# Quebec french accent and Job opportunities



## smr_ksr (Aug 12, 2013)

Hi,

I heard that French speaking person has clear advantage in order to Get Jobs in Quebec Province Canada. That is why I am learning french at the moment before moving/applying for Quebec Canada. As per most of the online available resources, I am basically learning Parisian french. However, I heard that Quebec French accent is very different from Parisian french. In this regard, I have following questions in my mind.

1- Is it OK to speak Persian French in Quebec, especially, from getting Job point of view. I am Software Programmer. So what do you think that how much Quebec accent will effect to get a job.

2- How much time usually it takes to get used to with Quebec accent. I mean, watching some Quebec movies is enough ?? or will it take much more time.

3- Is it useless to learn Parisian french if intention is to move to Quebec

Thank you in advance.


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## WestCoastCanadianGirl (Mar 17, 2012)

Is this your first attempt at learning French? If so, I don't think that you will be able to learn enough of the language quickly enough to survive in Quebec. The reason why I say this is that English speaking Canadian high school students spend up to 5 _years_ learning the language at school in 3-5 classroom hours per week and even after that period of time they aren't all necessarily fluent enough to go to Quebec to live and and work in a French language environment. 

I learned French between years 8-11 in school and occasionally practice with my husband (who is trilingual in English, French and German) but would have some trouble scoring well enough on the TEF French Language exam without having spent a month or two reviewing my written French skills and speaking nothing but French to my husband.

1) Yes, it's fine to speak Parisien French in Quebec. 

2) It varies from person to person, but I don't think that watching TV from Quebec will be enough. 




. 


3) Most definitely _not_ useless to be learning Parisien French. I prefer listening to the Parisien dialect over the Joual accent that is widely spoken in Quebec... Joual sounds like the speaker is speaking slurred French while Parisien French is crisp and very easy to understand.

French speakers from France tend to look down on people who speak with a Joual accent, so if you can learn a proper Parisien accent it's better for you, especially if you go to France.


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## smr_ksr (Aug 12, 2013)

WestCoastCanadianGirl said:


> Is this your first attempt at learning French? If so, I don't think that you will be able to learn enough of the language quickly enough to survive in Quebec. The reason why I say this is that English speaking Canadian high school students spend up to 5 _years_ learning the language at school in 3-5 classroom hours per week and even after that period of time they aren't all necessarily fluent enough to go to Quebec to live and and work in a French language environment.
> 
> I learned French between years 8-11 in school and occasionally practice with my husband (who is trilingual in English, French and German) but would have some trouble scoring well enough on the TEF French Language exam without having spent a month or two reviewing my written French skills and speaking nothing but French to my husband.
> 
> ...


Thank you for your reply. Yes. This is my first try and I understand that it will take some time.
Actually my field is not like Sales job etc , which require very high level or business level of communication. So, I guess that some conversation level french should be fine  .

I will search it further that some basic level is sufficient, and if it is true then I will definitely continue to learn French. I hope, Quebec employer will also cooperate to not use too much slangs while talking / giving instruction to me.  

Thank you for sharing information. If you want to comment anything else about this topic, please do share.


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## colchar (Oct 25, 2011)

smr_ksr said:


> Hi,
> 
> I heard that French speaking person has clear advantage in order to Get Jobs in Quebec Province Canada. That is why I am learning french at the moment before moving/applying for Quebec Canada. As per most of the online available resources, I am basically learning Parisian french. However, I heard that Quebec French accent is very different from Parisian french. In this regard, I have following questions in my mind.
> 
> ...



Quebecois French is different. And if you think that you can quickly learn French well enough to live day to day in Quebec then I think you are kidding yourself.


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## colchar (Oct 25, 2011)

smr_ksr said:


> So, I guess that some conversation level french should be fine.


You guess wrong.





> I will search it further that some basic level is sufficient, and if it is true then I will definitely continue to learn French. I hope, Quebec employer will also cooperate to not use too much slangs while talking / giving instruction to me.


If you think the Quebecois are going to bend over backwards to make things easy for you then you need to think again.


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## WestCoastCanadianGirl (Mar 17, 2012)

Basic level French _won't_ be enough to survive. When I was in University, I worked in a call centre that would occasionally take French language calls and my French ability wasn't nearly strong enough to be able to cope - I could understand about half of what the caller was saying, but I wasn't always able to answer them coherently in French just off the top of my head, so I usually ended up having to pass the call onto someone who spoke better French than I do ... you should expect to have to be able to think _in French_ and speak your thoughts _in French_ without resorting to using English to survive in Quebec, and "basic" French won't be enough.

Also, Canada may be a bilingual country, but in Quebec, the rules are slightly different... a francophone in Quebec may be able to converse as effectively in English as they do in French (you may even hear them speaking English), but because there is no _legal_ requirement for them to speak English to anyone if they don't want to, it's within their right to refuse to voluntarily speak English to you or anyone else simply because they aren't legally required to do so, so you'd better be able to converse somewhat _fluently_ in French.

Are you serious about "_I hope Quebec employer will also cooperate to not use too much slangs while talking / giving instruction to me_"? 

No employer is going to agree to that... would _you_ make the same accommodations for me if I was still learning "basic level" Hindi and coming to work for you in India? I know some polite greetings and also some rude words in Punjabi but that's it as far as being able to speak an Indian language, so I'd need you to speak s-l-o-w-l-y and like I was a 6 year old... you and I both know that that's not practical in the real world.


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## LazarusLong (Nov 2, 2015)

In all honesty, I find the Quebecois to be far more accommodating than the French (At least in Montreal proper). Outside of Montreal, English-speaking chances drop precipitously to almost 0% chance (In my in-laws town of Sorel, for example, it is absolutely 0%)

That said, knowing "some" French is absolutely beneficial, but you should really be prepared to "deep dive" and speak as much French as much as possible and ask people to correct you; you'll get the hang of it. I've been speaking French for over 25 years (Learned Parisian French) and some Quebecois accents still stump me from time to time, but virtually everyone I've spoken to has been absolutely wonderful in terms of accommodation. _Provided you attempt to speak French first_.

Bonne chance!


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## ozbound12 (Mar 23, 2012)

LazarusLong said:


> In all honesty, I find the Quebecois to be far more accommodating than the French (At least in Montreal proper). Outside of Montreal, English-speaking chances drop precipitously to almost 0% chance (In my in-laws town of Sorel, for example, it is absolutely 0%)
> 
> That said, knowing "some" French is absolutely beneficial, but you should really be prepared to "deep dive" and speak as much French as much as possible and ask people to correct you; you'll get the hang of it. I've been speaking French for over 25 years (Learned Parisian French) and some Quebecois accents still stump me from time to time, but virtually everyone I've spoken to has been absolutely wonderful in terms of accommodation. _Provided you attempt to speak French first_.
> 
> Bonne chance!


I agree. I've lived in Quebec and spent time in France, and I can say that by and large, the Quebecois really appreciate it when anglophones/allophones make the effort to speak French whereas Parisians tend to be a bit snobbier about it ("if your French isn't perfect, don't bother" sort of attitude). I think it helps that Quebec is surrounded by a continent of English speakers, so they are very much a minority in North America and are grateful when people appreciate their unique culture and language. But as was said earlier, you absolutely must speak to them in French first. (In some places, French is the only option as LazarusLong mentioned; if you can spend a few weeks living in a small Quebecois town I would imagine your French would improve dramatically since few people speak English in these places.)

Unfortunately, Quebecois French isn't taught in language schools (even in Canadian schools, most are taught Parisian French or at best, Radio-Canada French, which is basically just standard French with a slight Quebecois accent) so you will struggle with the accent, vocabulary and grammar at first. Even Parisian French speakers have trouble understanding Quebecois French at times. I often draw a comparison between standard American English and Australian English. Australians understand Americans quite well and can even imitate their accent when necessary, however Americans really struggle with understanding Australians because of their accent and unique vocabulary. After awhile though Americans usually adapt and have very little difficulty understanding them.

As a non-French speaker learning French, you will have to work extra hard to get your French up to an acceptable level for life in Quebec. You'll have to learn standard French of course but you'll also have to learn conversational Quebecois French, which is very different. The OffQc website is a good place to start to expose yourself to Quebecois French. I'd also look into watching some Quebecois shows like Unite 9 and 19-2 (both are on Canadian Netflix, so you can watch with English subtitles).


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