Québécois French - the French spoken in French Canada (Québec) - has been added to translation tool Google Translate, including words such as chum, and magasiner.
The tool can even translate Français (France) into Français (Canada).
One example includes:
“Je vais faire les magasins ce week-end avec ma femme (I am going shopping with my wife)”, which translates as “Je vais magasiner avec ma blonde”.
A view of Google Translate from French (France) to French (Quebec)Translate.Google.fr
Other examples of words used in Québécois rather than French include:
Char (car). Similarly, ‘chauffer son char’ means ‘driving your car’. In this instance, ‘chauffer’ refers to the word ‘chauffeur’, rather than the French ‘chauffer’, which means ‘to heat up’. Of course, car in French is 'voiture'.
Chum (friend). In France this would be more likely known as ‘copain’.
Dépanneur (corner shop). Would be known in France as an ‘épicerie de quartier’.
Avoir le tour or pogner le tour (to be skilled). In France this would be ‘être habile’.
Être bourré (to be stuffed, too full). This is in contrast to the word in France, which means to be drunk.
Prendre une marche (to take a walk). In France you would say ‘aller se balader/se promener’.
Slacker (to be fired). In France you would say ‘se faire congédier’.
Un torrieux / une torrieuse (a joker). Someone who jokes around. In France, this is a ‘blagueur’.
Oupelaye! (Oh no!). An expression for a minor inconvenience. In France, this would be ‘oups’.
The YouTube channel Wandering French, run by a Québecois French teacher, is one of many who has more examples of words, expressions (and accents) that are used in French Canada.
Patois and Creoles
The new Google Translate update also added other languages and dialects, including Jamaican Patois, Balinese, Mauritius Creole, Seychelles Creole, Fijian, and Greelandian.
The tool has the largest directory of languages available in translation online. Another major update took place in June this year. This included Occitan, Breton, Cantonese, Assyrian, and Wolof.
Last year, in February 2023, the tool also added Basque and Corsican to its list, as well as Yiddish, Hawaiian, Kurdish, Luxembourgish, Zulu, and Sudanese.
Google Translate first launched in 2006 and claims to have 500 million users daily, who use it for text, documents, and even full websites.
However, some of our readers have told us that they prefer other translators, including DeepL and Reverso, especially for common languages like English and French, as those readers deem them to be more accurate.
