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10 signs you speak French like the Québécois (#845)
If this list makes sense to you, you’ve learned to speak French like the Québécois. Congratulations! 1. You pronounce â like the sound the doctor tells you to make when examining your throat. 2. You’d...
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Getting it right: using POGNER in Québécois French (#846)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again) — we can never have too many examples of the Québécois French verb pogner on OffQc! It’s the one verb I’m consistently asked for help with. In this...
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Do you understand this informal contraction in French? (#847)
At a restaurant, I found a pair of keys at the counter. I picked them up and asked a man beside me if they were his. He said he had in fact seen the keys sitting there on the counter before, but they...
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Improve your pronunciation of Québécois French (#848)
Here’s a great audio overview of the main pronunciation features of Québécois French. It’s made available by Université Laval. You can listen to vowels, consonants and 30 example sentences, pronounced...
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Analysis of a short sentence in Québécois French (#849)
Michael asks about a usage he’s heard in which qu’est-ce que is used instead of ce que, like this: je comprends qu’est-ce que tu veux dire. Should you adopt this usage? It’s not considered to be...
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Improve your accent: the Québécois French  sound (#850)
You’ve got lots of videos featuring speakers from Québec in the Listen section, so let’s put two of them to good use by looking at how the Québécois pronounce â. The Québécois â sound is one of the...
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Understand 2 contractions in colloquial Québécois French (#851)
Check out the text on this sign in a Montréal street promoting a beer: Pas besoin d’avoir 56 sortes de verres, est bonne direct dans bouteille. No need for 56 kinds of glasses, it’s good straight from...
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If CHU means JE SUIS, what does CHU-TU mean? (#852)
Do you remember chu, that informal pronunciation of je suis used in Québécois French? je suis > j’suis > j’su’s = sounds like chu Sometimes you’ll also see chu spelled as chus. Either way, it...
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Quiz: Test your Québécois French! (#853)
How good is your Québécois French coming along? Take the quiz and find out! For each question, find the correct French translation of the English sentence in bold. There’s only one correct answer for...
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Using your French as a tourist in Montréal (#854)
A reader of OffQc will be travelling to Montréal and had some questions for me about informal and formal language. I’m going to answer here because I’m sure others have similar doubts. He asks: In...
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Do you know the meaning of GENRE in this quote? (#855)
Rabii Rammal writes about the overuse of text messages in a relationship, even when the subject matter is important. He says: Même les affaires importantes. Genre quand on se chicane, on s’envoie des...
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Get in line! Queueing up in Québec (#856)
The British are known for how seriously they take queueing up, but I say the Québécois are just as particular. It’s not for nothing “Québec” shares the same first three letters as “queue.” (Before I go...
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I do it… for the double chocolate cake (#857)
Remember the Mansfield gym with their Fuck the excuses posters? Or how about the Be better than your best excuse ones? They’ve got some new posters outside the gym now, these ones suggesting reasons...
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3 Québécois French usages: tanné, tanner, tannant (#858)
I spotted a Québécois usage on the cover of the magazine Ricardo yesterday. Tanné de jeter de la bouffe? Tired of throwing food away? The expression to learn is être tanné, which means to be tired, fed...
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3 random Québécois French usages overheard in Montréal (#859)
Today’s three usages come to us by way of a woman in her 70s. I overheard her speaking with her husband in Montréal. 1. une sacoche One of the things the woman talked about was her handbag (or purse),...
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J’ai la chienne! What does this Québécois expression mean? (#860)
A park for dogs to run around in (and their owners to cruise each other) in Montréal We’ve seen the expression avoir la chienne before, but let’s review it. I was reminded of this expression while...
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I wanna stay home… chenous (#861)
Keven Breton writes about how autumn is the perfect season to be boring and stay home in “La saison parfaite pour être plate” (The perfect season to be boring), which appeared on Urbania. Keven admits...
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Quiz: Test your Québécois French! (#862)
Test your knowledge of Québécois French! Pick the correct French translation in each question. There’s only one correct answer for each question: the other two are nonsense or mistranslations, so...
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Cognez à la porte! Knock on the door! (#863)
On Urbania, Kéven Breton writes about the challenge of getting into different bars in Montréal on his wheelchair, in Vie nocturne à roulettes : tous ces bars qui ne veulent pas de moi. He says some...
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Learn a new expression used in Québécois French: c’est rendu que (#864)
In #863, we found the adjective rendu in a text written by Kéven Breton about wheelchair accessibility. The wording was: Ah ouais c’est accessible chenous monsieur! Vous avez juste à passer par...
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