Acadian French - Characteristics

Characteristics

Since there was no linguistic contact with France from the late eighteenth century until the twentieth century, Acadian French retained features that died out during the French standardization efforts of the nineteenth century. That can be seen in examples like:

• While other dialects (such as Metropolitan French) have a uvular rhotic, Acadian French has an alveolar one so that rouge ('red') is pronounced

• The third-person plural ending of verbs -ont, e.g. ils mangeont ('they eat') as compared to Metropolitan French ils mangent, which does not have an ending that is pronounced.

• The use of -ions (now only plural first-person ending of verbs) instead of -ais as the singular first-person ending, in the "imparfait" tense: e.g. j'avions, j'aimions, j'étions... instead of j'avais, j'aimais, j'étais... (meaning: I had, I loved, I was...). This was most likely due to the old pronunciation of -ais endings in France before Louis XIV came to power, which sounded like -ois in most cases (ex: françois for français, j'avois for j'avais, etc.)

Many aspects of Acadian French (vocabulary, alveolar "r", etc.) are still common in rural areas in the West of France. Speakers of Metropolitan French and even of other Canadian dialects sometimes have minor difficulties understanding Acadian French.

See also Chiac, a variety with strong English influence, and Saint Mary's Bay French, a distinct variety of Acadian French spoken around Clare and also Tusket, Nova Scotia.