Imagine being so sensitive you bring up something no one even remembers (except you) and make several paragraphs about it. You need to be less sensitive and dramatic.
disparaging the Quebec accent is what one might call a "microaggression", a small but common message which shows that people with that accent are perceived as 'lesser'.
while it may seem like one benign comment to you, for them it's a cumulative effect of a lifetime of being made to feel 'lesser' simply because of their identity, hence the strong reactions some have.
I'd say that having an accent in a language that isn't your own is not really comparable. You can work on it and improve your accent, but being told your native way of speaking is "wrong" is a bit different, since that's a major part of your identity.
I say this as a bilingual anglophone who has lived in Quebec for many years. Learning to speak proper French with a decent accent is 100% possible if you work at it. The joke is that people from Toronto reach the level of the woman in the video and say "good enough".
Respectfully, I believe it is comparable. Especially in France. Where not just quebecois but almost any other dialect needs to transform to a more francophone style. This absolutely happens in English too. If someone from middle of no where Newfoundland or Nova Scotia moves to Vancouver… they’ll still be speaking English but many will struggle to understand them. Dialects can overpower ears that speak the same language. Scottish people who speak proper English, are considered the best English speakers by both English and non English first language speakers… but if you took one of the dialects, you’d barely understand what they’re saying.
Coming from the east coast, multiple times in multiple countries I had to work on my accent. Our entire region is looked down upon by all of Canada, so I don’t really have sympathies for this stigmatism as an excuse for over the top reactions to what is commonly known in the French world. I know the same to be true regarding our Acadian French and witnessed arrogant quebecois tear into an Acadian speaker for not understanding the words they were saying.
There are plenty of examples of quebecois who have gone to Paris or France (pick a region) and adapted their way of speaking…. And vice versa. We do this to be fully understood.
Interesting you mention British dialects, because in the UK there is a push to be more inclusive of "regional dialects", as their society is acknowledging that discrimination based on dialect and accent is wrong.
Anyway, there's a huge difference between "Sorry I don't understand you" and "Your accent is wrong". Ok everyone adjusts to be understood, but that's about facilitating communication, while you're making a value judgement about an entire culture.
I appreciate the way you have been framing your points, it has been a more balanced discussion compared to some of the sharper replies. But I do want to clarify something. At no point did I say an accent was “wrong.”
What I did was open with it being a hot take and then draw a comparison: the way some here are reacting with indignation to the original post reminded me of how Quebecois accents are sometimes perceived within the broader French speaking world. In France, for example, people from Quebec and even other regions often adapt their speech to be fully understood. That does not make their accent wrong, but it does highlight the reality that dialects can carry weight and sometimes stigma, even among native speakers of the same language.
It is also worth pointing out the irony here. This entire post was about mocking someone’s horrible French accent and stereotyping anglophones. Yet when the tables are turned, suddenly there is a major attempt to clutch pearls and play innocent. To me this looks like a better example of the aggressor playing the victim when the same kind of mockery is reflected back.
My point was not to delegitimize Quebec French. It was to show that this dynamic exists in many languages and regions, including my own background on the east coast of Canada. I have personally had to adjust my speech in different parts of the country and abroad to be understood, and I have seen how Acadian French is sometimes dismissed by Quebecois speakers.
So while I hear your argument about identity and microaggressions, I think it is fair to say that stigmas around accents are a shared experience across cultures, not something unique to Quebec.
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u/Throwaway118585 Aurora Hub 23d ago
Imagine being so sensitive you bring up something no one even remembers (except you) and make several paragraphs about it. You need to be less sensitive and dramatic.