Going Quebecois!

Where is the other challenge this summer?

OK, admit it! You may have seen my blog post about learning Indonesian this summer and thought, where’s the other language? I know he always takes on another similar language at the same time for these summer challenges!

Well, you’re right!

This summer, I am taking on Quebecois! Why Quebecois you might ask? Well there are a few reasons for the choice.

italki

For the month of July, italki has a month-long language challenge going on, called “Diversity Language Challenge“. The idea is that you pick a language from their list of lesser-studied languages and study it for a month. Now, I have gone a little off the beaten path with this because Quebecois is not on the list. However, I am already studying Indonesian and brushing up on my Icelandic for the Polyglot Conference in Reykjavik at the end of October. So, I think we can overlook this detail. I felt inspired by the challenge and that’s the main thing, right? 😉

The fun factor

I did something like this with Brazilian Portuguese a couple of years ago, having already studied European Portuguese at university. That challenge was a LOT of fun. It was in preparation for a trip to Brazil. This year, I find myself in a similar situation. This August I will spend one month in Canada. I’m going to LangFest there in Montreal!

LangFest

There is nothing like a get-together with a lot of other language lovers to gear me up for another challenge. LangFest in Montreal takes place on 25-27 August, so I have two months to get good at Quebecois! One month now and another month of practice in Quebec itself. You can join me in Montreal too, if you can make it there. Here are the details to reserve your place!

How am I going to do it? 

I already speak European French to a high level and use it daily with my daughter at home. I feel very comfortable in the language, as it’s spoken in France. But Quebecois has a number of dialects and quite a distinct sound. It also has a lot of slang that’s unknown to European French speakers. This is going to be a vocab building exercise too!

Assimil’s “(Guide de conversation) Québécois” is going to be my course book for this venture. I have it in digital format with links inside to the audio files. I started it on 1st July as it felt appropriate, being Canada’s 150th birthday!

The start was about the history and geography of Quebec and quite an interesting read and quite fitting to mark Canada Day. The plan is to go through it this month, splitting it out into equal amounts to not overload myself. I will look to practise speaking like a Canadian with my italki teacher every week. The aim is to try repeating what I have learnt and get feedback on my pronunciation.

Then we see how well it works on the streets of Montreal in August! Naturally I will make a video for your amusement too! 😉

Wish me luck! 😀

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Categorised in: Quebecois

This post was written by Richard