Quote:
Originally Posted by zoomer
My family is Acadian - my mom’s parents had 18 kids, potato farmers in New Brunswick before moving to BC to become loggers in the late 1960s. I told a neighbour (from Quebec) that my mom was French, when I said where she was from he said “ahh, that’s not real French!” He then went on to mock the way Acadians speak French and he really came across as an insecure racist. Somehow he decided to air all his grievances against English Canada to me, saying how Mario Lemieux is the greatest player hockey player ever, Gretzky was useless, and pretty much how everything from Quebec, from food to music to art was always much much better. Of course that was just him, a petty weird little man, definitely not reflective of the Quebec French at all.
.
|
It's a totally believable story, though it does sound like a blast from the past.
It's been decades since Québécois francophones self-identified as "French".
Also, generally speaking the Acadiens get a "pass" when it comes to ignorance of other francophone Canadians. Some Québécois can be condescending to them and treat them like "the little brother", but no one would deny that Acadiens exist, nor that they are francophone.
Many of my Gatineau born and raised Québécois friends don't really consider Franco-Ontariens to be "real" francophones. In many cases their judgement isn't necessarily political, but rather empirical: a lot of Franco-Ontariens they've known or have met speak English most of the time in family settings or among friends, don't really know much about francophone culture, and often when you hear them speak in English vs. French, they clearly sound more at ease in English. To your average Québécois (even from Gatineau), that doesn't add up to being a francophone.
Acadiens are different in terms of accent, culture and vocabulary, but they still come across as being more naturally francophone.