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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2019 and 7 May 2019. Further details are available
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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 01:27, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
As a speaker of French, I wonder about this classification, because much of what's listed as examples are exactly what I've heard on the streets of East-Central French cities, like Besançon, Dijon, Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon, Saint-Etienne. I'm sure there's more depth to this, however some of it can just be argued to be l'argot.
a type of sociolect aimed at excluding certain people from the conversation. Slang initially functions as encryption, so that the non-initiate cannot understand the conversation, or as a further way to communicate with those who understand it. Slang functions as a way to recognize members of the same group, and to differentiate that group from the society at large.
Those are Québec French expressions, and are not particularly joual (which is Montreal specific), so I think that paragraph should be moved to the more appropriate article. Plus I doubt that pitoune in the log sense has the same etymology as the cute girl sense...-- 24.203.216.242 02:50, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
[...] the word "pitchoune" exists in auvergnat that means "cute girl".
About "pitoune": if the word does come from France, which I cannot verify, its etymology would be "pichona", pronounced pi'tchouno or pi'tsouno, in Occitan. Mistralians spell it "pitchouna". The word "pitchoune" (masc. "pitchoun"), which is widely used in Southern France, retains the original meaning of "little one". It may describe any girl ranging from a child to a late teenager and is quite affectionate. We also say "pitchounette" (masc. "pitchounet"), from Occitan "pichoneta", but in this case we will almost invariably refer to a very young girl. The word in itself, even as used in today's French, doesn't involve someone is cute. AnPrionsaBeag 20:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
As for "chu", "té", "ché", "pis", "y", "a", "ouais", "y'a", "ben", "su'l" and "tsé", these are commonly heard in spoken French, though they're more often spelt as follows:
"chu" is "j'suis" (in most cases) or simply "chuis" (more aptly), but most French will write "je suis" and still speak it as "chuis";
"té" is "t'es" (very frequently heard and written): similar to "t'as" for "tu as";
"ché" is "j'sais" or "chais", same as "chuis" for use;
"pis" is "pis" too, but is becoming rare;
"y" is "y" (in nearly all cases) or "i": as words like "gentil" or "fusil" show, not saying the l after a final i-syllable is common in French; note that "il" is pronounced "i" only before a consonant;
"a" can also be noted "a": "elle" may also be shortened to "è" in spoken French but "elle" is still the preferred option in writing;
"ouais" is "ouais" as well, and not "ouai" as Marc asserted;
"y'a" is "y'a" (mistakenly) or "y a": Southerners have the excuse of Occitan "i a" for leaving out the "il";
"ben" is "ben", most famously in stereotypical Norman French wisdom: "Ptêt ben qu'oui, ptêt ben qu'non";
"su'l" is also heard but still spelt "sur le": maybe from Occitan "sul" for "sus lo";
"tsé" is "t'sais" and is very frequent in young people's French.
AnPrionsaBeag 20:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
See the works of Claude Duneton. The fact that a Quebec word is similar in meaning and form to a word in some regional dialect in France does not make it any less dialectal, and thus joual (depending on taste).
And then there are coincidences. For instance, "mon pitou" and "ma pitoune" were common endearments a generation ago. Once the masculine is re-inserted into the discussion (pitou means puppy), the Auvergnat form is an obvious red herring.
(By the way, in today's Montreal "pitoune" doesn't mean cute and does not especially mean loose, it means "hot looking". A girl can turn herself into a pitoune and back for the pleasure of "bummer" (to go bumming).
On the other hand, it has always struck me that joual also has its own grammar. One special point is the future tense. At the obvious level, "j'aimerai, tu aimeras, il aimera" are replaced with "m'a aimer, tu vas aimer, y va aimer".
More important is what is less obvious. In contrast to standard French, which is very definite (une porte doit être ouverte ou fermée), Québécois speech is minimal, prudent and tentative. Vigneau has some monologues that illustrate this well. Since the future is in any case a modality, joual multiplies the modalities indefinitely, so as not to take too definite a position on what is not yet a given. "Y va aimer" may be felt to be too assertive. So, you can have "y s'en va pour aimer", "y'é-t-à veille d'aimer", "y'é parti pour aimer", "y'é-t-en train pour aimer", "y'é-t-après aimer"... (The last form seems a variant of the present tense, but its persistence, I think, is due to the ambiguity, is he loving, right now, or is he on the way to it? The actual expression in Quebec speech of what the French call "le futur" takes a range of colorations which (again, in my opinion) wrecks the simplicity of French book grammar.
Another example, also related to modality, is the use of the infinitive to express a condition (with the consequence put in the conditional mood, as usual): "Être à Montréal, j'aurais été aux vues." (Had I been in Montreal, I would've gone to a movie.) Standard French would of course be: "Si j'avais été à Montréal, je serais allé au cinéma." Phranger 00:46, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
"Poutine" is the normal joual pronunciation for "pudding". But the meaning is, or rather was, much broader -- it covered the same extension as "chow" in US English (applied to human food). When a brilliant journalist asked some lady in Victoriaville or Drummondville what it was she served him, she said "chow", that is, "poutine". Being a journalist and therefore quite ignorant, he reported this as the name for a specific dish, and the rest unfortunately is history.
Until that idiot scribe got on the case, there was no standard "poutine", on the contrary, the word meant that the dish conformed to no special standard.
By the way, "pudding" itself, in English, comes from the French, "boudin" [OED].
The moral of the story is, don't talk to journalists. Phranger 00:23, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
As noted in the article, "joual" is attested before WW2, in the deprecatory sense of corrupt, uneducated Quebec French. The word itself refers to a pronunciation so foreign to what was believed to be standard French, that the link to the spelling was half lost (joual --> ? cheval). The spoken or unspoken implication was that this was the speech of illiterates.
Around the time Desbiens got on his horse, however, the context changed. People were literate, but they still spoke joual. The automatic deprecatory intent was put into question when, soon after, Michel Tremblay came out with Les Belles-Soeurs. Phranger 00:29, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Unless it was verrrrry recently adopted by either the académie of the OLF (as in the last 5 years I`ve been away from Montréal), pantry is *not* french. I looked online at various dictionaries and can`t find it. What did you based your removal on ? -- Marc pasquin 18:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
If have heard that there is also a form of French similar to Joual that is used mainly by younger people and is full of slang and anglicisms. Can anyone confirm or explain this? Thanks! B-] // Big Adamsky 21:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I know there is a sizeable Italian community in Montréal, so I'm wondering if it had any influence on the development of Joual. Tchine-tchine for "cheers" sounds identical to the common Italian toast, cin-cin. Bécosse brought a smile to my face, because in Italiese, the hybrid language that sprouted up among Italian immigrants in English-speaking Canada (especially in the Toronto area), baccàus is the word used for washroom :) Though I suppose that could simply be the result of two linguistic groups responding to the same English word. :: Salvo (talk) 03:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
It seems you missed what I wrote above: anything stigmatised is lumped into Joual. Plus, Joual is Quebec French, not all of Quebec French but part of it.
There's finally a book/study on the Quebec French norm (by M.-E. de Villers and published in 2005) and it only focuses on comparisons between Le Devoir and Le Monde. The reality, however, is that human beings are not newpapers and, as individuals, mix levels/registers in their own speech all the time (yeah, think Péladeau). I'll give an example: "la chose dont j'ai besoin" vs. "l'affaire que j'ai besoin"; most people in Quebec either don't know that the relative clause starting with "que" is substandard yet a very defining feature of Quebec French, regardless of socio-economic class. Often heard from television and radio reporters, relative or subordinate clauses with "que" are so common on all levels and among all socio-economic groups, yet everyone will call it Joual. Joual's more a perception than an actual sociolect; if you ask people on the street what they speak, they do not say "Joual" they say "French" or, worse, "bad French". "Joual" was a poster child of some sorts. Remember, joe-blow came up with the term and idea of "Joual", not linguists.
Oh, btw, the article as it is now is somewhat incorrect by starting with "toé", etc. The pronunciations in "oé" are also found outside of Mtl and not just in those words; it's a phonological phenomenon, not a lexical one. The Joual perception focuses more on lexical items than anything else, not major language practices and who and when they are used.
Also, I am not against the idea of the Joual article focusing more on its perception and its force as catalyst for identity affirmation. It would also be interesting to show how the transcription of Joual is eye dialect and that it became legitimate in the eyes of the public once plays were in it. Here's a riddle...in your opinion, is Virginie written in Joual? hehehe -- CJ Withers 06:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I re-read this article and am surprised at how so much is called "Joual" when the item in question is just an anglicism or casual French. "Ouin" is not Joual; it can be heard in Joual, but it is not Joual. "Truck" is not Joual; it's an anglicism as are "la hose", "bienvenue" instead of "de rien", etc. Also, sacres are an integral part of Joual but there's nothing on them... More misinformation than information, this article doesn't need sources, it needs to be purged 'n' merged. -- CJ Withers 06:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I hope you don't think I'm weird by saying this, but we agree and disagree yet in different ways. First, your perceptions of what constitutes Joual is the problem. We can discuss that point by point somewhere else. I find that wikipedia is not a good place to discuss linguistic minutia between linguists and non-linguists. Second, I totally agree with you that the Quebec French article needs much work; I want to include a Joual section, but it needs to be put in context. The probleme with native-speaker notions is just that, whether it's in English, French or Swahili: people's idea of something is often not the reality when it comes to language. It's been proved over and over again that our everyday notions of language are skewed by social values and identity politics. The upshot it that Joual = stigma aux yeux des vielles outremontaises and Joual = la langue du peuple pour ce que ne vois d'un oeil. The internal debate revolves around this polarization; that's what I'm working on showing. Please check my sandbox on Québec French...scroll down and look where I jotted down stuff about Joual, les Belles Soeurs, Tout le monde en parle, Denise Bombardier (dont j'ai fait la connaissance il y a un mois!!), etc. Also, please don't take this personally, but I don't an encyclopedia has great value if it's written by anyone who feels like writing about something that seems important to them. On the other hand, I do feel that experts can get out of hand and can also obscure the realities behind something important. That's why I find Wikipedia interesting; not only is there a team that can enhance articles, it also combines the knowledgeable folk with the uninitiated. By dialoguing with the uninitiated, the articles can acheive quality status because they are supposed to be informative. The real danger is writing about a topic which is taken for granted as reality when in fact it's just the notion that's taken root. Joual is that example is the article for Buffalo English. Joual is a (pre-conceived) notion of what a sociolect should be; the proof is that it is stigmatized. Anyway, I'm starting to repeat myself.
If we remove the phonological aspects and then the syntactic elements and then the anglicisms, what would be left? Nothing or close to it. I invite you discuss, for example, pronouns in Quebec French (they're the same in Joual and in standard spoken French in Quebec, btw). For example, "nous autres" is not Joual; in fact, it's just Quebec. "Nous" is virtually non-existent in spoken French in the world; "on" is the multi-purpose word. The same goes for "elles"; it doesn't exist in spoken French in Québec. Women and even the most ardent of feminists don't use it at all. This fact is startling. You can even hear Mme Bombardier use "ils" for "elles" in her commentary on International Women's Day. Enough for now. Later. -- CJ Withers 23:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
can someone please include words UNIQUE to joual, as the author of this article has used many continental french words? merci.
I'm hesitant about «ski-doo» being listed as an English word that's found its way into Québec's argot if the trademark originated in Québec, is based on a word «ski» that (like the name of most sports) is the same in both languages, and Armand Bombardier is not an anglo name. There may be other trademarks which do qualify as anglicisms, such as «le frigo/le frigidaire» (based on an American-language trademark, which in turn appears to be based on the English words "frigid air") or «le coke» ( Coca-Cola, originally created in Atlanta and named for the coca plant). Automotive terminology would also be a source of beaucoup de franglais as most of the cars were from US-based manufacturers and the mécaniciens would have originally been working from American-language service manuals to maintain the vehicles. «Le clutch, il ne va pas» would likely be understood as a clutch that doesn't work in any garage in Québec, even if the proper French word is «débrayage». -- carlb 15:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Joual is a living language, no just some poor people slang. It has many words in common with French, sure, but it's a distinct dialect.
Many words were invented in Joual and never appeared in the original french language. Take 'ferry boat' for example. Here in Quebec, we call it a 'traversier'. This word is unique, not just a popular culture derivation of some working class usual guy.
Calling joual a slang is pretty offensive, and I suggest that if you're to come and visit us, don't say this to the people : you won't be taken for a funny nor intelligent guy at all. This is simply ethnic purism.
To dial or push buttons. Is this Joual? I don't remember where or how I learned this word. Perhaps I made it up?
Another (from my mother, the interior designer): keten (or kéten, qéten - actual spelling is unclear) Pendragon39 06:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
While the vast majority of this article is uncited, there is one assertion that deserves some confirmation. The list of English loan words has "Fucker le chien", which, to a non-speaker, looks like "to fuck the dog". While its definition looks like this phrase could be genuine, the phrase itself looks spurious. Could someone confirm the veracity of this phrase? ++ Arx Fortis ( talk) 01:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
The article Quebec French claims this word is perjorative. Is it or not? NorthernThunder ( talk) 09:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes it is, but this term is not used often nowadays. Kovlovsky ( talk) 15 november 2009 —Preceding undated comment added 03:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC).
What about "blounde"? Slang of: 'blonde' or 'blond', as in: girlfriend. Example: "...i' s'en va'ncore avec sa blounde, tabernouche..." ( = "...he's going out again with his girlfriend, dammit...", like when you are hoping to watch hockey Saturday night with your buddies and one of your gang instead seems to prefer to go out with his new girlfriend -- again -- instead of hanging with his 'homies' to watch the game, thereby proving that she is starting to bust up the sacred circle of you and your 'guy-buddies' and ...... ah but I digress).
Anyway, what about 'blounde'? I don't know if I am spelling that correct, but any francophone guy knows that that means girlfriend. Because 'blondes' are kind of rare amongst Catholics (ie, French and Irish in Quebec and Northeastern Ontario and New Brunswick and St-Boniface), so the word 'blonde' -- where blonde girls are more likely to be Protestant -- really hits home as defining a 'girlfriend'.
Another way to think of it is that: "blounde" ~= " shiksa". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atikokan ( talk • contribs) 03:14, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
I just want to point out that "blonde" for girlfriend was also used in France up to the 19th Century. "Auprès de ma blonde", a old an famous folklore song, refers to that. Writers like Flaubert used it also. It meant "mistress" as opposed to spouse. Many French words still in use in French Canada are obsolete now in French Europe.
Sir John Falstaff (
talk) 15:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
Today, many Québécois who were raised in Quebec during the last century (command of English notwithstanding) can understand and speak at least some joual.[citation needed]
Every Québécois raised in any part of Quebec can understand joual. It is in fact the causal language that most people speak even at work or at any other place. It ain't really perceived as uneducated anymore to speak joual. I think that citation needed sign should be removed. Joual is well-known in Québec and even communally spoken on national television on varieties show. For that reason, I'll remove the Citation needed mark. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.22.160.143 ( talk) 07:45, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I very much dispute this. Many people in Quebec, myself included, understand very little joual. Both my parents, born in Quebec, understood almost none and my grandparents none whatsoever. Gentleman wiki ( talk) 01:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
I noticed several pronunciations in Joual that are parallel in Haitian Creole. My thought is a general petrification of pronunciations that existed earlier in European standard French, but history of the French language is not my area. Just to note, 'isit', 'aswa-a', and 'fret~fwet' are all the standard ways to say 'icitte', 'asoere' and 'frete' in Creole. 2601:582:4401:477B:ED8C:8CAF:389D:2857 ( talk) 16:47, 19 December 2016 (UTC) Tom in Florida
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2019 and 7 May 2019. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Gd6505a,
Janiegoheen. Peer reviewers:
Ylils,
Otkri,
Kh3522a.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 01:27, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
As a speaker of French, I wonder about this classification, because much of what's listed as examples are exactly what I've heard on the streets of East-Central French cities, like Besançon, Dijon, Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon, Saint-Etienne. I'm sure there's more depth to this, however some of it can just be argued to be l'argot.
a type of sociolect aimed at excluding certain people from the conversation. Slang initially functions as encryption, so that the non-initiate cannot understand the conversation, or as a further way to communicate with those who understand it. Slang functions as a way to recognize members of the same group, and to differentiate that group from the society at large.
Those are Québec French expressions, and are not particularly joual (which is Montreal specific), so I think that paragraph should be moved to the more appropriate article. Plus I doubt that pitoune in the log sense has the same etymology as the cute girl sense...-- 24.203.216.242 02:50, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
[...] the word "pitchoune" exists in auvergnat that means "cute girl".
About "pitoune": if the word does come from France, which I cannot verify, its etymology would be "pichona", pronounced pi'tchouno or pi'tsouno, in Occitan. Mistralians spell it "pitchouna". The word "pitchoune" (masc. "pitchoun"), which is widely used in Southern France, retains the original meaning of "little one". It may describe any girl ranging from a child to a late teenager and is quite affectionate. We also say "pitchounette" (masc. "pitchounet"), from Occitan "pichoneta", but in this case we will almost invariably refer to a very young girl. The word in itself, even as used in today's French, doesn't involve someone is cute. AnPrionsaBeag 20:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
As for "chu", "té", "ché", "pis", "y", "a", "ouais", "y'a", "ben", "su'l" and "tsé", these are commonly heard in spoken French, though they're more often spelt as follows:
"chu" is "j'suis" (in most cases) or simply "chuis" (more aptly), but most French will write "je suis" and still speak it as "chuis";
"té" is "t'es" (very frequently heard and written): similar to "t'as" for "tu as";
"ché" is "j'sais" or "chais", same as "chuis" for use;
"pis" is "pis" too, but is becoming rare;
"y" is "y" (in nearly all cases) or "i": as words like "gentil" or "fusil" show, not saying the l after a final i-syllable is common in French; note that "il" is pronounced "i" only before a consonant;
"a" can also be noted "a": "elle" may also be shortened to "è" in spoken French but "elle" is still the preferred option in writing;
"ouais" is "ouais" as well, and not "ouai" as Marc asserted;
"y'a" is "y'a" (mistakenly) or "y a": Southerners have the excuse of Occitan "i a" for leaving out the "il";
"ben" is "ben", most famously in stereotypical Norman French wisdom: "Ptêt ben qu'oui, ptêt ben qu'non";
"su'l" is also heard but still spelt "sur le": maybe from Occitan "sul" for "sus lo";
"tsé" is "t'sais" and is very frequent in young people's French.
AnPrionsaBeag 20:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
See the works of Claude Duneton. The fact that a Quebec word is similar in meaning and form to a word in some regional dialect in France does not make it any less dialectal, and thus joual (depending on taste).
And then there are coincidences. For instance, "mon pitou" and "ma pitoune" were common endearments a generation ago. Once the masculine is re-inserted into the discussion (pitou means puppy), the Auvergnat form is an obvious red herring.
(By the way, in today's Montreal "pitoune" doesn't mean cute and does not especially mean loose, it means "hot looking". A girl can turn herself into a pitoune and back for the pleasure of "bummer" (to go bumming).
On the other hand, it has always struck me that joual also has its own grammar. One special point is the future tense. At the obvious level, "j'aimerai, tu aimeras, il aimera" are replaced with "m'a aimer, tu vas aimer, y va aimer".
More important is what is less obvious. In contrast to standard French, which is very definite (une porte doit être ouverte ou fermée), Québécois speech is minimal, prudent and tentative. Vigneau has some monologues that illustrate this well. Since the future is in any case a modality, joual multiplies the modalities indefinitely, so as not to take too definite a position on what is not yet a given. "Y va aimer" may be felt to be too assertive. So, you can have "y s'en va pour aimer", "y'é-t-à veille d'aimer", "y'é parti pour aimer", "y'é-t-en train pour aimer", "y'é-t-après aimer"... (The last form seems a variant of the present tense, but its persistence, I think, is due to the ambiguity, is he loving, right now, or is he on the way to it? The actual expression in Quebec speech of what the French call "le futur" takes a range of colorations which (again, in my opinion) wrecks the simplicity of French book grammar.
Another example, also related to modality, is the use of the infinitive to express a condition (with the consequence put in the conditional mood, as usual): "Être à Montréal, j'aurais été aux vues." (Had I been in Montreal, I would've gone to a movie.) Standard French would of course be: "Si j'avais été à Montréal, je serais allé au cinéma." Phranger 00:46, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
"Poutine" is the normal joual pronunciation for "pudding". But the meaning is, or rather was, much broader -- it covered the same extension as "chow" in US English (applied to human food). When a brilliant journalist asked some lady in Victoriaville or Drummondville what it was she served him, she said "chow", that is, "poutine". Being a journalist and therefore quite ignorant, he reported this as the name for a specific dish, and the rest unfortunately is history.
Until that idiot scribe got on the case, there was no standard "poutine", on the contrary, the word meant that the dish conformed to no special standard.
By the way, "pudding" itself, in English, comes from the French, "boudin" [OED].
The moral of the story is, don't talk to journalists. Phranger 00:23, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
As noted in the article, "joual" is attested before WW2, in the deprecatory sense of corrupt, uneducated Quebec French. The word itself refers to a pronunciation so foreign to what was believed to be standard French, that the link to the spelling was half lost (joual --> ? cheval). The spoken or unspoken implication was that this was the speech of illiterates.
Around the time Desbiens got on his horse, however, the context changed. People were literate, but they still spoke joual. The automatic deprecatory intent was put into question when, soon after, Michel Tremblay came out with Les Belles-Soeurs. Phranger 00:29, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Unless it was verrrrry recently adopted by either the académie of the OLF (as in the last 5 years I`ve been away from Montréal), pantry is *not* french. I looked online at various dictionaries and can`t find it. What did you based your removal on ? -- Marc pasquin 18:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
If have heard that there is also a form of French similar to Joual that is used mainly by younger people and is full of slang and anglicisms. Can anyone confirm or explain this? Thanks! B-] // Big Adamsky 21:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I know there is a sizeable Italian community in Montréal, so I'm wondering if it had any influence on the development of Joual. Tchine-tchine for "cheers" sounds identical to the common Italian toast, cin-cin. Bécosse brought a smile to my face, because in Italiese, the hybrid language that sprouted up among Italian immigrants in English-speaking Canada (especially in the Toronto area), baccàus is the word used for washroom :) Though I suppose that could simply be the result of two linguistic groups responding to the same English word. :: Salvo (talk) 03:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
It seems you missed what I wrote above: anything stigmatised is lumped into Joual. Plus, Joual is Quebec French, not all of Quebec French but part of it.
There's finally a book/study on the Quebec French norm (by M.-E. de Villers and published in 2005) and it only focuses on comparisons between Le Devoir and Le Monde. The reality, however, is that human beings are not newpapers and, as individuals, mix levels/registers in their own speech all the time (yeah, think Péladeau). I'll give an example: "la chose dont j'ai besoin" vs. "l'affaire que j'ai besoin"; most people in Quebec either don't know that the relative clause starting with "que" is substandard yet a very defining feature of Quebec French, regardless of socio-economic class. Often heard from television and radio reporters, relative or subordinate clauses with "que" are so common on all levels and among all socio-economic groups, yet everyone will call it Joual. Joual's more a perception than an actual sociolect; if you ask people on the street what they speak, they do not say "Joual" they say "French" or, worse, "bad French". "Joual" was a poster child of some sorts. Remember, joe-blow came up with the term and idea of "Joual", not linguists.
Oh, btw, the article as it is now is somewhat incorrect by starting with "toé", etc. The pronunciations in "oé" are also found outside of Mtl and not just in those words; it's a phonological phenomenon, not a lexical one. The Joual perception focuses more on lexical items than anything else, not major language practices and who and when they are used.
Also, I am not against the idea of the Joual article focusing more on its perception and its force as catalyst for identity affirmation. It would also be interesting to show how the transcription of Joual is eye dialect and that it became legitimate in the eyes of the public once plays were in it. Here's a riddle...in your opinion, is Virginie written in Joual? hehehe -- CJ Withers 06:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I re-read this article and am surprised at how so much is called "Joual" when the item in question is just an anglicism or casual French. "Ouin" is not Joual; it can be heard in Joual, but it is not Joual. "Truck" is not Joual; it's an anglicism as are "la hose", "bienvenue" instead of "de rien", etc. Also, sacres are an integral part of Joual but there's nothing on them... More misinformation than information, this article doesn't need sources, it needs to be purged 'n' merged. -- CJ Withers 06:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I hope you don't think I'm weird by saying this, but we agree and disagree yet in different ways. First, your perceptions of what constitutes Joual is the problem. We can discuss that point by point somewhere else. I find that wikipedia is not a good place to discuss linguistic minutia between linguists and non-linguists. Second, I totally agree with you that the Quebec French article needs much work; I want to include a Joual section, but it needs to be put in context. The probleme with native-speaker notions is just that, whether it's in English, French or Swahili: people's idea of something is often not the reality when it comes to language. It's been proved over and over again that our everyday notions of language are skewed by social values and identity politics. The upshot it that Joual = stigma aux yeux des vielles outremontaises and Joual = la langue du peuple pour ce que ne vois d'un oeil. The internal debate revolves around this polarization; that's what I'm working on showing. Please check my sandbox on Québec French...scroll down and look where I jotted down stuff about Joual, les Belles Soeurs, Tout le monde en parle, Denise Bombardier (dont j'ai fait la connaissance il y a un mois!!), etc. Also, please don't take this personally, but I don't an encyclopedia has great value if it's written by anyone who feels like writing about something that seems important to them. On the other hand, I do feel that experts can get out of hand and can also obscure the realities behind something important. That's why I find Wikipedia interesting; not only is there a team that can enhance articles, it also combines the knowledgeable folk with the uninitiated. By dialoguing with the uninitiated, the articles can acheive quality status because they are supposed to be informative. The real danger is writing about a topic which is taken for granted as reality when in fact it's just the notion that's taken root. Joual is that example is the article for Buffalo English. Joual is a (pre-conceived) notion of what a sociolect should be; the proof is that it is stigmatized. Anyway, I'm starting to repeat myself.
If we remove the phonological aspects and then the syntactic elements and then the anglicisms, what would be left? Nothing or close to it. I invite you discuss, for example, pronouns in Quebec French (they're the same in Joual and in standard spoken French in Quebec, btw). For example, "nous autres" is not Joual; in fact, it's just Quebec. "Nous" is virtually non-existent in spoken French in the world; "on" is the multi-purpose word. The same goes for "elles"; it doesn't exist in spoken French in Québec. Women and even the most ardent of feminists don't use it at all. This fact is startling. You can even hear Mme Bombardier use "ils" for "elles" in her commentary on International Women's Day. Enough for now. Later. -- CJ Withers 23:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
can someone please include words UNIQUE to joual, as the author of this article has used many continental french words? merci.
I'm hesitant about «ski-doo» being listed as an English word that's found its way into Québec's argot if the trademark originated in Québec, is based on a word «ski» that (like the name of most sports) is the same in both languages, and Armand Bombardier is not an anglo name. There may be other trademarks which do qualify as anglicisms, such as «le frigo/le frigidaire» (based on an American-language trademark, which in turn appears to be based on the English words "frigid air") or «le coke» ( Coca-Cola, originally created in Atlanta and named for the coca plant). Automotive terminology would also be a source of beaucoup de franglais as most of the cars were from US-based manufacturers and the mécaniciens would have originally been working from American-language service manuals to maintain the vehicles. «Le clutch, il ne va pas» would likely be understood as a clutch that doesn't work in any garage in Québec, even if the proper French word is «débrayage». -- carlb 15:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Joual is a living language, no just some poor people slang. It has many words in common with French, sure, but it's a distinct dialect.
Many words were invented in Joual and never appeared in the original french language. Take 'ferry boat' for example. Here in Quebec, we call it a 'traversier'. This word is unique, not just a popular culture derivation of some working class usual guy.
Calling joual a slang is pretty offensive, and I suggest that if you're to come and visit us, don't say this to the people : you won't be taken for a funny nor intelligent guy at all. This is simply ethnic purism.
To dial or push buttons. Is this Joual? I don't remember where or how I learned this word. Perhaps I made it up?
Another (from my mother, the interior designer): keten (or kéten, qéten - actual spelling is unclear) Pendragon39 06:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
While the vast majority of this article is uncited, there is one assertion that deserves some confirmation. The list of English loan words has "Fucker le chien", which, to a non-speaker, looks like "to fuck the dog". While its definition looks like this phrase could be genuine, the phrase itself looks spurious. Could someone confirm the veracity of this phrase? ++ Arx Fortis ( talk) 01:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
The article Quebec French claims this word is perjorative. Is it or not? NorthernThunder ( talk) 09:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes it is, but this term is not used often nowadays. Kovlovsky ( talk) 15 november 2009 —Preceding undated comment added 03:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC).
What about "blounde"? Slang of: 'blonde' or 'blond', as in: girlfriend. Example: "...i' s'en va'ncore avec sa blounde, tabernouche..." ( = "...he's going out again with his girlfriend, dammit...", like when you are hoping to watch hockey Saturday night with your buddies and one of your gang instead seems to prefer to go out with his new girlfriend -- again -- instead of hanging with his 'homies' to watch the game, thereby proving that she is starting to bust up the sacred circle of you and your 'guy-buddies' and ...... ah but I digress).
Anyway, what about 'blounde'? I don't know if I am spelling that correct, but any francophone guy knows that that means girlfriend. Because 'blondes' are kind of rare amongst Catholics (ie, French and Irish in Quebec and Northeastern Ontario and New Brunswick and St-Boniface), so the word 'blonde' -- where blonde girls are more likely to be Protestant -- really hits home as defining a 'girlfriend'.
Another way to think of it is that: "blounde" ~= " shiksa". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atikokan ( talk • contribs) 03:14, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
I just want to point out that "blonde" for girlfriend was also used in France up to the 19th Century. "Auprès de ma blonde", a old an famous folklore song, refers to that. Writers like Flaubert used it also. It meant "mistress" as opposed to spouse. Many French words still in use in French Canada are obsolete now in French Europe.
Sir John Falstaff (
talk) 15:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
Today, many Québécois who were raised in Quebec during the last century (command of English notwithstanding) can understand and speak at least some joual.[citation needed]
Every Québécois raised in any part of Quebec can understand joual. It is in fact the causal language that most people speak even at work or at any other place. It ain't really perceived as uneducated anymore to speak joual. I think that citation needed sign should be removed. Joual is well-known in Québec and even communally spoken on national television on varieties show. For that reason, I'll remove the Citation needed mark. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.22.160.143 ( talk) 07:45, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I very much dispute this. Many people in Quebec, myself included, understand very little joual. Both my parents, born in Quebec, understood almost none and my grandparents none whatsoever. Gentleman wiki ( talk) 01:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
I noticed several pronunciations in Joual that are parallel in Haitian Creole. My thought is a general petrification of pronunciations that existed earlier in European standard French, but history of the French language is not my area. Just to note, 'isit', 'aswa-a', and 'fret~fwet' are all the standard ways to say 'icitte', 'asoere' and 'frete' in Creole. 2601:582:4401:477B:ED8C:8CAF:389D:2857 ( talk) 16:47, 19 December 2016 (UTC) Tom in Florida