Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

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CaroleR
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Fri Nov 18, 2022 7:09 pm

My week of French ...

11-17 Nov, 22

News feeds – the usual ledes plus several articles

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – Échelle québécoise 5-6 (B1)
**Hiver**
Épisode 10: Bilan : On se débrouille! Review of lessons 6-9. I skipped "Le projet phare" at the end. It involved getting into groups and discussing health matters, and creating a game of giving directions to others. I could have role played but it seemed too overwhelming. I should come back to it later, but probably won't. Not my best effort, I'm afraid. Oh well, on to spring.

TV
L'épicierie – 22 min
– s21ep9 Un cours de médecine culinaire, une première (imagine, teaching medical students about nutrition!) + nos éponges de cuisine sont probablement gorgées de bactéries + on découvre les tarailli
STAT – 22 min
– s1ep33-36
De garde 24/7 – 46 min
– s8ep9 En état d'alerte
La table de Kim – 46 min
– s2ep2 La foi en l'avenir – guests : animatrice France Beaudoin, comédienne Sophie Cadieux, chirugien Daniel Borsuk (qui a réalisé la première transplantation faciale au pays :shock: ); c'est Ariane Paré-Le Gal qui a préparé le repas, elle est spécialisée en cueillette en forêt. Dessert is strawberry, sweet clover tarts. Having a guest chef is a change from last season where Kim and/or her mom did the cooking.
Tout le monde en parle – talk show – 142 min
– s19ep7 Invitées : Fabien Cloutier, actor/writer; Jean-François Lepine, journalist; Kim Thùy, she talks about her piece in Solo about the abuse she endured for 35 years + she's on the cover of Châtelaine – si lumineuse. It's the season of Kim. Good, I like her so much!; Souldia, rapper (pas ma tasse de thé but he has amazing tattoos, including his whole head and neck); Valérie Plante, mayor of Montreal; Adib Alkhalidey, actor/writer/comedian/singer
This show is really long so I don't often watch it but I wanted to see Kim and Valérie Plante. I understood about 40% of the show, enough to get the gist, but I missed so much. Ugh. Still, I should watch it regularly because most québécois celebrities are on it at some point. It's very good for learning about Quebec culture.

Youtube videos
Ma prof de français – 10:05 min
– Les anglicismes au Québec : mots anglais utilisés par les Québécois pour parler de l'hiver; spinner, slider, windshire (windshield), frosty, party, snowboard, sloche (slush)
Wandering French – 1:39 min
– Différence : futur simple et futur proche

Current book
Still reading Un outrage mortel by Louise Penny. Just renewed for another 3 weeks but I should be finished sooner. A 20-hour power outage helped.

Balado
Aujourd'hui l'histoire – 23 min
– La querelle du joual : deux conceptions de l'identité québécoise
From the website:
Pour certaines personnes, le joual symbolise la déchéance et la pauvreté intellectuelle d'un Québec colonisé. Pour d'autres, il est plutôt un symbole d'affirmation nationale, un marqueur d'identité.
------
À partir de la fin des années 1960, le discours négatif du joual s’efface, et cette appellation perd de son élan et se transforme en « français québécois ».

The play Les Belles-sœurs by Michel Tremblay (c1968) portrayed working-class québécois women speaking "joual" and was quite controversial at the time. Per the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia:
The impact of this work is still being debated in Quebec today, but suffice it to say that it changed much of what was believed to be Quebec culture: language, the form of theatre, which plays should be done at which theatres, the displacing of the Old Guard ...
-----
It set off a storm of controversy, firstly because of the language (a particularly raucous - some say vulgar - joual), and then because it dared to portray working class women doing working class things. Also, it went after men. None of this sounds particularly special today, but in 1968, theatre in Quebec was just releasing itself from religious and morality plays and joining (late) in the Quiet Revolution ...

Needless to say, it's been hugely influential. See also, Les insolences du Frère Untel by Jean-Paul Desbiens « Pourquoi se forcer pour parler autrement, on se comprend. »

Québécisme
Passer un sapin (duper qqn) = to trick or deceive
Ex. Loi sur les langues officielles : Ottawa accusé de « passer un sapin » au Québec. (Radio-Canada lede – I feel like I may be repeating this one. Sorry, if so.)

Bon, salut. À la prochaine.
Last edited by CaroleR on Sat Nov 19, 2022 1:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:07 pm

CaroleR wrote:Épisode 8: Aux petit soins – (suite de la semaine précédente) prévenir et soigner les engelures (très important, mon pays c'est l'hiver*). This is especially critical for immigrants who have never experienced extreme cold. There have been cases of undocumented people crossing the border in the middle of winter without adequate clothing, suffering from frostbite so severe they've had to have most of their fingers amputated. PSA: Do NOT try to cross the border in the winter! Also: what you need to know about vitamin D and the lack of sun in winter; and instructions for using a dehumidifier. I'm heartened by all this useful info directed toward immigrants. Our weather must be a big shock for them, unless they come from similar climates.


I had never heard of engelures before your post, so I translated it (well a dictionary did) to discover I'd not heard of chilblain either. Indeed, your winter weather would be a big shock for me despite having winters here that are cold enough to wear wear several layers at times. I bet your buildings are built for the cold, however. Ours are draughty, thin and inefficient.

CaroleR wrote:TV
L'épicierie – 22 min
– s21ep9 Un cours de médecine culinaire, une première (imagine, teaching medical students about nutrition!)


It's not necessary. Food/diet/nutrition = nothing to do with (good/poor) health nor anything to do with recovery. We all should know by know that if you have a health problem, first of all it's not ever your fault and secondly there's a magic medication to solve almost anything. Can't learn a foreign language? Here, take two of these with each meal, attend the clinic for this injection and don't ask (unscripted) questions or poke at the system with debunked radical theories. Fine print: This medication has only been shown to work if taken in conjunction with a good deal of language study and language use. Medication may be carcinogenic. Medication thoroughly tested in controlled environment, but not with humans, only with stones with whom translations and symptoms may have been positively inferred on 100% of occasions. Always seek advice from a very scientifically proven YouTube polyglot or two or even three (especially if they say all other methods of language learning are useless despite many success stories proving otherwise).
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CaroleR
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Sat Nov 19, 2022 2:45 am

PeterMollenburg wrote:I had never heard of engelures before your post, so I translated it (well a dictionary did) to discover I'd not heard of chilblain either. Indeed, your winter weather would be a big shock for me despite having winters here that are cold enough to wear wear several layers at times. I bet your buildings are built for the cold, however. Ours are draughty, thin and inefficient.

Here engelures means frostbite. I don't think I've ever heard anyone use chilblain before, although I've heard of it. Re: "Cold enough to wear several layers at a time." Hahahahahaha! I wear several layers to bed! :lol: And I live in the warmest part of the country. Most buildings are built for cold but my house, not so much. Mind you, it was intended as a summer cottage, so I guess I can't complain. Anyway, cold is relative. If your buildings aren't efficient, you'll feel cold, even in a milder climate.

PeterMollenburg wrote:
CaroleR wrote:TV
L'épicierie – 22 min
– s21ep9 Un cours de médecine culinaire, une première (imagine, teaching medical students about nutrition!)


It's not necessary. Food/diet/nutrition = nothing to do with (good/poor) health nor anything to do with recovery. We all should know by know that if you have a health problem, first of all it's not ever your fault and secondly there's a magic medication to solve almost anything. Can't learn a foreign language? Here, take two of these with each meal, attend the clinic for this injection and don't ask (unscripted) questions or poke at the system with debunked radical theories. Fine print: This medication has only been shown to work if taken in conjunction with a good deal of language study and language use. Medication may be carcinogenic. Medication thoroughly tested in controlled environment, but not with humans, only with stones with whom translations and symptoms may have been positively inferred on 100% of occasions. Always seek advice from a very scientifically proven YouTube polyglot or two or even three (especially if they say all other methods of language learning are useless despite many success stories proving otherwise).

Thanks so much! This is a gold mine of information! Some of it I already knew from YouTube and other reliable internet sources, but it's so hard to keep up with debunked radical theories and whatnot. I think I need some of that magic medication, my French isn't going so well and for sure it's not my fault!
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Sat Nov 26, 2022 2:00 am

18-24 Nov, 22
Didn't do as much as usual this week. I had some major technical problems (mea culpa) and was without a computer for two days. Add that to the two days without power and I realize I will not survive when it all comes crashing down.

News
• Read a story about the Francophonie in Tunisia. Canada, Quebec and New Brunswick were represented. There's a school near Tunis that uses a New Brunswick curriculum to teach French to (mainly) Arabic speakers. I would think that the cultures would be miles apart but I don't know much about Tunisia. It makes me wonder if the students end up with Acadian accents. :lol:
• In the lede from a story in La Presse about a Quebec-France $5 billion trade agreement, « Comme on dit au Québec, c'est des peanuts. » This from François Legault, the premier of Quebec. At the Francophonie. :roll:
• Read another article about franco-americans in the US, particularly in New England. One source estimates that there are about 2 million descendants of French-Canadian immigrants in New England, with about 200,000 speaking French at home. One descendant, a Harvard professor who teaches North-American French, said that at one time, some children were made to write: "I will not speak French in the school ground." :x

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – Échelle québécoise 5-6 (B1)
**Printemps**
• Épisode 11: On se retrousse les manches! Faire une corvée du printemps avec les voisins; le futur simple; pronoms possessifs
• Épisode 12 (in progress): Oui, allo! First lesson is to learn the parts of a cell phone. I never thought about learning that before. Unfortunately, the book was published in 2016, so the technology has changed a lot since then. I think the illustration is of an iPhone 4.

TV
STAT – 22 min
– s1ep 37-40
De garde 24/7 – 46 min
– s8ep10 Une équipe tissée serrée – this was really sad. Much of the episode revolved around a man with terminal cancer, who was estranged from his son. Fortunately they reconciled; it was very emotional. The episode was dedicated to his memory.

Films
Il pleuvait des oiseaux – 2:06 hrs
– Le prix Dragon du meilleur film international du Festival du film de Göteborg 2020
• La légende Freddie Mercury – 1:24 hrs
– The film was made in France, so not native, but I wanted to see Freddie. TBH, I've only watched part of it so far. I'm finding the voice-overs annoying. At least they didn't do that to the songs.

Youtube videos
Wandering French
– 1:22 min – Barrer la porte (ou lieu de verrouiller ou fermer à clé)
– 1:38 min – Différence: futur simple et futur proche Ex. J'aurai un enfant ou je vais avoir un enfant

Current book
Nothing in French at the moment, but there's a book waiting for me at the library. I'll pick it up tomorrow.

Finished Un outrage mortel by Louise Penny. Her books are written in English about Quebec and her characters are both English and French. Penny doesn't address which language they speak when they get together, although, in real life it would probably be English. In the original English versions everyone speaks English and the reverse in the French translations, of course. At one point in the book, one of the inspectors calls an arms manufacturer in England and he speaks in perfect "street English" to the representative, all of which is written in French. Later, the chief inspector calls the same company and, although she learned perfect English in school, could not make herself understood. Finally she gets through to the representative who speaks French. « Vous parlez français? elle demanda en anglais. » Penny herself speaks French and I wonder if she finds it tricky to write about these situations, knowing they'll be translated into the language some of the characters actually speak. If that makes any sense. It's kind of a mind twister.

Québécismes
– Attache ta tuque = Hang on to your hat, be ready for something.
– Le "tu" interrogatif – used when asking a yes or no question. Ex. « Il vient-tu icitte? » or « Il est-tu bon? » It's taking me a while to grasp this. What? Tu isn't a pronoun? Nope.
– Icitte = ici

Took the test on TV5 monde: 9/14 = B1– probably more accurate than Dialang but disappointing. Feels as though I'll forever be on the B1 plateau.
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Nov 26, 2022 1:51 pm

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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Sat Nov 26, 2022 5:16 pm

DaveAgain wrote:A Quebecois won the PFL lightweight title yesterday!
Woohoo! Way to go Olivier! I admit that this is a world I know nothing about, but it seems to be quite an accomplishment. A million bucks will come in handy, I bet. :D
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Tue Dec 06, 2022 2:52 am

25 Nov – 1 Dec, 22
16 hours w/o power due to a snowstorm. Plus no phone or internet Nov 29 – Dec 1 (This continues into the next week, for a total of 5 days.) Ugh!

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – Échelle québécoise 5-6 (B1)
**Printemps**
Épisode 12: Oui, allo! cont'd; making phone calls to request info, making reservations, leaving messages, etc; le conditionnel présent (de politesse) –  ex. « nous souhaiterions savoir », which is le fun to say; 20 dialogues in this lesson, which I'm using as mini-dictées. Hoping this will help with listening comprehension. One mistake I made was hearing "métropole" instead of "Baie-Saint-Paul." It's going to take a lot more time, I guess.

TV
L'épicierie – 22 min
– s21ep10 Le café aux champignons
STAT – 22 min
– s1ep41-45
De garde 24/7 – 46 min
– s8ep11 Le lien privilégié – "les médecin dépanneurs" was a term I hadn't heard before. Apparently they're not doctors who hang out at the corner convenience store, they're doctors who go to remote places that don't have a lot of medical services. Otherwise, in Quebec, dépanneurs are small corner stores that sell basic necessities, plus beer, wine and cigarettes. Some are open 24/7. Years ago, when I first moved to Vancouver, I was at a party and we ran out of wine. I asked where the nearest dépanneur was and no one knew what I was talking about. For a minute I didn't know what to call it in English. Sadly, wine was not sold in the corner grocery store and I wondered why I had moved to this hick town. :lol:

Current book
La grande aventure de la langue française: de Charlemagne au Cirque du Soleil by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau, translated from The Story of French ~500 pgs – Thanks to PeterMollenburg for the suggestion. This book seems a bit easier to read than the fiction I'd been reading, but, I will probably have to read the English version as well. It cracks me up that the English title is so much more concise than the French.
Notes: « ... anglais est la plus latine et la plus française des langues germanique ... » – p38. I'm just now beginning to realize how similar English and French are. How did I not see this before?!

Bon, ben c'est tout pour le moment. À tantôt.
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:34 am

Voici une recette que j'ai fait pendant la semaine:

Sauce aux canneberges
Ingrédients:
Un sac (227g) de canneberges fraïche
1 tasse (125 ml) d'eau
1/4 tasse (60 ml) sirop d'érable

Préparation:
Faites bouillir les ingrédients ensemble dans une casserole jusqu'a les canneberges éclatent et l'eau est absorbée (environs 10 minutes). Laissez refroidir. Faites attention, c'est comme de la lave en fusion quand c'est chaud. (Had to look up molten lava.) La sauce est un peu sucré, un peu aigre et, câline de bin, c'est bon! On peut ajouter le zeste d'un citron ou d'un orange si désirer, mais je ne l'ai pas fait.

Il y a une recette sur le sac des canneberges, mais elle demande de la cassonade, laquelle je n'utilise jamais. J'ai fait la recette de Let's Eat Plants sur YouTube et je la traduite moi-même, avec quelques corrigées de DeepL et Bon Patron. Happily there weren't too many corrections that I could see, although there's probably some awkwardness. Désolée.

Voici les marques que j'ai utilisées. Ce sont des produits du Québec, tous les deux. It's kind of weird that we import the cranberries from 3750 km away when we grow them here, but it fits with my "everything québécois," so there you go. FYI, maple syrup is très Québec. Go to a sugaring-off party in the spring; they put maple syrup on everything.
cranberries.jpg
maple syrup.jpg

What's cool here is that all labels must be in both official languages.
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby CaroleR » Sat Dec 10, 2022 2:51 am

2-8 Dec, 22
Slim pickings this week, I'm sad to say. It's been a week of feeling sorry for myself. Dec 2-5 continued with no phone or internet, plus we had another 28 hours w/o power spread over 3 days, this time to fix the issue caused by the storm wiping out the internet and phone cables. This was planned so they were able to connect the power at night, thankfully. The other day I told my neighbour that I couldn't remember what we did before the internet. She said, "we read." Well, I still read, but I use an online dictionary for French. I'm over-reliant on technology obviously. Maybe I should buy a paper dictionary ...

Note: I got my phone bill today. Did they give a credit for 5 days without phone, without even the ability to call 911 in an emergency? No they did not.

Textbook + workbook
Par ici: méthode de français – Échelle québécoise 5-6 (B1)
**Printemps**
Épisode 12: Oui, allo! – the neverending lesson

TV
STAT – 22 min – s1ep45-46

Current book
La grande aventure de la langue française. I'll probably be reading this for a long time. Something interesting that I read: 16th century French essayist Michel de Montaigne used four different variations of "à cette heure" in his work: à cett' heure, astheure, asteure and asture. "Astheure" is often used today in Quebec, although mostly orally, I think. Plus ça change. Also, "les immortels" de l'Académie française ... what the H E double-hockeysticks?? The problem I'm finding with this book is that there are a lot of potential rabbit holes I could go down.

Misc: I think I need to change what I'm doing, although I'm not sure what else to do. There's a Canadian (NCLC-AEL) site that tests competence in both French and English. I took the "A" test in written comprehension last year and got 7-8 (B2). I took the "B" test this week and got 6-7. I appear to be regressing. Talk about disheartening. :cry: Guess I have some thinking to do. Not my best thing. :D
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Re: Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate!

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Dec 10, 2022 6:22 am

CaroleR wrote:Current book
La grande aventure de la langue française. I'll probably be reading this for a long time. Something interesting that I read: 16th century French essayist Michel de Montaigne used four different variations of "à cette heure" in his work: à cett' heure, astheure, asteure and asture. "Astheure" is often used today in Quebec, although mostly orally, I think. Plus ça change. Also, "les immortels" de l'Académie française ... what the H E double-hockeysticks?? The problem I'm finding with this book is that there are a lot of potential rabbit holes I could go down.
Rabbit holes is a good sign, isn't it? :-)
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