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''Joual'' () is an accepted name for the linguistic features of Quebec French that are associated with the French-speaking
working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
in
Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...
which has become a symbol of national identity for some. ''Joual'' is stigmatized by some and celebrated by others. While ''Joual'' is often considered a
sociolect In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language (non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group. Sociolects involve both passive acquisiti ...
of the Québécois working class, many feel that perception is outdated. Speakers of Quebec French from outside Montreal usually have other names to identify their speech, such as Magoua in Trois-Rivières, and Chaouin south of Trois-Rivières. Linguists tend to eschew this term, but historically some have reserved the term ''Joual'' for the variant of Quebec French spoken in Montreal. Both the upward socio-economic mobility among the Québécois, and a cultural renaissance around ''Joual'' connected to the Quiet Revolution in the Montreal East-End have resulted in ''Joual'' being spoken by people across the educational and economic spectrum. Today, many Québécois who were raised in Quebec during the 20th century (command of English notwithstanding) can understand and speak at least some ''Joual''.


History

The creation of ''Joual'' can be traced back to the "era of silence", the period from the 1840s to the 1960s and the start of the Quiet Revolution. The "era of silence" was marked with stark stigmatization of the common working man. Written documents were not shared with the typical working class man, and the very strict form of French that was used by elites excluded a majority of the population. The Quiet Revolution during the 1960s was a time of awakening, in which the Quebec working class demanded more respect in society, including wider use of Québécois in literature and the performing arts.
Michel Tremblay Michel Tremblay (born 25 June 1942) is a French-Canadian novelist and playwright. Tremblay was born in Montreal, Quebec, where he grew up in the French-speaking neighbourhood of Plateau Mont-Royal; at the time of his birth, a neighbourhood wi ...
is an example of a writer who deliberately used ''Joual'' and Québécois to represent the working class populations of Quebec. ''Joual'', a language of the working class, quickly became associated with slang and vulgar language. Despite its continued use in Canada, there are still ideologies present which place a negative connotation on the use of ''Joual''.


Origin of the name ''Joual''

Although coinage of the name ''joual'' is often attributed to French-Canadian journalist André Laurendeau, who in October 1959 wrote an article in '' Le Devoir'' criticizing the quality of the French language spoken by French Canadian students, the usage of this term throughout French-speaking Canada likely predates this text. The actual word ''Joual'' is the representation of how the word ''cheval'' ( Standard French: , ''horse'') is pronounced by those who speak ''Joual''. ("Horse" is used in a variation of the phrase ''parler français comme une vache'' o speak French like a cow i.e. to speak French terribly; hence, a put-down of the Québécois dialect.) The weak
schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
vowel disappeared. Then the
voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
was voiced to , thereby creating . Next, the at the beginning of a syllable in some regional dialects of French or even in very rapid speech in general weakened to become the
semi-vowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are th ...
written . The end result is the word transcribed as ''Joual''.


Most notable or stereotypical linguistic features

Diphthongs are normally present where long vowels would be present in standard French. There is also the usage of ''sontaient, sonté'' (''ils étaient, ils ont été''). Although ''moé'' and ''toé'' are today considered substandard slang pronunciations of ''moi'' and ''toi'', these were the original pronunciations of ''
ancien régime ''Ancien'' may refer to * the French word for " ancient, old" ** Société des anciens textes français * the French for "former, senior" ** Virelai ancien ** Ancien Régime ** Ancien Régime in France {{disambig ...
'' French used in all provinces of Northern France, by the royalty, aristocracy, and common people. After the 1789
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...
, the standard pronunciation in France changed to that of a previously-stigmatized form in the speech of Paris, but Quebec French continued to evolve from the historically older dialects, having become isolated from France following the 1760 British conquest of New France. ''Joual'' shares many features with modern Oïl languages, such as Norman,
Gallo Gallo may refer to: *Related to Gaul: **Gallo-Roman culture **Gallo language, a regional language of France **Gallo-Romance, a branch of Romance languages **Gallo-Italic or Gallo-Italian language, a branch spoken in Northern Italy of the Romance ...
, Picard, Poitevin and
Saintongeais Saintongeais (''saintonjhais'') is a dialect of Poitevin-Santongeais spoken halfway down the western coast of France in the former provinces of Saintonge, Aunis and Angoumois, all of which have been incorporated into the current departments ...
though its affinities are greatest with the 17th century koiné of
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
. Speakers of these languages of France predominated among settlers to
New France New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spa ...
. It could be argued that at least some aspects of more modern ''Joual'' are further linguistic contractions of standard French. ''D'la'' (''de la'') is an example where the word ''de'' has nearly fallen out of usage over time and has become contracted. This argument does apply to other words, and this phenomenon has become widespread throughout contemporary French language. Another significant characteristic of ''Joual'' is the liberal use of profanities called '' sacre'' in everyday speech.


Words of English origin

There are a number of English
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...
s in ''Joual'', although they have been stigmatized since the 1960s, instead favoring alternative terms promoted by the ''
Office québécois de la langue française The (, OQLF; en, Quebec Board of the French Language) is a public organization established on 24 March 1961, by the Liberal government of Jean Lesage. Attached to the , its initial mission, defined in its report of 1 April 1964, was "to align ...
''. The usage of deprecated anglicisms varies both regionally and historically. In the table below are a few common ''Joual'' words of English origin. Some words were also previously thought to be of English origin, although modern research has shown them to be from regional French dialects: * Pitoune (log, cute girl, loose girl): previously thought to come from "happy town" although the word ''pitchoune'' exists in dialects from southern France (possibly coming from the Occitan word ''pichona'', "little girl"), now used to mean "cute girl". * Poutine: was thought to come from "pudding", but some have drawn a parallel with the Occitan language (also called Provençal or Languedoc) term ''podinga'', a stew made of scraps, which was the previous use of the term in Montreal.


Glossary


In popular culture

The two-act play '' Les Belles-sœurs'' by Canadian writer
Michel Tremblay Michel Tremblay (born 25 June 1942) is a French-Canadian novelist and playwright. Tremblay was born in Montreal, Quebec, where he grew up in the French-speaking neighbourhood of Plateau Mont-Royal; at the time of his birth, a neighbourhood wi ...
premiered in 1968 at the Théâtre du Rideau Vert in Montreal. Many consider it to have had a profound impact on Canadian culture, as it was one of the first times ''Joual'' was seen on a national stage. The play follows a working-class woman named Germaine in Montréal. After winning a million trading stamps, she invites her friends over to help paste them into booklets to redeem them. But Germaine is unsuspecting of her jealous friends who are envious of her winnings. The fact that the play was originally written in ''Joual'' is very important to the socio-linguistic aspect of the women. The characters all come from the working class and for the most part, speak in ''Joual'', which at the time was not seen on the main stage. The play was cited at the time as a "radical element among Quebec critics as the dawn of a new era of liberation, both political and aesthetic". When ''Les Belles-sœurs'' premiered in Paris, France in 1973 as it was originally written, in ''Joual'', it was met with some initial criticism. One critic described it as difficult to understand as
ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
. Tremblay responded, "a culture should always start with speak to herself. The ancient Greeks spoke to each other". The popularity of the play has since caused it to be translated into multiple languages, raising controversies in the translation community over retaining the authenticity of ''Les Belles-sœurs'' even when not performed in the original dialect of ''Joual''. Writing in ''Joual'' gave Tremblay an opportunity to resist cultural and linguistic "imperialism" of France, while signifying the secularization of Québec culture.


See also

* Anglicism * Association québécoise de linguistique * Basilect *
Bilingualism Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...
*
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
*
Canadian French Canadian French (french: français canadien) is the French language as it is spoken in Canada. It includes multiple varieties, the most prominent of which is Québécois (Quebec French). Formerly ''Canadian French'' referred solely to Quebec ...
* Canadien (disambiguation) * Chaouin * Chiac * Cockney * Demographics of Quebec *
Franglais Franglais (; also Frenglish ) is a French blend that referred first to the overuse of English words by French speakers and later to diglossia or the macaronic mixture of French () and English (). Etymology The word ''Franglais'' was first att ...
* French Canadian *
French Canadians French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the twentieth century; french: Canadiens français, ; feminine form: , ), or Franco-Canadians (french: Franco-Canadiens), refers to either an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to Fren ...
* French language in Canada *
Language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...
*
Language planning In sociolinguistics, language planning (also known as language engineering) is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of languages or language varieties within a speech community.Kaplan B., Robert, and Richa ...
* Languages of Canada * Linguistic description * Magoua * Mixed language * Mockney *
Post-creole continuum A post-creole continuum (or simply creole continuum) is a dialect continuum of varieties of a creole language between those most and least similar to the superstrate language (that is, a closely related language whose speakers assert or asserte ...
* Quebec (disambiguation) * Quebec English * Quebec French * Quebec French lexicon *
Quebec French phonology The phonology of Quebec French is more complex than that of Parisian or Continental French. Quebec French has maintained phonemic distinctions between and , and , and , and . The latter of each pair has disappeared in Parisian French, and o ...
*
Quebec French profanity Quebec French profanities, known as (singular: ; french: sacrer, "to consecrate"), are words and expressions related to Catholicism and its liturgy that are used as strong profanities in Quebec French (the main variety of Canadian French) an ...
* Quebecer (disambiguation) * Québécois *
Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of ...
* Standard French


Notes


External links


Article on ''Joual'' at Canadian theatre

Article on ''Joual'' in ''La Linguistique'' journal


* http://www.yorku.ca/paull/articles/1990h.html * http://www.yorku.ca/paull/articles/1992.html * http://www.yorku.ca/paull/articles/2004b.html {{Gallo-Romance languages and dialects Quebec French Culture of Quebec Languages of Canada Oïl languages Slang Sociolinguistics Language varieties and styles Working-class culture in Canada