French of France

Oh, yeah.

So the Canadian French are more French than the Parisian French almost, that you've got the, um, if you go down to Patagonia, you'll find the, them speaking the Welsh language-

They're Welsh speaking down there, yeah, yeah

... and still making bara brith and, and, and being very, very Welsh, uh, down in that part of the world.

Consider the word angin.

In standard formal Parisian French, the gine part... might possess a much tighter, more closed forward placement in the mouth.

Like a sharper sound.

Right.

Yes, absolutely.

It's the exact same mechanism.

Like if you as a listener are unconsciously expecting standard Parisian French, the Quebecois vowel shift acts as a slight accent shift for your ear.

A micro deviation, exactly.

It's the perfect gateway into this whole concept of cognitive friction.

Right, because if you approach this with, like, standard textbook Parisian French, you'd probably look at the title and say something like, um, Angeine de Poitrine.

Which would be totally normal-

Mm-hmm

Take the word engine, you know, in this regional dialect.

The gin sound doesn't stay tightly closed in the front of the mouth like it might in Parisian French.

It opens up.

Right.

The company was known to be in financial trouble, but officially explained that it was dropping Les Simpsons Québécois because streamer Disney Plus would now be streaming its own French version of The Simpsons in the province.

A Parisian French version, dubbed in France.

But it wouldn't be the same.

It's exactly like if you guys tomorrow would have to listen to a localized version of The Simpsons made in England and people speaking like this.

And when we talk about humor, I think that there are jokes that if you translate word by word, it will just not fly in France or in Quebec.

So you need to tweak them or replace them by something that local people might relate to.

And so the idea of Les Simpsons speaking Parisian French and dropping its references to La Belle Provence seemed sacrilegious.

For people to shift from the Quebec version to the French version from France, you know, something that would be really, as I said, a culture shock.

Exactly.

And we should be precise here because it's not standard Parisian French.

No, it has a very distinct, resonant, localized Quebec flavor.

If you look at the name, your English-speaking brain might automatically read, you know, Angin de Poitrine.

Okay.

But the French they speak in Canada is very different from the Parisian French.

Ah, I see.

Québécois.

And the phonetics themselves tell the story of their music.

So if you were to pronounce the name in standard Parisian French, the vowels sit very far forward in your mouth.

It sounds light and airy.

Right.

So here's where it gets genuinely fascinating.

Quebecois French and European French have diverged enough that even very advanced European French speakers can really struggle when they hear Quebecois spoken at natural speed.

And a lot of it comes down to specific sounds.

There's a feature called affrication, where the sounds T and D become almost like TS and DZ before certain vowels.

Can you give me an example of what that actually sounds like?

Sure.

So the word to, which means you in European French, is just T.

But in Quebecois, it becomes something closer to C.