What is joual?

"Qu'est-ce que le joual ?"
French B2 writing exercise

Learn about this typical French Canadian way of speaking.

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "to refer to", "Quebec French", "originally", "the working class", "joual/jouale (adj.)", "a similarity", "Norman (adj.)", "the lower class", "inelegant", "from the [years] onwards", "recognition", "to take on a larger meaning", "a dialect", "a standard of writing", "to contribute to".

Written by Qualified French Expert Aurélie Drouard HKH, Licence d'anglais LLCE
Last updated: 2023-01-05

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into French

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
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How the test works
You’ll practise: Adjectif, Le Présent (Indicatif), Article défini

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

Joual refers to a specific sociolect of Quebec French that was originally spoken by Montreal's working class. The term itself comes from the joual pronunciation of the French word "horse", which finds similarities with older Norman dialects. As a language of the lower classes, joual was often considered inelegant and even vulgar. But from the 1960s onwards, joual obtained some recognition thanks to artists like novelist and playwright Michel Tremblay, and this term took on a larger meaning to include Quebec's popular French in general. Though joual was originally an oral dialect without a standard of writing, nowadays, the popularity of social media networks, which are essentially written, contributes to the standardisation of written joual.

Thinking...