Speaking Canadian French : An Informal Account of the French Language in Canada

by Mark M. Orkin

Good Hardcover General Publishing Group, Inc.. edgewear to dj. . Good. Hardcover. 1971.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1971

Reviews

[Biblio Curious]

Hands down, the 1st section is the most interesting. It goes into the history of Canadian French and how it changed over time.

The second section includes a lot of French phrases without any translations available. So I missed a lot of it, the whole middle section actually because of how many untranslated phrases there are. The target audience seems to be for bilingual folks.

And finally, the last section gets into the nitty gritty linguistics data which is interesting for language nuts like me. Some parts read like it's very out of date and perhaps a book like this is where the 'Eskimos have 30 words for snow' mistaken theory comes from.

Note: don't use the word, Eskimos anymore, please!! Some academics still use this out-dated word from a more racist time. Today, Canadian Northerners want to be called Inuit. This book probably won't age well because of the inherent racism towards Canadian Indigenous people.

I'd recommend an up-to-date book on this subject.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty outdated now but the first chapter detailing the way Canadian French was praised by the French before the 1760s was really interesting. Many French travellers to New France thought that the French spoken in the colony was pure and beautiful, only for that opinion to alter dramatically after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
I recognized some Canadian French expressions ("décollé-toé ded'là") but others weren't something I ever remember hearing. I do think that it's rich criticizing Canadian French for using anglicisms when the French say "week-end", "puzzle" and "batterie" (meaning battery rather than drums). I also just learned that instead of maîtrise the French say "master." Come on now.