#joual

[wittylittle]

[quebec-canada]

[maryeve-the-bitch]

si s'tai pas de Joe l'oeil du coton, j's'rais marrié ça f'rrai un boute. Mais tu viens d'où toè, T'en va où? Tu viens d'où, Joe l'oeil du coton?

Every time I see my mutuals post in their native tongue that I don't understand I'm like yes 🥰 that's language babes 💖

[djbrub]

L'origine de "Simonaque"

Simonaque vient de « simoniaque » qui veut dire quelqu’un qui commet le péché de simonie (trafique et vente de biens spirituels). La simonie doit son nom à un personnage des Actes des Apôtres, Simon le Magicien qui voulut acheter à saint Pierre son pouvoir de faire des miracles (Actes, VIII.9-21), ce qui lui valut la condamnation de l’apôtre : « Que ton argent périsse avec toi, puisque tu as cru que le don de Dieu s’acquérait à prix d’argent ! »

Même si les saintes Écritures n'en font pas mention, on raconte que Pierre aurait terminé sa discussion avec Simon le Magicien (!) en lançant un :

Toé mon simonaque !

[starakex]

Fun little fact I discovered while putting away the game post-completion: the french language booklet packaged in the canadian version of Shadow the Hedgehog (which was included in canadian game copies as a requirement at the time) reuses the bilingual box's front and back art! Seems like it was a quick job to remove the 4KidsTV advert on the back... Even though it's featured on the english booklet anyways, despite the channel not being available in Canada. (Sonic X played on YTV instead.) Oops!

[pickled-flowers]

Little project about bumblebees and friends amd perhaps even bread

[jessielefey]

MHA Au's I will never make part mumble

- Aoyama's Quebecois not continental French

[summerhighlandfalls]

Every time someone brings up the PATH it is imperative that I bring up RÉSO. Fuck you Toronto you’re not the only one with tunnels

[cakesexuality]

I grew up speaking English and French and it's all just bullshit!!

There's two forms of singular "you" but one of them doubles as plural "you", there's two forms of plural "they" and one is exclusively used for a group of women but the other one can mean a group of men OR a group of people of mixed genders, and possessive pronouns change depending on the gender of what you're possessing so saying "ma mère" and "mon père" is like saying "my mom (she's a woman)" and "my dad (he's a man)" but you still gotta gender your possessive pronouns even if it's an inanimate object!! So I drink from ma tasse and write with mon stylo

it’s so funny to me when terfs and other transphobes talk about “biological pronouns”

you realise there is nothing about a vulva that means you have to call someone who has one “she”, right? and nothing about a penis that means you have to call someone who has one “he”? like that is literally a socially constructed idea based on the perceived gender of a person with a certain set of genitals.

you cannot be actually critical of gender if you are not critical of the ideas about it that society has created, you fucking clowns 💀

[rustbeltjessie]

When I was Kerouac I was the outsider identifying in perhaps dangerous, naive ways with other, more obviously marginalized groups, because I wanted everyone to see that I could not fit into mainstream White America, even if to most I seemed like I could (Ti Jean with joual tongue ‘til the age of seven, me queer as a three-dollar bill.) I was the outsider always observing, even amongst crowds of friends at the happiest times I was writing it all down in my notebook or in my mind, collecting the stories, the places, the names of all the people in the legend of my life, archiving the hidden America of criminal teenagers, prostitutes in donut shops, the smoke-stained walls of greasy spoons, dark dealings under bridges, the wildflowers growing up through the cracks in an empty lot. I was the memory babe telling the stories of the lovers I’d lost, the brothers I’d lost, the sisters I’d never had. I was the young writer trying to find my voice, not even knowing who I was, not even knowing my own true name. And sometimes, when it all got to be too much, I was the one fallingdown drunk, or sitting in the corner alone with my brooding glooms.

—Jessie Lynn McMains, from Reckless Chants #28.11: Neal & Jack & Me

[cadere-art]

Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

After many, many months, I have finally managed to finish reading this series (well, the first two books, because the third one is not out yet). Mostly, I loved it.

I feel like I need to insist on the fact that these books are so long. They are so, so long. The Poppy War books are shorter. LotR books are shorter. ASoIaF books are shorter. The damned Wheel of Time books are shorter - as a matter of fact, I got through two thirds of Wheel of Time in the time it took me to read these two books.

I've seen a lot of reviews compare this series to LoTR, which I think is both an apt and completely inaccurate comparison. Like reading LotR, reading Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King is kind of a labour of love, because while the books are very good, they're also very long, slow paced, and honestly a little bit of a chore to read at times. They are not very bingeable books. They both have absolutely stellar worldbuilding. They have entirely different themes, moods, and general message.

I've also seen a lot of reviews comparing this series to ASoIaF, which is very easy to see where that's coming from but does this series a disservice. These books are dark. They're the grimdark ASoIaF wishes it was. They're also much, much better than ASoIaF, with much more consistent and consequent worldbuilding and darkness that feels a lot more in line with actual human behaviour as well as a lot less gratuitious. It has to be said however that Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider Kind both come with essentially every imaginable trigger warning.

The worldbuilding in both books is stellar, and the stylistic writing choices (make the book harder to read) really support the worldbuilding. The story takes us to a fantasy Africa very inspired by western and central African mythology, and it manages to transport you to this setting in a very impressive way, which is what I love a book to do the most. The books are written in an African english dialect (wikipedia tells me Jamaican patois is used in dialogues, but I am unsure if there are other dialects used as the body of the text was not standard american english either), which made them - especially the first one - much more difficult to understand to me, but really grounded the worldbuilding. It felt like I was reading another language in english. It reminded me of feeling of reading quebecois books written in joual - joual is my own language, so where joual writing feels both strange and familiar and kind of wrong, english is my second language and African American dialects are less familiar to me, so Marlon Jame's writing felt doubly foreign. This made it a difficult, but absolutely fascinating and fascinating read - exactly the kind of "dépaysant" I love to experience.

It was also a nice change of pace to read a book with a queer protagonist whose queerness was actually informed and shaped by the setting.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Character Profile - Canada

Character Name: Canada. Matthieu Marc Jean-Luc Bonnefoy. Matthew Williams. Matt. Mattie. Mattie-no-mates. Frostbite. Mo leanbh.

Age: 10-12 by 1760, 13-14 by 1815, 18 by 1867, 22 by 1945.

Height: 6'0/183cm by 1867, 6'4/194cm by 1949.

Physical Description: A beautiful but disappointing baby that grew into a tall and oddly hollow adult, Matt will surprise people a little when he's not dressed like a flannel onion. He's a little too tall and thin to look normal unless he's in the woods, and then his body proportions look correct compared to the winter-stripped trees. He's got shit posture, so it's easy to forget how tall he is until he's reaching to get something off the top shelf someone asked for, and suddenly he's unrolling himself a whole new half-spinal column. He got some of Francis' beauty but much of Arthur's sharpness. He looks somewhat fragile, but in the way an axe with a poorly proportioned handle does. He'll get the fucking job done, but the damage accrued will be impressive.

Eye colour: Blue on a technicality but a shade of deep arctic water grey-blue. The sky in the dead of winter when the cloud cover is so thick the whole world is tinged with carbon, charcoal and iron.

Hair colour/style: A few shades lighter than Alfred's and just a hue or two shy of being strawberry blond. When it's his own choice (and for much of history, it wasn't), he wears it longer than Alfred generally, so the curl shows more than on Alfred. He's spent so much time in the bush that it's gotten disgusting and needed to be cropped short again because he wasn't keeping it up on it. Still, in modern times he has an embarrassing amount of hair care products he's always hiding when Alfred comes over and throws a 15 in one bottle of something in the shower, or he'll get the absolute mickey taken out of him.

Other distinguishing physical traits: He's got some scars floating around but not many, all things considered.

Personal Appearance/Style: He can look extremely nice and put together, with a very fashionable closet of options at certain times, especially for official events, but otherwise, he's a creature of comfort. Flannel pyjama pants, sweaters, two pairs of socks, a collection of plaid shirts he's barely updated in decades. His entire existence relied on French fashion for half his life, so he knows the rules and can look like a fashion plate if he wants to; the problem is he generally doesn't want to, and his own tastes are quite homely. Even Arthur is like, "come on now, lad, you can do better than that."

Verbal Style: He mostly has a fairly mild Canadian accent and honestly plays it up around others to further distinguish himself from Alfred. He speaks a very standard version of French around others most of the time because he's easily embarrassed when laughed at about Quebecois or the rest of his non-standard dialects but drunk or upset, it's pure joual and ironically the only person who understands him is Arthur because English kept weird pieces of the Norman dialects that made up most of the early Canadien French. His Gaelic is good but has some French sounds in there. His Dutch sounds, unfortunately, Flegmish to Jan because he spoke French natively and learned a lot of it in Flanders during WW1. Russian + German, he speaks with a raging Ukrainian accent just for the raging fuck you from Katya. Those Gs of his are a pure hique from the steppes or downtown Lviv.

Level of Education: He had a very good classical education under Francis in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when he still thought he might be useful. Still has quite a lot of skills in Greek, Latin and Hebrew when he wants to. He's never been much good with math or financial things; his math somewhat stopped at what he needed to be an effective clerk for the fur trade. The only time Alasdair ever yelled at him was when Matt just completely blanked for decades with Algebra and Calculus. Did very well in almost all applied versions, though. He has much knowledge of many things and surprises people quite often with how much he has retained from being the first dominion. That position gave him a very pragmatic political education under Arthur and some really sharp peacekeeping skills. He got more into forestry after WW2. He's the most educated nation in the world now, and its probably because showing up for class keeps him out of the woods and going feral.

Occupation: Diplomat, forest ranger, government minister, arctic conservation.

Past Occupations: Soldier, sniper, infantry, pilot, paratrooper, ship's boy, lumberjack, fisherman, apothecary, fur trapper, merchant's clerk, farmer, hunter.

Skills, Abilities or Talents: He can go practically unnoticed by other nations, especially when those with stronger identities are around. He was practically born a part of the forest. He can survive in woodlands practically indefinitely, even when he's so mentally ill he turns off the human parts of his existence. Knows practically every animal and plant in his country and a good chunk of the world. As almost as natural on the water as Arthur but better in smaller crafts meant for freshwater.

Admirable Personality Traits: Deeply loyal, compassionate, giving, gentle, polite, and welcoming.

Negative Personality Traits: Loyalty is a really two-edged sword, anxious, depressive, reserved, cold, and passive-aggressive.

Sense of Humor: Gentle, ironic, self-deprecating.

Physical/Mental illness or affliction: Absolutely terrible lungs and horrible ankles from snowshoeing and hockey, he started having back pain during his last growth spurt, and it never went away. He's a fucking tinderbox of mental problems. Just throw the fucking DSM at him, honestly, because he's been a wreck his entire life. He might tie his father, but he happens to hide it even better than Arthur because he doesn't end up drunk on his brother's doorstep because he's got even less of a wish to be a nuisance than Arthur. And also, he doesn't affect international policy like Arthur or Alfred's, so no one really gives a shit how moody he's been for most of his life as long as he goes and does it out of view, so he's not wrecking the mood or being a nuisance.

Hobbies/Interests: Reading, hockey, hiking, camping, woodwork and carving in practically any material, even ice. Sailing, kayaking, skiing, snowboarding. He and Alfred go good old-fashioned sledding almost every year.

Favourite Foods: Anything warm; he's not about to be fussy, annoying and picky. He loves poutine, the good stuff with duck fat demi-glace, but nothing satisfies as much as oven fries from the frozen section, cheese curds and packet or jarred gravy. He's the holy mother of carb whores. Potatoes, bread, pancakes, doughnuts, pastry, Montreal bagels. Remember, we're the fucking people who looked at pizza and spaghetti and went "hmmm..... that's not enough carbs" and put the fucking spaghetti on the pizza.

Most important personal item: When he plays some important hockey matches he uses the laces from the combat boots he was wearing for VE-Day to hold his leg pads on. He had a rosary with the largest piece made from the bulla Rome gave Francis he carried everywhere, but Francis took that with him 'for safe keeping' when the Seven Years War started to go against them, and Matt never saw it again. He still has the one Alasdair made him from whatever rocks and wood were around in a trunk of keepsakes.

Person/friend close to character: Alfred is the most important person in his life, whether he likes it or not. He usually prefers it that way but only sometimes. Maria has been a close friend since the 90s. Jan is very special and was almost exclusive until the 90s, but still a large part of his life. Arthur's really important still. Jack and Zee are a fixture. Francis is important but a massive dick. He and Aditya have always gotten on extremely well, especially with Sikh culture strongly represented in Canada. Katya is ungodly important to him, being his most distinctive formative part besides indigenous, French and British.

Brief family history: He was born a baby hot potato between Scotland, France and England, getting tossed around constantly because fuck he was useless and expensive. Assuming Arthur is his father, he's got two uncles (one of whom Arthur considered his 'actual' father for a while) and an Aunt. One older brother, one younger and a sister. He might have more 'family' on Francis' side, but his global relations are still very much informed by the Anglosphere today. Diversity win! your favourite gay couple committed war crimes and produced a nervous wreck! Everyone waited in anticipation of the third North American child after the impressive shows put on by Maria and Alfred. It was probably the greatest letdown of 17the century European bullshit in the Americas after the silver collapse, and that set the tone for his familial relationships for the rest of time.

Most painful experiences in the character’s past: 1760, the Rising of 1837-1838, Passchendaele, Halifax going boom.

Their Song: The Unlikely Candidates – Follow My Feet

[shoehorseconstant]

i spoke french with my professor today and it was very fun very cute but I suddenly switched to HEAVY québécois joual to say "ouais" "ouais" "ouais" and I don't know where I got that??? no one I've heard has spoken like that it's like I became a caricature of myself

[clarenecessities]

As extra as the French went with some of their translations, the québécois went harder. Take Crystal Moonbeam, for example. The French called him Clair de Lune. Simple, classic, just a touch pretentious.

The Québécois translated it literally. Rayon de Lune Cristallin. Which both makes it sound like the moon is crystal (instead of the beam) and is a TRAGIC missed opportunity. Cristallion was right there!! Joual my ass.

[pickled-flowers]

contributing a data point i dont speak french but i just listened to the song on your recommendation and it's really good. i love the deep twang of the guitar and i love the tonality of the singer's voice even though i have no idea what he's saying

Yay thank you!!!!!

[blogtbear]

La corneille pi le coyote

Ce matin T-Bear a lu sur FesseBouc une note énonçant beaucoup de mots du dialecte québécois appelé “joual”, déformation de cheval qu’on retrouve notamment dans le patois charentais. La plupart de ces expressions proviennent du vieux français du XVIIème siècle importé par l’immigration à l’époque. T-Bear regrette que ce langage si fleuri soit en voie de disparition depuis le changement de…