OffQc | Québécois French Guide

In a conversation last week, a man in his 50s talked about his computer troubles and that he eventually got the blue screen.

Here’s just a little of what he said:

Je pèse su’l’piton une coup’ de fois… écran bleu… c’est peut-être mon disque qui a foiré…

(So) I press the button a few times… blue screen… it might be my (hard) disk that failed…

1. peser sur le piton

je pèse sur le piton
je pèse su’l’piton
(sounds like je pèse sul piton)
I press the button

In this sense, peser means the same thing as appuyer.

Piton here refers to a button that can be pressed, like on a keyboard, remote control, telephone, etc.

2. une couple de fois

une couple de fois
une coup’ de fois
(sounds like une coupe de fois)
a couple times, a few times

The expression une couple de… only survives in Québec. In the rest of the francophonie, it has fallen out of use. It will obviously remind you of the English expression “a couple (times, weeks, questions, etc.),” which came from French.

You’ll often hear couple pronounced without the -le ending in Québec, making it sound like coupe.

When couple is used in this sense, it’s feminine: une couple de fois, une couple de semaines, une couple de questions, etc.

If couple means “(romantic) relationship,” then it’s masculine: Je ne supporte pas ma belle-mère et mon couple va droit dans le mur. “I can’t stand my mother-in-law and my relationship is tanking.”

3. dzzzzz

Disque is a dzidzu word, so the d in disque makes a dz sound: dzisque.

The word for computer, ordinateur, often gets shortened to ordi during conversations (e.g., mon ordi, my computer). Both ordinateur and ordi are dzidzu words too: ordzinateur, ordzi.