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User:CJ Withers/Quebec French (lexis)

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See Quebec French lexicon for more examples and further explanation.


The lexis of Quebec French is dinstinctive for:

  • lexical items formerly common to both France and New France and that are today unique only to Quebec French; (This includes expressions and word forms that have the same form elsewhere in La Francophonie, yet have a different denotation or connotation.)
  • borrowings from Amerindian languages, esp. place names;
  • les sacres - Quebec French profanity (see separate article);
  • many loanwords, calques and other borrowings from English in the 19th and 20th centuries, whether such borrowings are considered standard French or not;
  • starting in the latter half of the 20th century, an enormous store of French neologisms (coinages) and re-introduced words via terminological work by professionals, translators, and the OLF; some of this terminology is "exported" to the rest of la Francophonie;
  • feminized job titles and gender-inclusive language;
  • morphological processes that have been more productive:
1. suffixes: -eux/euse, -age, -able, and -oune
2. reduplication (e.g. the international French word guéguerre): bibite, cacanne, etc.
3. reduplication plus -oune: chouchoune, doudoune, foufounes, gougounes, moumoune, nounoune, poupoune, toutoune.