B. A. Major Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph
French Influence on Canadian English
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- 6.1 Vocabulary
- 6.1.1 Vocabulary of Quebec English
- 6.2 Grammar
- 6.2.1 Post Adjectival Position of Canada
- 6.2.2 Prepositions and Idiomatic Expressions
- 7. Conclusion
- Bibliography
6. French Influence on Canadian EnglishAs has already been mentioned, French language has exercised a significant influence on CanE. Both languages have co-existed in Canada from roughly the 1970’s, Canadian French being nearly a century ‘older’ than CanE, and since 196941, Canada has been an officially bilingual country (McArthur 1996: 162, 167). As far as the French influence on CanE is concerned, it is especially Montreal (Quebec) English that should be given particular attention because, as Boberg (2005: 53) suggests, it has been a minority language “in close contact with French” which has been an official language of Quebec since 1977, when Bill 10142 was passed (McArthur 1996: 167). It is obvious that the specific instances of the French influence on CanE will be best perceptible in such a dialect that is most exposed to Canadian French, which is primarily English in Quebec. However, most expressions and certain grammatical features adopted from Canadian French have constituted a considerable part of CanE as a whole; and this part has been one of the major differentiators of CanE from British, American, and other varieties of English. 6.1 VocabularyPenetrating of French words into CanE has been a natural consequence of the co-existence of the two languages. As Lovell records, one of the components of CanE vocabulary are “loanwords from Canadian French, frequently with Indian antecedents” (1955, qtd. in Orkin 1970: 66). Thus, it is sometimes difficult to recognize the aboriginal origin of certain expressions, such as babiche or caribou43, which have entered CanE through Canadian French from Micmac āpapīc and ĝalipu, respectively (ITP 1997: 98, 212). Certain French Canadian words have inspired the creation of English forms of those expressions while at the same time their French forms were preserved. The result has been the co-occurrence of both French and English forms in CanE with similar, although not identical meanings as in carryall and cariole44. There are also expressions of French Canadian origin which exist in CanE only in their English form, namely mush (related to French Marche!), sny(e) (from French chenail), shanty (probably from French chantier) or lacrosse45 (from French (jeu de) la crosse, a name of a game of Algonquian origin) (ITP 1997: 902, 1295, 1257, 759). The reality of life, work and society in ‘ancient’ Canada is reflected in such expressions as caboteur, coureur du bois, cache, voyageur, portage, Métis, or seigniory.46 Other words include tuque, caisse populaire, gaspereau, brulé (or brûlée) or fameuse.47 Moreover, such expressions as anglophone and francophone (written with lower case letters at the beginning) are based on the French model, too (McArthur 1996: 166). Grace Jolly (2002) adds that these words have even motivated the creation of other composites with -phone, namely sinophone and ukrainophone. 6.1.1 Vocabulary of Quebec EnglishIn Quebec English, which is more ‘saturated’ with French than other varieties of CanE, Boberg (2005: 26) noted the occurrence of the word steamie.48 He suggests that this usage may be reborrowed from a Canadian French expression hot dog steamé, which French Canadians prefer to its French form chien chaud à vapeur. Another popular expression in Quebec is poutine, “the gooey mass of French fries smothered in gravy and melted cheese curds” (Boberg 2005: 26). Interestingly, the etymology of this word adopted from Canadian French reveals that the word has its antecedent in an English expression pudding (ITP 1997: 1077) . However, Quebec English is also rich with typically French words, for instance autoroute replacing English highway (McArthur 1997: 749), dépanneur which is derived from French dépanner ‘to repair’ but actually designates a sort of convenience store, or one-and-a-half or two-and-a-half, the expressions refering to apartments, where the numeral stands for the number of individual rooms and half designates a bathroom (Boberg 2005: 27). Montreal English, which Boberg (2005: 36) describes as “most lexically distinct”, further contains words such as stage for internship, chalet for summer cottage, or guichet for ATM. McArthur mentions the influence exercised by bilingual francophones on Quebec English: they ‘anglicise’ the French words instead of using ‘proper’ English expression, thus Quebec English is richer with such expressions as collectivity (community in English), annex (appendix) (1997: 749), or polity (Jolly 2002). Bilingual anglophones, on the contrary, adjust certain French words to get their ‘English forms’, e.g. sc(h)olarity (schooling, from French scolarité) or syndicate (a trade union, from syndicat) (McArthur 1997: 749). In addition, Quebec English includes terms such as reunion (meeting, from French réunion), ‘a good souvenir of something’ (memory, from French souvenir) or the use of deceive in the sense of disappoint (from French décevoir) as in I was deceived... (McArthur 1997: 749) (evoking J’étais déçu...). As for the perception of words primarily connected with Quebec, such as sovereignty association, independentist and Quiet revolution, Jolly (2002) notes that while the USA and British press use them in inverted commas, Canadian media do not mark their French origin in any way; and while English Canadian newspapers commonly use the French abbreviation FLQ49, the New York Times replaces it with QLF (Quebec Liberation Front) – its English equivalent. From Jolly’s examples of treating words of French origin in the press and from the great number of francicisms incorporated into CanE, it follows that these words have been an inseparable component of Canadian lexicon: their number and the naturalness with which they are accepted is incomparably higher than in other varieties of English. Originally French vocabulary is another feature of CanE which makes it unique. 6.2 GrammarOn the level of grammar, the French influence is especially evident in “the post adjectival position of the word Canada after certain proper names” (Jurcic 2003: 6) and in using in certain syntagmas other words than usual, i.e. lexemes that occur in the French equivalents of those syntagmas, and are probably incorrectly employed by bilingual French Canadians and gradually adopted by English Canadians. 6.2.1 Post Adjectival Position of CanadaUnlike in the English language, in French adjective is usually placed after the noun (cf. Hendrich 2001). As far as the adjectival use of Canada is concerned, however, Canadian English, in contrast to other varieties of English, appears to stick to the French conventions. As McArthur (1996: 166) reports, “in the names of government departments, crown corporations and national organizations,” Canada is not only used attributively, as in Canada Post, but it frequently occupies the position after the noun. Thus, as Jolly (2002) suggests, such expressions as Air Canada, Parks Canada, Environment Canada are quite common and these naming practices tend to spread into other domains. The sentence “Canadian hockey players get support from Sport Canada when playing for Team Canada in the Canada Cup series” which, according to Avis, sounds quite natural to a Canadian (Avis 1983, qtd. in Jurcic 2003: 6), is a convenient illustration of this fact.
Another expression related to the French language is sick at his heart. Looking for Canadianisms in Canadian literature, Christopher Dean encountered it. He explains that it is not related to the idiom sick at heart (i.e. sad) and speculates about the expression being derived by analogy from sick at his stomach (1963: 281). I assume a French influence behind the expression Dean found: the meaning of the French phrase mal au cœur corresponds to sick at his stomach (cf. Velký francouzsko český slovník 1992: 53). Thus, I suggest the English translation of the French word cœur (heart) was implanted into the English phrase together with the meaning of the whole French expression. Other Canadian English usages inspired by French include give a conference (give a lecture, from French donner une conférence) (McArthur 1996: 749), take a decision (instead of make a decision, from French prendre la décision), or an infinitive after the verb accept as in accept to meet him instead of accept + direct object, e.g. accept a meeting, or accept + final clause, for instance accept that I should meet him (Jolly 2002). Finally, Avis indicates that it is French Canadians’ usage of eh, eh bien and hein interjections that has so significantly contributed to the frequent usage of eh among English Canadians (1972, qtd. in Jolly 2002). The influence of Canadian French on CanE is undisputed. As has been demonstrated, the originally French vocabulary has penetrated all spheres of Canadian life, from official expressions to everyday words. Syntactical phenomena stemming from French have equally become a non-negligible part of CanE. Nothing like that has happened in other varieties of English. Hence it can be concluded that the French factor is one of the features that make CanE unique. 7. ConclusionThe objective of this thesis was to demonstrate the distinct nature of CanE by focusing on vocabulary, grammar, spelling and features adopted from Canadian French. It was shown that despite the initial reluctance to investigate the variety of English spoken in Canada, its difference from both British and American varieties had been evident long before the serious study of the subject began. As far as Canadian vocabulary is concerned, it was noted that the contribution of both BrE and AmE to the vocabulary of CanE resulted in the combination which is unique and unidentifiable with either of the two varieties. Besides, more components of different origins recognizable in the vocabulary of Canadian variety were pointed out .There was also presented a number of Canadianisms which do not occur in either BrE or AmE. The changes that affected the expressions of British or American origins in the Canadian background, as described by Lovell, proved that the development of certain features of CanE is independent of other related varieties. As for the opinion that the vocabulary of CanE is inconsistent, it was attempted to explain that in Canadian lexicon, there exists an inner consistency based on the preferences of choice, as exemplified by the compounds, by the prevalent British or American vocabulary in selected domains as well as by the different lexical preferences in individual regions. These regional preferences, as demonstrated on Toronto and Montreal lexicons, were shown to develop in time, which proves that CanE is vital. Furthermore, the findings of Boberg’s survey proved that there are much greater lexical resemblances between individual Canadian regions than between the regions in Canada and in the USA. The section on Canadianisms presented many expressions peculiar to Canada which cannot be found in other varieties of English and are hence another evidence of the distinctiveness of CanE. Although the examination of the grammatical level revealed quite a few similarities between CanE and AmE, several features were found to be uniquely Canadian, such as the usage of ’cep’fer or employing the adverbial as well in initial position. Moreover, despite not being unique to CanE, the interjection eh was shown to be one of the distinguishing characteristics of Canadian speech. On the background of the question of consistency, the ‘Spelling’ chapter dealt with selected spelling phenomena in CanE as compared with BrE and AmE. It was demonstrated that certain inconsistencies can be found in all the three varieties. In respect to this fact, it was suggested that the distinctiveness of neither of the varieties should be doubted. Besides, the chapter offered an overview of the historical development of Canadian spelling, which elucidated particular usages in certain domains, such as preferring American usage in the press or observing the British norm on the official level. The sixth chapter focused on such features of Canadian vocabulary and grammar which have their origin in the French language. They constitute another part of CanE that is not to be found in other varieties of English. The characteristics of Canadian vocabulary, spelling and grammar, which were dealt with in this thesis, clearly illustrate that CanE cannot be fully identified with any other variety of English. It was proved that the Canadian variety of English is distinct.
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