There are various lexical differences between Quebec French and France French. These are distributed throughout the registers, from slang to formal usage.

Standardization

The Office québécois de la langue française believes that neither morphology nor syntax should be different between Québécois and France French, and even that phonetic differences should be kept to a minimum. However, starting in the 1960s, it agreed to the use of words then called "well-formed Canadianisms (canadianismes de bon aloi)," that either are regional in nature (such as names of plants and animals), have been used since before the Conquest, or are justified in their origin and are considered to be equivalent or "better" than the standard equivalent.

A small list of words was published in 1969, mainly containing words that were archaic in France but still common in Quebec. This list especially contained imperial units and words from aboriginal languages. Subsequent lists have been published regularly since then.

Preservation of forms

Many differences that exist between Quebec French and European French arise from the preservation of certain forms that are today archaic in Europe. For example, espérer for "to wait" (attendre in France).

Cour in Quebec is a backyard (jardin in French), whereas in France cour has dropped this meaning and primarily means a courtyard (as well as other meanings like court). However, in some areas of France, such as in the mining regions of northern France, cour still means backyard.

The word breuvage is used for "drink" in addition to boisson; this is an old French usage (bevrage) from which the English "beverage" originates. Breuvage may be used in European French, but generally indicates some nuance, possibly pejorative.

The word piastre or piasse, a slang term for a dollar (equivalent to "buck"), was in fact the term originally used in French for the American or Spanish dollar.

The word couple is used in standard French as a masculine noun (a couple, married or unmarried), but in Quebec it is also used as a feminine noun in phrases like une couple de semaines (a couple of weeks). This is often thought to be an anglicism, but is in fact a preservation of an archaic French usage. This confusion is not as wrong-headed as might be thought, though, given that English itself includes French or Norman archaicisms (e.g. the pronunciation of an initial "ch" as ).

Nautical terms

A number of terms that in other French-speaking regions are exclusively nautical are used in wider contexts in Quebec. This is often attributed to the original arrival of French immigrants by ship. An example is the word débarquer, which in Quebec means to get off any conveyance (a car, a train); in Europe, this word means only to disembark from a ship or aircraft (on descend from other vehicles), plus some colloquial uses.

Quebec specialties

There are also words for Quebec specialties that do not exist in Europe, for example poutine, cégep, tuque (a Canadianism in both official languages), and dépanneur (a corner store/small grocery; dépanneur in France is a mechanic who comes in to repair a car or a household appliance).

Blueberries, abundant in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, are called bleuets; in France, they are called myrtilles and bleuet means cornflower. (Bleuet is also slang for someone from the Saguenay.)

Informality

French speakers of Quebec use the informal second-person pronoun tu more often and in more contexts than speakers in France do. In certain contexts it may be perfectly appropriate to address a stranger or even the customer of a store using tu, whereas the latter would be considered very impolite in France. The split often runs across generations in Quebec: Persons between 40 and 60 years of age often feel that sales persons, or service personnel giving them a tu instead of a vous are uncouth or uncivilised. Persons 60 years of age and more will sometimes feel deeply insulted if a stranger uses the tu on them. Government employees (such as policemen or bureaucrats with some contact with the public) as well as employees of large stores or large chains in Quebec are usually instructed to use vous on everybody, unless some kind of camaraderie or "instant bonding" circumstance is in play. Sometimes the split is also across social or educational lines. For instance, young academics are usually hesitant in using tu on slightly older colleagues with just a few more years of seniority.

Although it is best to avoid generalizations, Parisian French speech (and public speakers such as politicians) often come across as stuffy or snobbish to the ears of Quebec Francophones. This is also true for the ears of people from southern France, who pronounce French very differently from Parisian people. Southern French people who move temporarily to Paris and pick up the local Parisian accent are often derided by their friends who have remained in the south. It is also very similar to the perception North American English-speakers may have of British English ("upper-class" and "fancy").

Idioms

There is a huge variety of idioms in Quebec that do not exist in France, such as fait que ("so"); en masse ("a lot"); s'en venir (for arriver and venir ici); ben là! or voyons donc! ("oh, come on!"), de même (for comme ça).

Entire reference books have been written about idioms specific to Quebec. A handful of examples among many hundreds:

• J'ai mon voyage = J'en ai marre = I'm fed up
• C'est de valeur = C'est dommage = It's a pity

Dialog in sitcoms on Quebec television uses such idioms extensively, which can make some dialog rather incomprehensible to speakers of European French.

Slang terms

As with any two regional variants, there are an abundance of slang terms found in Quebec that are not found in France. Quebec French profanity uses references to Catholic liturgical equipment, rather than the references to prostitution that are more common in France.

The expression "you're welcome" is bienvenue in Quebec, de rien in France; and the expression bonjour can be used for "goodbye" in Quebec, which it cannot in France (although it is more common to say au revoir or bye).

One of the more hazardous differences is the fact that gosses ("kids" in France) means "testicles" in Quebec. (Gosser means "to annoy.") This brought many hilarious situations involving French tourists making remarks about kids to their Quebecer parents. And boules, which means testicles in Europe, means breasts in Quebec.

Some slang terms unique to Quebec:

Words from aboriginal languages

Use of anglicisms

Loanwords from English in French, as well as calques or loan syntaxic structures, are known as anglicisms (French: anglicisme).

Colloquial and slang registers

The use of anglicisms in colloquial and Quebec French slang is commonplace. Some examples of long-standing anglicisms include:

use of preposition stranding

It is also very commonplace for an English word to be used as a nonce word, for example when the speaker temporarily cannot remember the French word. This is particularly common with technical words; indeed, years ago before technical documentation began to be printed in French in Quebec, an English word might be the most common way for a French-speaking mechanic or other technical worker to refer to the mechanisms he or she had to deal with.

It is often difficult or impossible to distinguish between such a nonce anglicism and an English word quoted as such for effect.

There are some anglicisms that have no obvious connection to any currently existing modern Canadian English idiom. For example, partir sur un nowhere ("leave on a 'nowhere'", to go on an adventurous trip without necessarily knowing your destination or perhaps even your travel companions); etre su'l party ("be on the 'party,'" to be partying or to be in the mood for a party).

Standard register

A number of Quebecisms used in the standard register are also derived from English forms, especially as calques, such as prendre une marche (from "take a walk," in France, se promener, also used in Quebec) and banc de neige (from English "snowbank;" in France, congère, a form unknown in Quebec.) However, in standard and formal registers, there is a much stronger tendency to avoid English borrowings in Quebec than in France.

As a result, especially with regard to in modern items, Quebec French often contains forms designed to be more "French" than an English borrowing that may be used anyway in European French, like fin de semaine which is week-end in France, or courriel (from courrier électronique) for France's e-mail or mel. Some are calques into French of English phrases that Continental French borrowed directly, such as un chien chaud for European French hot dog. Likewise, the word "gay" in the sense of "homosexual" is used in the English form in France, but in Quebec, the spelling gai is standard (gai has kept the original meaning of gay in France: "happy", "cheerful").

Although many (not all) of these forms were promulgated by the Office québécois de la langue française (OLF) of Quebec, they have been accepted into everyday use. Indeed, the French government has since adopted the word courriel (although it remains to be seen whether it will come into widespread use among the French public as it has in Quebec).

Perception

The perceived overuse of anglicisms in the colloquial register is a cause of the stigmatization of Quebec French. Both the Quebercers and the French accuse each other (and themselves) of using too many anglicisms. A joke runs that the difference between European French and Quebec French is that in Europe, on se gare dans un parking (one parks in a carpark) and in Quebec, on se parque dans un stationnement (one parks in a parking lot).

Quebec and France tend to have entirely different anglicisms because in Quebec they are the gradual result of two and a half centuries of living among English speakers, whereas in Europe they are much more recent and result from the increasing international dominance of American English. Statistically though, and rather counter-intuitively, the French use more anglicisms than the Quebecers.

See also Franglais.

Other differences

Here are some other differences between standard Quebec French and European French:

Many, but not all, of the European equivalents for the words listed above are also used or at least understood in Quebec.