Dictionary of Canadian French =: Dictionnaire du franc¸ais canadien

by Sinclair Robinson and Donald Smith

Book Overview

Book by Sinclair Robinson, Donald Smith This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 077375363X
• ISBN13: 9780773753631
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Stoddart
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Nice Gift Idea

If you have Canadian roots, this is a great gift idea for those who have a fairly good understanding of French. The authors' research was extensive, and, it shows. I gave my copy to my instructor at the University of Québec at Trois-Rivières. She was delighted with it. Now I need to buy another onr for myself.

C'est le caramel sur la creme glacee-The icing on the cake

The book "Dictionary of Canadian French" is a very useful book for people who deal with French speakers from Quebec. It has very thorough sections on the vocabulary of Quebec. These are divided into sections e.g. around the house, at the hardware, business. There is a very large section titled miscellaneous that encompasses a large number of items that cannot be fitted into the other sections. These sections are followed by a section dealing with differences in the pronunciation of Quebec French from Standard French and a section dealing with the differences in the spoken grammar of Quebec French from Standard French. It also has sections on Acadian French vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. The Quebecois vocabulary item is listed, followed by standard French equivalents, if any, or an explanation in French, and then English equivalents, if any, or an explanation in English. The section on Acadian French follows the same layout. The "Dictionary" includes many colourful metaphors, a section on swearing in Quebec, and a section on body parts both polite and vulgar. You will find many items not found in standard French-English dictionaries because many of the entries are not single words but are phrases. This book, however, would not suffice as a stand alone French-English dictionary and should be used in conjunction with a good one. There is a small section on differences between Quebec and Standard French pronunciation and grammar. The section on pronunciation is adequate. The section on grammar is quite sparse. There is an index at the back of French Canadian words, but indices of Standard French and English, also, would have been helpful. In my career, I deal with Quebecois on a regular basis and have found this book useful in my interactions in French with them. I have not had interactions with Acadians or Cajuns and so am not able to offer any opinion on the usefulness of the sections that deal with the French spoken in Acadie and Acadiana.