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Pardon?
: Maciej Ceglowski has moved to Montreal and is trying to adjust to Quebecois French and so he put up a handy chart of difficult translations, which includes:
What it says: sous-marin de 12 pouces
What I hear: undersea boat of twelve thumbs
What it really means: 12-inch sub
a funny read about adapting to quebecois. :) Back in ’97 I spent 3 wonderful days in Quebec, right by Lac St-Jean. People were warm, but man can they be a pain to understand at times, and i’m a native french speaker, originally born and raised in paris. heh. I find his analysis very-much dead-on.
okay a “char” in quebecois, is a “car”. “char” does mean tank in french but they’ve slanged it to “car”. heh. “voiture” would be the proper word. In parisian slang, you’ll hear people refer to “voiture” as “bagnole” (no meaning i know of) or “caisse” (a box).
I have no idea what simonizer means. I’ll have to hop on IRC and ask a few friends. heh.
Simonizing is some kind of fancy car wash + wax. I believe ‘char’ actually comes from chariot, a usage that predates tank.
The things you learn when 1,239,532 Quebecois email you.
12-inch sub? What happened to metric?
Metric? Nothing happened to it. It never happened at all in PQ. :)
Have MC give his report on poutine. Quebec’s contribution to international cuisine.
Ever heard of “joual”? It’s PQ slang, so called because that’s how it makes “cheval” sound. ;p
Maciej: oh haha that’s cool, thanks for the info :D The things we learn thru Buzzmachine connecting us! :D
Brian: Ugh, Poutine, Ugh Ugh Ugh. Last I remember from a most traumatic sampling, Poutine was made of french fries drenched in some really obnoxious, rich, thick cheese-esque sauce. Well that’s how i remember it at least, but I guess people like it. Or maybe it wasn’t poutine i tasted?
poutine is french fries and cheese curds smothered in gravy (the fake kind, ridiculously thick and viciously unhealthy), very very good on a winter’s day
all quebecois food is peasant food thats been kicked up a notch to deal with the vicious environment (montreal winters are viciously cold and ridiculously snowbound) by adding lots and lots of fat…
lot of pig knuckles and very traditional “feves au lard” which is baked beans with lots and lots of pig fat and bacon, and a bit of maple syrup
language is horribly hard to deal with and the small towns make for all sorts of regional variation in accents (being broadly a poor language minority, typical quebecois doesn’t travel much and you get much more dialectisation than you do in the rest of north america for the same amount of distance)