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Old 12-02-2009, 07:58 PM
 
Location: Bergen County, NJ
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Is the French taught in U.S. High Schools/Colleges Quebec/Canadian French or Standard France French?
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Old 12-02-2009, 08:01 PM
 
Location: South Carolina
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Je pense qu'il est français standard...

But I could be wrong. Sorry if some of my sentence is wrong...I havent used French in quite a while.
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Old 12-02-2009, 08:09 PM
 
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It's standard French--I've never personally heard of Quebecois being taught outside of Quebec or Eastern Canada.

Even when I lived in Canada, albeit in Edmonton, Alberta which is in Western Canada, we were mandated in public schools to take standard French, not Quebecois French. The difference between Quebecois French and the French spoken in France is proabably slightly greater than say the difference between American English and British English. I've heard that European French speakers can understand most of Quebecois French when spoken formally, however the accent and slang(a lot of Anglicisms have made their way into the language) can make it difficult to comprehend.
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Old 12-02-2009, 08:54 PM
 
Location: Bergen County, NJ
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Deezus View Post
It's standard French--I've never personally heard of Quebecois being taught outside of Quebec or Eastern Canada.

Even when I lived in Canada, albeit in Edmonton, Alberta which is in Western Canada, we were mandated in public schools to take standard French, not Quebecois French. The difference between Quebecois French and the French spoken in France is proabably slightly greater than say the difference between American English and British English. I've heard that European French speakers can understand most of Quebecois French when spoken formally, however the accent and slang(a lot of Anglicisms have made their way into the language) can make it difficult to comprehend.
But for example, if I knew good Standard French, and maybe move to Quebec, would I be able to understand their french without problem? Or do I need to take quebec french classes?
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Old 12-02-2009, 08:59 PM
 
Location: 30-40°N 90-100°W
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One French woman I knew said she found Quebecois French hard to understand. Although I'd think if you know French it shouldn't be too hard to get Quebecois French.

Anyway yeah so far as I know schools teach France/French.
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Old 12-02-2009, 09:20 PM
 
Location: Penobscot Bay, the best place in Maine!
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In my high school in Maine, the French that was taught was Standard French, but with many side lessons on Quebecois and "County" French (Many people in the St. John River Valley and elsewhere in Aroostook County, Maine speak a dialect of French that is not textbook French and sometimes not even Quebecois French!).
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Old 12-02-2009, 09:35 PM
 
Location: West Michigan
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Originally Posted by deerislesmile View Post
In my high school in Maine, the French that was taught was Standard French, but with many side lessons on Quebecois and "County" French (Many people in the St. John River Valley and elsewhere in Aroostook County, Maine speak a dialect of French that is not textbook French and sometimes not even Quebecois French!).
So true! I spent almost 20 years in the County and most of the French speaking people I knew that went over to Quebec City came back and said that they knew how I must have felt when I first moved there. "They were speaking the words and some I knew, some I didn't, I didn't know WTH they were saying over there!" was the general statement. Aroostook County French is a very odd mix of French, Quebecois, English, and "County" rolled into one dialect. Most people will have some English and some French in the same sentence. Get them excited and who knows what is going to come out for words. It could be all French, all English, even a compound word that is spoken half French half English. Whatever language has the word that best fits, is the one used for that word.

Most High Schools teach Standard French in the US though to answer the OP's question.
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Old 12-03-2009, 12:05 AM
 
Location: New Hampshire
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When talking about "standard French," you need to consider grammar and pronunciation separately. Every French teacher in the U.S. is going to teach standard French grammar (which is "standard" across the French-speaking world), but their pronunciation may vary depending on where they're from or where they learned French.

In my experience, the vast majority of French teachers in the U.S. were educated in standard European (Parisian) French and thus imitate Parisian pronunciation. However, there is always a chance that you may have a teacher from Canada or some other part of the French-speaking world with a noticeably different accent, but they usually try to "reduce" it to an extent. After all, the vast majority of the French learning materials used in U.S. curriculums are based on standard European French.

In Quebec, speech varies dramatically by register (i.e. the French spoken in news broadcasts vs. by working class people). If you have only heard European French before, you will struggle at first to understand Canadians and it will take time to adapt. Just imagine if you had only ever studied the Queen's English and then suddenly took a trip to Arkansas. It won't take that long to understand the accent as used on the news, in academic contexts, or by public figures; what's more difficult is learning all the expressions and contractions used by people in everyday life.

A good way to introduce yourself to the Québécois accent is to listen to kids' shows. This is a good site, an archive of radio shows in which kids phone in questions like "Who invented the alphabet?" or "How do geese know where to fly?"

Regardless of whether you're taught French by a European or a Canadian, it's going to take a long time before you can travel to a French-speaking country and understand most of what's being said. Reading will come more quickly for most people, in which case it doesn't matter which accent you've been hearing. If you've only been studying French for several months or so, most of the basic expressions you'll know won't sound that different in France or Canada anyway.
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Old 12-03-2009, 05:18 PM
 
Location: Boston
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I teach a bit of both. I also do some Belgian French (80,90 etc) There's no standard curriculum for French in my district and I think it's useful. When I was in college, my lower level classes were mostly standard with a bit of Quebec/Belgium/etc thrown in... The upper level classes were more specialized. There were two courses about Quebec, taught in french, and taught by a québécois.
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Old 12-04-2009, 07:01 PM
 
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At my high school, it was standard French.
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