page_title: French language in Canada
section_title: Quebec
hierarchical_section_title: French language in Canada / Francophones across Canada / Quebec
caption_attribution_description: English: Stop sign in Quebec Français&#160;: Panneau arrêt au Québec
context_page_description: French is the mother tongue of approximately 7.2 million Canadians according to the 2016 Canadian Census. Most Canadian native speakers of French live in Quebec, the only province where French is the majority and sole-official language. 77 percent of Quebec's population are native francophones, and 95 percent of the population speak French as their first or second language.
  Additionally, about one million native francophones live in other provinces, forming a sizable minority in New Brunswick, which is officially a bilingual province; approximately one-third of New Brunswick's population is francophone. There are also French-speaking communities in Manitoba and Ontario, where francophones make up approximately 4 per cent of the population, as well as significantly smaller communities in Alberta, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan – approximately 1 to 2 per cent. Many of these communities are, in the contemporary era, supported by French-language institutions. In 2016, 29.8 per cent of Canadians reported being able to conduct a conversation in French.
context_section_description: Quebec is the only province whose sole official language is French. Today, 81.4 per cent of Quebecers are first language francophones. About 95 per cent of Quebecers speak French. However, many of the services the provincial government provides are available in English for the sizeable anglophone population of the province (notably in Montreal). For native French speakers, Quebec French is noticeably different in pronunciation and vocabulary from the French of France, sometimes called Metropolitan French, but they are easily mutually intelligible in their formal varieties, and after moderate exposure, in most of their informal ones as well. The differences are primarily due to changes that have occurred in Quebec French and Parisian French since the 18th century, when Britain gained possession of Canada.
  Different regions of Quebec have their own varieties: Gaspé Peninsula, Côte-Nord, Quebec City, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Outaouais, and Abitibi-Témiscamingue have differences in pronunciation as well as in vocabulary. For example, depending on one's region, the ordinary word for "kettle" can be bouilloire, bombe, or canard.
  In Quebec, the French language is of paramount importance. For example, the stop signs on the roads are written ARRÊT (which has the literal meaning of "stop" in French), even if other French-speaking countries, like France, use STOP. On a similar note, movies originally made in other languages than French (mostly movies originally made in English) are more literally named in Quebec than they are in France (e.g. The movie The Love Guru is called Love Gourou in France, but in Quebec it is called Le Gourou de l'amour).
caption: A Quebec French stop sign
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