Ch 31 · Lesson 24French · Chapter 31 · Lesson 24 · Themed review
La francophonie du Nord
French in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Québec: septante and nonante, the Québec accent, and the everyday words that change.
Practise this lesson
19-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
Septante, courriel and a car called a char
Paris does not own French. Close to its borders and across the Atlantic, millions speak it as their first language, each with an accent and words of their own.
Where
| Where | French there |
|---|---|
| Belgium | one of three official languages, with Dutch and German; spoken in Brussels and Wallonia, the south |
| Switzerland | one of four national languages; about a fifth of the population, in the west, around Geneva and Lausanne |
| Luxembourg | one of three official languages, used for laws and street signs |
| Québec | the only Canadian where French alone is official; about three in four people speak it most at home |
| New Brunswick | Canada's officially bilingual , home of the Acadians |
Numbers
| France | Belgium | Switzerland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 70 | septante | septante | |
| 80 | huitante, in some cantons | ||
| 90 | nonante | nonante |
Plenty of French people will admit septante is more logical, and still would not dream of saying it.
Québec
French has been spoken in Québec since the 1600s. The accent is the first surprise: vowels are longer and sometimes split in two, and and can sound like "tsu" and "dzu". Within a week of listening, it stops being strange.
| English | France | Québec |
|---|---|---|
| car | ||
| weekend | week-end | |
| courriel | ||
| to go shopping | shopping | magasiner |
| you're welcome |
Québec protects its French by law, more firmly than France does: it says courriel where most French people say mail, and its stop signs read ARRÊT where France's read STOP.
Belgium and Switzerland
Belgian and Swiss French are close to the French of France; the differences are mostly words. In Belgium your mobile phone is a GSM, and in both countries the meals have older names (the food session explains them).
Which French to learn?
The one you are learning. Standard French is understood everywhere from Brussels to Montreal, and every speaker you meet will enjoy telling you how they say it at home.