History
Quebec French is not derived, as is sometimes misstated, from Old French – a much earlier ancestor that spanned the 10th to 14th centuries and more closely resembled Latin than modern French does. The origins of Quebec French actually lie in the 17th- and 18th-century regional varieties (dialects) of early modern French, also known as Classical French, and of other Oïl languages (Saintongeais, Norman, Picard, etc.) that French colonists brought to New France. Quebec French either evolved from this language base and was shaped by the following influences (arranged according to historical period) or was imported as a koine from Paris and other urban centres of France.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)