OffQc | Québécois French Guide

On the radio, there’s an audio clip taken from a television show being used for promotional purposes. In the audio clip, the character from the television show can be heard saying:

Je suis dégoûtée de comment qu’on a pas protégé mes enfants.
I’m disgusted by how my children weren’t protected.

There are a few things I wanted to point out about the language in this quote:

1. Comment que was used instead of just comment. This can be heard frequently in spoken language. You saw this before in a past post where a speaker used comment que and quand que, instead of just comment and quand. She said:

quand qu’y’a fermé la porte
(an informal variation on quand il a fermé la porte)
when he closed the door

comment qu’y pensaient
(an informal variation on comment ils pensaient)
how they used to think

2. On a pas from the quote is an informal equivalent of on n’a pas, but they both in fact sound exactly the same. (I could’ve written on n’a pas in the quote above, but ne is almost always dropped in informal language — even if, here, including it or not including it makes no difference to the pronunciation of the quote.)

3. You know now that je suis frequently contracts to j’su’ in spoken language (sounds as if it were written chu in French — the ch sounds like the ch in chez). But the speaker here did in fact use the full je suis, and not a contraction of it. That’s because she wanted to stress what she was saying. By using the full je suis, she was able to emphasise her words more, which helped to convey her anger. Maybe we can compare it to the way an angry parent calls a child by his full name when he’s in trouble!