penny's series of Inspector Gamache mysteries. Penny is from Toronto but she lives in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, the main setting for her books. Her translators are québécois so I figure that's pretty close to native. Plus, she usually throws in some interesting Quebec history or culture. As an aside, Penny co-wrote a book with Hilary Clinton.

For what it's worth, I took a test at Dialang and was assessed at B2 listening comprehention and C1 written comprehension. There's no way that's accurate, but it gave me a bit of a lift.

Bon, that's it for now. À tantôt.
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby Amandine » Thu Oct 27, 2022 12:03 am

Bonne chance. I have a t-shirt I bought in Lafayette, Louisiana with the Lâche pas la patate motto so the Acadians must have brought it down with them!
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Thu Oct 27, 2022 1:57 am

Really? That's so interesting. Thanks for letting me know. I had no idea that the expression had been used for so long. I forsee some research in my future. And now I need that t-shirt!

ETA: It turns out that the expression's source is American via two Acadian guys from Louisiana. Here's some info from Wikipédia:

«Lâche pas la patate est une chanson américaine de langue française écrite par Clifford Trahan en 1972 et interprétée par Jimmy C. Newman, tous les deux des Acadiens originaires de la Louisiane.

La chanson a connu un important succès au Québec pendant les années 1970, elle a remporté le disque d'or après avoir vendu plus de 150 000 exemplaires. L'expression « lâche pas la patate » est passée dans le vocabulaire populaire québécois ; il s'agit d'une invitation à persévérer.»
Last edited by CaroleR on Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby badger » Thu Oct 27, 2022 10:41 am

soyez la bienvenue! :)

purely by chance I got pulled into a Zoom call with a Québecois customer yesterday & when they were chatting among themselves in French (fortunately they weren't being rude about me) I was able to follow the conversation quite easily - nothing like the Québecois in Au Service de la France. :lol:
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:43 pm

badger wrote:soyez la bienvenue! :)

purely by chance I got pulled into a Zoom call with a Québecois customer yesterday & when they were chatting among themselves in French (fortunately they weren't being rude about me) I was able to follow the conversation quite easily - nothing like the Québecois in Au Service de la France. :lol:


Merci badger!

It's good to hear you were able to understand your Québecois customers. Your French must be good. I still have a lot of trouble understanding when people talk among themselves. I hadn't heard of Au Service de la France but I take it the Québecois in question is difficult to understand. In France, Quebec films have to be dubbed apparently, so I guess it depends who's speaking. There can be a huge difference between someone from Montreal and someone from Gaspé, for example. Sometimes it's hard to believe it's the same language.
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Le français québécois: En Amérique centrale

Postby anitarrc » Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:44 pm

No politics.
Hearing québécois in guanacaste and in our workshop was always a real treat for my ears. The boss never begrudged me the pure joy, soon I had a reputation as a translator for the exiled French Canadian.

Even English speaking Canadians often practised their French with me.. we all had good fun.

Oh well, I hope some are still around when I retire.
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CaroleR
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Re: Le français québécois: En Amérique centrale

Postby CaroleR » Thu Oct 27, 2022 3:08 pm

anitarrc wrote:No politics.
Hearing québécois in guanacaste and in our workshop was always a real treat for my ears. The boss never begrudged me the pure joy, soon I had a reputation as a translator for the exiled French Canadian.

Even English speaking Canadians often practised their French with me.. we all had good fun.

Oh well, I hope some are still around when I retire.


Ha! I love this! A lot of people don't like the accent, but I love it so much. And Canadians love Costa Rica, so I'm sure there will still be some around when you retire. :)
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:05 pm

My week of French
21-27 Oct, 22

News feeds: ledes
I read these first thing in the morning. I don't know why I torture myself.

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – Échelle québécoise 5-6 (B1) – there are 4 seasonal sections from Automne to Été. I confess that I have mostly skipped the role-playing with my collegues. I don't actually have any collegues, so that's probably why.
**Hiver**
• Épisode 6: Les nouvelles de la journée
• Épisode 7: Belle nouvelle! In progress. I find that I'm resisting working on this as it becomes harder.

TV in which I go into way too much detail. In my defence, I'm trying to really absorb the culture and learn about prominent personalities. My end game is spy-level fluency.
L'épicierie – everything groceries ~ 22 min
– s21ep6 Tout ce que vous avez toujours voulu savoir sur la gomme + la dinde fumée + la meringue. This wasn't a great episode but they had some lovely shots of Quebec City streets.
Moi, j'mange – they cook, they eat ~ 23 min
– s4ep8 – Un menu costumé (pour l'Halloween) – une pizza de charcuteries de légumes – le pepperoni de betteraves, des frites de panisse et pâtes du Jacquier
STAT – drama set in a hospital ~ 22 min (4 episodes per week)
– s1ep21-24
De garde 24/7 – docu-reality, also set in a hospital, this time it's real life ~ 46 min
– s8ep6 Changement
La table de Kim – Kim Thùy and her family were among the "boat people," refugies who fled Southeast Asia and came to Canada in the late 70s, in Kim's case, from Vietnam. She's very well known in Quebec as a lawyer, restauranteur and author. In this series, she invites people she wants to know better to share a meal. She often has them help her cook or set the table. And she has them bring something meaningful to them, related to the theme of the gathering. Her guests are sometimes famous, sometimes not, but they've always been interesting, so far – 46 min
– s1ep5 guests Boucar Diouf, Luc Dionne, Marie-Eve Cotton, Philémon Cimon; the theme is creativity; Philémon sings "Ma mère au nord" which nearly makes Kim cry. I like the song but I don't understand the real meaning of it, even after reading the English translation. I never understand poetry either.
– s1ep6 guests Christian Bégin (actor/tv personality and guest of honour), Pierre-Yves Lord, Genviève Bernatchez et Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne (forensic genealogist – genealogy is my favourite thing!) It ends with Christian doing the dishes. – The theme is family.
5 chefs dans ma cuisine – with Marina Orsini, a very well-known actor – 22 min – 5 episodes per week
– s1ep3 Gâteau de crêpes à la tartinade choco-amandes – Bob le Chef
– s1ep9 Tortilla aux pommes de terre (this is a spanish tortilla, like an omelette) + Pain grillé aux tomates – chef Haissam Souki – He used half a litre of olive oil to cook the onions. Yikes!
– s1ep11 Galettes végétaliennes aux haricots et pois chiches – chef Kimberly Lallouz – veggie burgers basically

Youtube videos
Ma prof de français – 8:09 min
21 oct 22 – Le mot le plus utilisé au Québec? spoiler, it's «pogner»; she gives 11 examples
Wandering French – 2:14 min
? oct 21 – Nos amis les chats

Current books
La nature de la bête by Louise Penny – 471 pages – translation of The Nature of the Beast. I've renewed this twice. It will have taken me nearly 8 weeks to read this book and I've understood only about 60%. Not great. I usually note some words I don't know (in context) in a notebook, with the intention of adding them to Anki. But I haven't done that lately. Mostly I just read extensively and get the gist. The gist of this book revolves around Gerald Bull, renowned in Canada for his supercanons, which he designed for Iraq before he was assassinated. Apparently, he built one in Three Pines, the main setting of Penny's books. :lol:
Défis zéro gaspi: Techniques et canevas pour réduir le gaspillage alimentaire by Florence-Léa Siry – 150 pages – reading this one intensively. Florence-Léa is a regular guest on Moi j'mange, a show I watch regularly. She's very cute and has a lot of good tips to avoid food waste.

Misc
Just bought a new vitamix and they sent a bilingual cookbook which has French in the front! I've never seen that before. It's pretty cool.

Québécismes
un courailleur = a womanizer – Per Usito: Personne à la recherche d'aventures amoureuse

C'est tout. À la prochaine.
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:23 pm

CaroleR wrote:Québécismes
un courailleur = a womanizer – Per Usito: Personne à la recherche d'aventures amoureuse
Looking that up in Wiktionary led to some new-to-me information on -ailler and -aille endings.
Étymologie

De courir, avec le suffixe péjoratif -ailler.

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/courailler

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/courailleur
Suffixe

-aille \aj\ féminin

Suffixe indiquant le résultat d’une action.
semaille, relevaille.

Suffixe indiquant un collectif.
Cette dernière, cependant, fait une exception pour le suffixe -aille, qui, selon elle, possèderait un sens fondamentalement collectif et, plus sérieusement, construirait un collectif « massif ». On rencontre de fait dans les dictionnaires un assez grand nombre de dénominaux en -aille renvoyant à des ensembles d’entités comptables désignées elles-mêmes par le nom de base (cf. par exemple flicaille, piétaille ou valetaille) et cette catégorie de dérivés est en expansion. Mais cette idée que -aille a un sens essentiellement collectif se heurte à un certain nombre d’objections d’ordre sémantique. — (Marc Plénat ; Poissonnaille, poiscail (et poiscaille) : Forme et sens des dérivés en -aille. ERSS (UMR 5610, CNRS) ; Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail)

(Péjoratif) Suffixe donnant un sens péjoratif.
Une troisième difficulté vient de ce que les dénominaux en -aille ont presque constamment un sens péjoratif, qu’ils fassent référence à une collection d’entités (comme flicaille) ou à des entités singulières (comme Saint-Denaille). Le problème se pose donc de déterminer quel lien relie la valeur collective et la valeur péjorative du suffixe -aille. Sur ce point, l’hypothèse de S. Aliquot-Suengas (ibid. : 265-268), c’est que la valeur péjorative de ce suffixe est seconde par rapport à sa valeur collective. — (Marc Plénat ; Poissonnaille, poiscail (et poiscaille) : Forme et sens des dérivés en -aille. ERSS (UMR 5610, CNRS) ; Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail)

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/-aille
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby Le Baron » Fri Oct 28, 2022 11:35 pm

I listen to some of those podcasts from Radio Canada (Ohdio) now and again. I listened to a recent series about a woman trying to pass on her French language/cultural heritage to her children in Saskatchewan. In the face of strong competition from English.

Generally on the radio, in factual programming at least, they're speaking pretty ordinary French, but with varying degrees of accent (which is sometimes an indicator of the region). I have had the rude awakening though, with regard to how people in Quebec sound in real-life.
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