Which to Learn Canadian ou European French

Which would be more easier...? how diffrent are they from each other...? I was reading on wikipidia that european french cant under stand canadian french, and they they needed subtitles in movies and in TV shows...? and that their grammar is totally diffrent as well as their accent. Can anyone help me out here...?



Thanks in advnace.!

Certainly, no doubt, you should learn the French spoken and written in Paris.

I speak Québécois French but I can easily switch to a more standard European French. They will not understand me if I speak it with rural Quebeckers, but I will always understand them. Canadian French is a more archaic dialect of French and it has maintained many features which were lost in European French.

Learn the standard though, since material for you to gain fluency in Canadian French is scarce. And they are not that different from one another... plus Canadian French is virtually never written, except for comedy.

My mother toung is Spanish & I'm fluent in English, Spanish & French come from the same Root, their Father or Mother Latin, so it should not be so hard for me to learn French, I can understand French when its wiriten, I dont know why, and I can also write it a little better than speaking it... I truly dont know why, that kind of freaks me out....

I like Canadian French but it is a little too rough and nasal for many foreigners. European French has a more lilting and elegant quality about it. As for programs, I recommend Assimil. The native speakers who do the recordings speak beautiful pristine Parisian French.

JLK : « I like Canadian French but it is a little too rough and nasal for many foreigners. European French has a more lilting and elegant quality about it. »

C'est un point de vue subjectif européocentré. Ce qui ne veut pas dire qu'il n'est pas partagé par beaucoup. Mais il n'est pas partagé par tous.

Parisian French... It's the one dialect that the entire Francophonie is very familiar with.

No offense to Canadians, but unless you are Canadian, learn Parisian French. 31 Languages of the world has European and Canadian versions of French (it's inexpensive/tourist level), so you can listen to both types, if you really feel it's important to make a decision based on 'sound'.

I wrote that it's better to study African French but my message was deleted. What's wrong with it?

Okay, guest, I'm curious. Why is "African French" better? and what area of Africa do you mean?

I can understand African French (even rap sometimes, but I admit I had to listen to one rapper three times before I caught what he was saying because of his accent.)

African is not better nor worse than other varieties. But Canadian French is spoken by 5 millions of people. You have around 60 millions of French speakers just in North Africa (Maghreb). This is the same population France has.

From this discussion, I gather than the French of Paris is equivalent to RP in English, in being the internationally recognized standard form of the language?

I imagine that some of those speakers in the Mahgreb also speak Arabic mixed with French (I'm thinking of Algeria) and others have Berber as a first language. Of course, there are some wonderful speakers of French in those areas, but how many are "native" speakers? The number you gave seems very high for French speakers in the mahgreb who are native
speakers.

There are many people in North Africa who don't use Arabic at all. French is their mother tongue.

How many speakers in North Africa have French as their native language?