The Origins and Development of Emigrant Languages Proceedings from the Second Rasmus Rask Colloquium, Odense University, November 1994 Edited by Hans F. Nielsen and Lene Sch0sler ODENSE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1996 THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRONUNCIATION OF FRENCH IN QUÉBEC by Yves-Charles Morin Although the early colonists who settled in New France originated from regions having widely divergent dialects, early reports praise the conformity of their usage with the Parisian standard, while modern observations show that the language now spoken in Québec is relatively uniform and still relatively congruent with this standard. Several models have been proposed to account for this state of affairs. A reasonable answer, however, requires a careful distinction between the lexical, syntactical, morphological and phonetic aspects of the language as well as a reasonable knowledge of all the potential 17th-century dialectal sources: the Parisian norm, the regional dialects, and the regional standards. 1. The issues There are three striking facts about the French spoken in Québec: (1) its relative uniformity, (2) its relative conformity with standard French, and (3) the early reports about its 'quality'. This may appear to be somewhat paradoxical as the early colonists originated from regions having widely divergent dialects, and in particular from Ile- de-France, 1 Normandy, Poitou-Vendée and Aunis-Saintonge, the four regions that provided the largest contingents. Two models have been proposed to account for this state of affairs: (1) early adoption of both elaborate and colloquial Parisian speech habits (which does not exclude the equally early adoption of some non-Parisian features nor a later progressive loss of colloquial Parisian forms) 2 or (2) progressive uniformization of an early dialect - or dialects - toward the Parisian norm (requiring a dismissal of the earlier reports on the quality of the language as being merely ideological); the latter model may be further divided: (2a) the early setders originally spoke a mosaic of dialectal variants that continued to be spoken for a relatively long period 3 or (2b) the colonists spoke a rather uniform koine, distinct from that of Paris, which they either learned before their arrival 4 or developed shortly after they settled on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. 5 Supporting evidence for any of these models would require a reasonable knowledge of the different geographical and social 243