Quebec English: A distinct dialect

This article first appeared in the June 2016 issue of Life in Québec Magazine.

Life in Quebec Magazine is a lifestyle publication covering Quebec and is published 4 times per year.

Subscribers have their copies mailed directly to them.

You can support Life in Québec Magazine by subscribing here – join the club and have your copy mailed to you.

Quebec English: A distinct dialect

By Michael Bourguignon

What do you get when an anglo from Montréal tells a Toronto landlord that he’s in town to do a stage and would like to find a three-and-a-half near a metro and dep? A long, blank stare.

In an article he wrote recently for the Canadian Encyclopedia, Dr. Charles Boberg, an associate professor of linguistics at McGill University, notes that the anglophone population in the province of Québec has declined from 25 percent in the 19th century, to 14 percent in the mid-20th century, to roughly 8 percent today.

For a variety of reasons, the English language that has survived, if not thrived, in the province has become as distinct as Québec itself.

As a specialist in regional language differences, Boberg has studied Québec English in comparison to the English spoken elsewhere in Canada, and does not hesitate to describe the other language of La Belle Province as a truly unique dialect that is not to be heard anywhere else on the continent. Even within the province, pockets of English-speaking Quebecers retain their own unique patois.

“We found out that the Gaspé Peninsula is an interesting transition zone between classic Québec English and New Brunswick English, where anglophones say things like, ‘It’s some hot out there!’”

For a long time, the Gaspé was a remote place, having closer contact to New Brunswick than to the rest of Québec, Boberg explained. Like language itself, that reality has been changing over time, in part because of the strength of Québec’s language laws, he says.

In the same way that Québec French is peppered with anglicisms, English as it’s spoken in the province is a distinct dialect heavily influenced by the language of the French majority. That’s why anglos here buy their beer at a “dépanneur” instead of at a convenience store, and write the Métro to work instead of the subway.

The distinction comes from a number of sources, Boberg says. Historically, one of the major differences between English in Eastern Canada and the rest of the country was that provinces like Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario were settled by some 45,000 United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution; when members that same group arrived in Québec, they were “encouraged” by resident francophones to stake their claims in Ontario, s’il-vous-plaît.

The sparsely populated Eastern Townships of the late 18th century were more hospitable to English-speaking arrivals, and English people and place names remain well established there to this day.

In the early 19th century, Montréal and Québec, major entry points thanks to their busy ports, became home to scores of Irish, Scots and Brits, and the language of those islands has continued to influence Québec English in the centuries since.

“So first you have the British influence, and then you have the fact that English in Québec has become not only a numerical minority, but a social minority,” Boberg explains. “There’s still relatively little contact between Québec English speakers and the rest of Canada, so the language has developed in its own way.”

Examples?

“(English-speaking) Québecers are the only people in Canada who retain the British distinction between the E and the A before two Rs, as in ‘Mary, marry and merry.’ At the same time, for some other words, it’s the only US versus British question. In Québec, we tend to use more of the American terms because of our exposure to US mass media.”

Boberg was born in the US in what he calls a tri-dialectal environment: his father was Canadian, his mother British, and his schoolmates spoke US English. This was the mixed language bag he was carrying when he later moved to Alberta, where he stayed until taking up residence in Montréal in 1997. It was in the metropolis that Boberg first observed and gained a quick appreciation of the distinct nature of the local language.

“The first thing I noticed was the incredible diversity of the ethnic language components of English here,” he says, citing three major categories of distinct English speakers: British, Jewish and Mediterranean, the latter group including the Portuguese, Greeks and, especially, Italians.

“In Edmonton, you can’t tell if someone is Jewish by the way they speak,” he notes, whereas the hard G sound in words ending in ‘ing’ is a distinct feature of the Montréal Jewish accent.

As for the Italian population, Boberg notes the existence of a “dictionary of St. Leonard English,” referring to a Montréal neighbourhood whose demographics are overwhelmingly Italian.

Boberg finds it fascinating that these various groups of English speakers “live 20 kilometres away from each other, and yet they don’t speak the same English.”

The same is not true in Toronto, he maintains, because of that city’s apparent power to assimilate. By comparison, he says, a St. Leonard resident of Italian descent, even if his family has been in Québec for a generation or more, retains his distinctive accent “as a source of pride.”

If that’s the history and current reality of Québec’s “English fact,” what could be its future?

“It depends on all kinds of non-linguistic factors,” says Boberg. “For a language to survive, there has to be a linguistic community. Depending on how oppressive the French-speaking majority wants to be, it wouldn’t take much to start the exodus again and counteract the small numbers of new English-speaking coming (to Québec).”

He notes that the Montréal of the 1850s was 50 percent English-speaking, and even Québec City, which has largely remained a staunchly French-speaking enclave, was 40 percent anglophone.

“What’s special is that Québec is the only place in North America where English is in the minority,” Boberg notes.

And the English spoken here is a minority within the broader language itself.

………………………………………………………………………………….

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUBSCRIBE TO LIFE IN QUÉBEC MAGAZINE?

The ONLY way to guarantee your copy of Life in Québec Magazine is to have it mailed to you.

You can purchase your subscription online by clicking HERE or email the details to us,via lifeinquebec.com/contact-us or call 418-948-4144 and we’ll take your order over the phone.

Thanks for your support.