OffQc | Québécois French Guide

In entry #498, you watched a short clip from François en série, where François comes face-to-face with different aspects of his personality in the form of real people that only he can see.

In that clip (watch again here), the artist in François, l’artiste en lui, jumps out the window after being told how awful his romantic poetry to Marie-Hélène is.

Below we see François again, making a telephone call to Marie-Hélène. She’s crying and doesn’t answer the phone.

The artiste en François composes a poetic email to her. But the text of his poem is so awful that it’s met with disapproval by François and the woman in him, la femme en lui…

— Ça répond pas… J’aime pas ça. Je pense que je vais aller la voir.

— Mon chou, mon minou, mon genou, mon pou!

— Que c’est qu’tu fais là, toi?

— J’écris un email à Marie-Hélène, une ode, un poème. Ô Marie-Hélène! Ton nom composé me décompose le cœur. Ton parfum m’ensorcelle. Ô toi! Sorcière de mes amours! Envoyer.

— C’est vraiment poche!

The adjective poche (bad, lame, no good) was used in the video from entry #498 too, where François says mais t’es ben poche!

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On a sign from a mobile phone company:

Des spéciaux qui vont faire jaser.

des spéciaux
specials, deals

jaser
to chat, to make conversation

faire jaser
to get people talking, chatting

You’ll hear jaser pronounced with the vowel sound â in Quebec, as if it were written jâzer.

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In the series François en série, François literally comes face-to-face with different aspects of his personality.

François is the one with the stubble on his face. The other people we see in this scene are all parts of his personality, in the form of real people. That’s why they’re all dressed the same. Only François can see these people though.

The female in this scene is the woman in François, la femme en lui (his feminine side).

We also see the artist in François, l’artiste en lui, who tries to help François attract a woman called Marie-Hélène through poetry. François thinks that the artist in him is an awful poet though. He tells him:

Mais t’es ben poche!
But you really suck!

The artist in François has a depressive personality and can’t handle criticism…

Watch another clip from François en série here.

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Une poche is a pocket, so something that’s format de poche is pocket-sized.

In Quebec French, poche also exists as an informal adjective meaning nul, “no good,” “lame,” etc.

For example: Je suis vraiment poche en anglais. I’m really bad at English, hopeless in English…

If something’s pas poche, like the price of this 414 mL Coke, then it’s the opposite.

format de poche
prix pas poche

pocket-sized
not-awful price

It sounds better in French though because of the wordplay on poche.

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In the summer months, representatives from different charities take the streets of downtown Montreal by storm.

These representatives can be found on many street corners, looking for people interested in their cause. Some passers-by stop to talk to them, while others avoid them and just keep on walking.

While walking down Sainte-Catherine Street, a group of three people in their 20s walked ahead of me — two guys and a girl. A representative from a charity approached the girl, and she stopped unwillingly to speak to him.

Her two friends kept on walking, leaving her behind. They laughed at how she got “stuck” speaking to the representative.

Frustrated that her friends had left her behind (and eager to free herself of the representative), she called out to her friends to not leave her alone. That’s when the representative himself encouraged her two male friends to come back by saying:

Venez-vous-en, les boys!
Come here, guys!

They kept their distance though, and they let their friend get out of the conversation on her own…

venez-vous-en!
viens-t’en!
come here!

And the opposite:

allez-vous-en!
va-t’en!
go away!

Remember, there’s a liaison between vous and en, so the vous forms sound like this:

venez vou zen
allez vou zen

The representative also used the informal les boys to call out to the guys. The s in boys is pronounced z, just like in English.

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I was intrigued to find this example of the word raque (see photo), a word belonging to the informal, spoken level of Quebec French, but usually spelled rack.

This sign informs us that everything on the rack is on sale for $69. The word raque here refers to the rack that the shirts are hanging on. The use of rack in French (or raque as we see it here) is a borrowing from the English “rack.”

If you watched the Pure laine clip from entry #493, you might have caught another example of rack in use. The young Ming says rack à t-shirts when speaking to the store employee. Similarly, you might also hear rack à velos in the spoken language.

The use of rack in French surely ruffles the feathers of language purists. It’s not the sort of word you’ll find in professionally created advertising.

The fact that this word managed to find its way onto the sign here isn’t what intrigues me, however. This is just a simple sign created by an employee for that single rack of shirts.

What I find interesting about the use of raque in this photo is the French spelling applied to it (raque instead of rack).

Was a French spelling used because the word is simply felt to be French by the person who made the sign?

Or was this maybe the writer’s attempt to render the word more French for the purpose of a sign, unsure if the original English spelling was acceptable?

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