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« 30+ useful phrases and expressions to learn in Québécois French (#985)
T’es vraiment dans la lune! How DANS LA can contract in Québécois French (#987) »

Winter slush and summer slush in Québec (#986)

23 July 2015 by OffQc

In Québec, you’ll find slush all year round… not because winter never ends, but because you can drink it in the summer as a treat.

In the winter, la sloche (or la slush) is snow on the ground that becomes watery and dirty as large numbers of pedestrians or cars pass over it.

Corner of rue Sainte-Catherine and rue Guy in Montréal, December 2013

In the summer, you can drink la sloche (or la slush) in the form of a colourful, icy drink that you slurp up through a straw.

Window of a dépanneur at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, July 2015

For the sake of interest, and as you might have imagined, the OQLF recommends different words for these two concepts because sloche comes from English. For winter slush, one of the recommended words is la gadoue. For summer slush, one of the recommended words is la barbotine. This doesn’t stop people from using sloche colloquially in both cases, of course.

One of the reasons they give for not recommending sloche is that it doesn’t fill any gaps in the French language because words like gadoue and barbotine exist. This argument doesn’t hold up; we can also say that gadoue and barbotine don’t fill any gaps because the word sloche exists. Shall we stop saying content because heureux exists? It’s unclear to me why they need to hide the real motive and which everybody already knows anyway — they don’t recommend sloche because it comes from English.

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Posted in Entries #951-1000 | Tagged français québécois, Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), Québécois French, sloche, slush | 2 Comments

2 Responses

  1. on 23 July 2015 at 23:13 Adrian

    Tu peux-tu écrire un billet sur les différences entre “coudonc!” pis “voyons donc”? Ou peut-être q’une simple réponse suffira.

    Me semble qu’ils sont similares à l’exception de l’usage de “coudonc” dans le cadre d’attirer l’attention de quelqu’un si l’on veut poser une question (un de tes exemples: “coudonc, c’est quoi le problème?”).

    J’ai plein d’autres questions, fait que je me demande si c’est préferable de poser ces questions dans les billets les plus récents.

    En plus de ça, je trippe solide sur ton 1000 québécois french pdf. Je le consulte tout le temps et peux dire pas mal de phrases par coeur. Vraiment là, si ce blog n’existait pas, je n’aurais pas appris même un tiers du québécois qui traîne dans mon cerveau. Je déménage à Mtl dans une semaine, fait que j’ai tellement hâte de jaser québécois avec qui que ce soit et avoir du pas pire fun. Je capote ben raide. =)

    Merci!


  2. on 24 July 2015 at 11:29 OffQc

    Wow, c’est génial, Adrian! Je suis certain que tu vas tripper solide à Montréal! 😛

    coudon’
    voyons don’

    Les deux expressions expriment la surprise, mais, plus précisément, je dirais que coudon’ exprime un mélange de surprise et d’incompréhension, tandis que voyons don’ exprime un mélange de surprise et d’indignation.

    Coudon’, y’est où ton frère?
    surprise–incompréhension

    Ben voyons don’, pourquoi t’as fait ça?!
    surprise–indignation



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