The French Language in Canada (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The French language in Canada by John Hewson Jan Holeš The French language in Canada. By John Hewson. (LINCOM studies in Romance linguistics.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2000. Pp. 113. ISBN 3895865710. $45.36. The history of Canadian French stretches back almost four hundred years. From the end of the Seven Years War until recent days, it has survived in spite of interrupted contacts between Canada and France. Today, approximately 25% of the population of Canada speak French as their mother tongue and, in addition [End Page 176] to Quebec, a sizeable minority of French speakers is found in New Brunswick and Ontario. In this brief volume, John Hewson examines the main features of Canadian French and provides the reader with a historical background of the subject. The book is divided into eight chapters. Ch. 1 presents the basic concepts necessary for understanding the linguistic situation in Canada and discusses the relationship between the standard language and its regional forms. Ch. 2 includes a survey of works describing the French language in Canada starting in the eighteenth century and continuing to include two major linguistic works of the twentieth century—Atlas linguistique de l’Est du Canada (by Gaston Dulong and Gaston Bergeron, Québec: Editeur Officiel de Québec, 1980) and Dictionnaire historique du français québécois (ed. by Claude Poirer, Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1998). Ch. 3 deals with certain features of life in Canada that have had an impact on the vocabulary, such as the early exploration of the territory, its colonization, contacts with Indian tribes, the lumber trade, and some cultural developments. An examination of the main pronunciation traits distinguishing Canadian French from the standard pronunciations constitutes the core of Ch. 4. As far as vowels are concerned, H mentions especially the opening of high vowels in closed syllables, the devoicing of high vowels in internal syllables, the tendency to diphthongize long vowels, the preservation of back /ɑ/, the chain shift of nasal vowels, and the variations of /ε/. For consonants, these are especially palatalization and assibilation, the reduction of final consonant clusters, the loss of final /r/, the aspirated /h/, the syllabification of liquids after obstruents, the ouïsme, and the reflex of strong romance /r/ in Acadian. Ch. 5 investigates morphology and syntax. Most of the deviations from standard forms encountered in Quebec and Acadia are also heard in popular European French, for example, false liaisons, postposed pronouns in the imperative, the variation of gender in nouns beginning with a vowel, the expansion of quand into quand que, the regularization of irregular verbs, and so on. In Ch. 6, the author turns his attention to the expressive language exploiting the religious terms that are not found in such usage elsewhere. Ch. 7 introduces three parameters of linguistic variation (temporal, spatial, and social), underlining the risks of their confusion. Ch. 8 provides a summary of the main sources and types of anglicisms found in Canadian French. The book contains suggestions for further reading as well as an index of French examples and exercises. It may serve as a first introduction to this vast and complicated subject. Even though it does not cover all the varieties of French spoken in Canada and many issues had to be omitted, it can still be recommended as a convenient textbook for those who wish to study this variety of French. Jan Holeš Univerzita Palackého Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America