[cydonian_monk]

It also doesn't help that French and Quebecois French are different dialects to the point of almost being different languages. We "offended" our entire office in Montreal when we rolled their telephony system into our headquarter's PBX and added localization for IVRs, Voicemail and whatnot using prompts recorded by a Parisian. I could understand the French French, the Quebecois was..., well, honestly about as different as street Spanish in Mexico and the Columbian Spanish I learned early in life.

[malpighien]

French spoken in Quebec is the same French as in France, they use their idioms and slang at time with an accent but we can 100% understand each others. If you are not convinced you can find multiple interviews of Quebecois speakers done in France on youtube and see for yourself that it is without filters or subtitles. Here is an example for celine dion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x6ezHzWPDU

[coredog64]

It goes the other way too. Most Parisians would rather speak English with a Québécois than listen to them “mangle” it.

[gerbilly]

> It also doesn't help that French and Quebecois French are different dialects to the point of almost being different languages.

No, just no, they aren't and I can speak both.

I don't know if you are a native speaker, but It's tiring to have your own language (or 'dialect') explained to you.

For what it's worth, France has dozens of regional dialects as well.

[droussel]

I am a French speaking Québécois and do work with many French people (downtown Montreal). You can't deny that the French French and Québécois French uses a lot of different words. They are still the same language for sure, but we often have so much fun exchanging funny expressions.

A funny anecdote was when I was working with a guy name Jean-Nicolas and all the Québécois people called him Jean-Nic. That was very funny to the French guys hehe

[cydonian_monk]

Not a native French speaker, no. Apologies if that one-sentence broad generalization was tiring to you - I meant neither to explain nor be exhaustive. ;)

Obviously they're not different languages - I was a bit exaggeratory in that regard. And I do understand both, in as much as I understand either. French is my third or fourth most proficient language after English, Spanish and maybe German, but I never get to use it (or German for that matter).

The two are however different enough in some pronunciation and idioms that we ultimately had to do a second localization to support both. And the differences reported to us ran the spectrum from simple things, such as how to correctly pronounce the (cardinal) number 1 (a cleaner "un" compared to what sounds to my ear like "arn"), to the longer phrases one might expect to hear in a voicemail prompt. Ultimately our translation department got things ironed out, but it was a (somewhat amusing/bemusing) learning experience for us.

[gerbilly]

It's ok.

I have another response in this thread about the origins of the Parisian accent (because it really is a new invention) compared to the Québec accent.

Also in Martinique, they speak with a less sing-songy accent than they do on the mainland.

I personally enjoy all the variations of my language, and especially appreciate the language that is 'of the people'.

[fatnoah]

Definitely. Some of the idioms are different and the language sounds come from the back of the throat vs. Parisian French. I had the same experience in terms of understanding and being understood.