Yi Hu
In this blog, I will continue to talk about the French language which is interesting to me, but this time it will be from a different perspective. One day, my French teacher in the class said that in Quebec, people prefer to say “ À tantôt”, but in France, people are more likely to say “À bientôt”. At that time, I began to think about one question, that is, why the same language can have different expressions between different countries?
First of all, the differences relate to the local language environment and historical background. As we know that the official language in Quebec is French but we still can see that people are mostly bilingual, especially in Montreal, which means that they speak English and French. One of the reasons is that Quebec French has been influenced by English for a long time. For example, when Francophones in Quebec want to respond “thank you”, they often say “Bienvenue”. It is similar to the English expression “you are welcome”. There are still many other differences, Melody Tabatabaian explained them in her blog https://www.fluentu.com/blog/french/quebec-french/ Beginning in the 1530s, the French were the first to develop fur-trading activities in the region and colonize what is present-day Canada, calling it New France. When British people began to dominate the eastern coast of North America in the 1680s, they entered into a series of wars with France. As a result of these wars, New France was eventually turned over to Britain (Royal, 2012). Although Quebecers often support language policies designed to maintain French, in the administrative, financial, and industrial fields such as science and technology, there is an English influence. After all, nowadays the official languages in Canada are English and French. Many anglophones may also move to or live in Quebec. On the contrary, in France, people live in a relatively monolingual environment though more recently French has experienced a great deal of evolution.
Besides, the differences are influenced by local geographical factors. France is characterized by a temperate climate and oceanic with a high level of rainfall, mild winters, and warm summers. Sometimes summers will be cool too. Canada on the other hand can be very cold in certain areas, especially in winter (Aron, 2011). Thus, after the initial French immigrants came to North America because the natural environment and climate were quite different from France, they combined with the new living environment and created many new expressions based on French.
So here is the question: Do you think we need to assimilate and unify the language or maintain the language diversity?
References:
Aron. (2011, February 18). Difference between Canada and France. Difference Between.com. https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-canada-and-vs-france/
Royal, B. (2012). World Regional Geography. University of Minnesota Libraries.
