[throwaway41968]

Couple remarks on the author's alleged "weaknesses":

>Understand strongly accented speech. I understand essentially all the “standard” French without subtitles, but very little of the Quebecois.

Most European French speakers have trouble understanding Québecois as well, especially if it delves into slang, so I wouldn't fret much. High level (and written) speech should be ok though.

>Understand very slang-heavy speech. I know a good chunk of argot but there are still plenty of informal vocab words and expressions I don’t know. Especially that damn verlan.

Again, seeing how most people over 35 don't understand any of that stuff either I wouldn't worry too much. Especially because this stuff evolves like crazy and new slang/verlan words keep popping up all the time. I'm in my late 20s and can already feel the divide in the slang I and friends in their early 20s use.

>Write error free text. I can get the message across pretty well without relying on a dictionary, but I often phrase things a bit unnaturally and make minor grammatical errors.

Like I and another poster said, most of the mistakes aren't really mistakes. Only the most extraordinary pedant would object to these.

>Quickly use less common verb tenses. While I know how to construct the past conditional and future perfect, I still can’t use them very fluidly. >Recognize all the weird literary tenses. Imperfect subjunctive? Yuck.

Yeah no one uses these. In fact if you did attempt to use these in a normal conversation there's a good chance you wouldn't be understood. Even in writing, modern authors are more and more switching to present and past perfect. Even tenses like the future are getting increasingly uncommon, people instead use the present and rely on contextual clues or markers, like in German (" we'll meet tomorrow" -> "we meet tomorrow").

What I mean to say from all of this is that even native French speakers are not completely at ease with these pain points so it's no use worrying about them too much.

[mytailorisrich]

The future perfect is very much used both orally and (especially) in writing and so is the past conditional.

The passé simple is almost never used orally these days, and in writing mostly only in literary texts.

I've noticed that the subjunctive is used less in writing since some change to 'simplify' (i.e. dumb down) the language.

Exotic forms of subjunctive (imperfect subjunctive, anyone?) are hardly used anymore even in contemporary literary texts.

[throwaway41968]

> The future perfect is very much used both orally

The past conditional, maybe. The future, really? Do you actually say things like nous nous verrons demain or il l'aura fait avant in casual speech? Well I don't know if you do, but the vast majority of French speakers would say something like on se voit demain et il l'a probablement fait avant. Instead of using specific verb forms to convery meaning people instead rely on context and adverbial cues, as do the speakers of the dozens of languages that do not use the byzantine tense and mood system of the Romance languages (see: Japanese, Chinese, etc.) and are certainly not the worse for it.

>I've noticed that the subjunctive is used less in writing since some change to 'simplify' (i.e. dumb down) the language.

You're aware that the argument you're making about the language getting "dumbed down" is literally millennia old, right?

[Karawebnetwork]

> nous nous verrons demain or il l'aura fait avant

I am a french speaker from Québec and hear both of those often.

[neplus]

Do you happen to be from Quebec? I'm Canadian by birth and have wanted recently to learn Quebecois French, but have struggled with finding practical resources (as everyone seems to agree most French resources and learning programs are going to give you a rather half-baked understanding of Quebecois French).

[jefft255]

I’m Québécois. Honestly, I’m not aware of any Quebec-specific online resources. If you’re still living in Canada, there’s a good chance that you can get night classes at a University that would be taught by a Quebec expat. Otherwise, I wouldn’t agree that other resources will give you a half-baked understanding. It’s mostly a question of training your ear for the accent, which you can do by watching shows, for example. Differences in vocabulary are well-documented and easy to memorize (probably, as someone who’s done the reverse and learned the France equivalent).

[shwoopdiwoop]

Mango languages app offers Canadian French/Québécois - I find their approach to language learning much better than Duolingo. Plus it comes free with your library card if you’re in Ontario!