There are quite a few differences between Québec French and French French. (It's stationnement, by the way, not stationment.)
The French word for brassiere is soutien gorge, whereas the Québecois simply pronounce brassiere as a French word (much to the amusement of French people). The French talk about "le weekend," whereas the Québecois prefer the original "fin de semaine." There are many more, of course. The foot-dragging on units of measure seems as bad in Québec as it is in British Columbia (which I visit at least once per year). I've long preferred m/s for wind, for the reason you state -- easy to visualize. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Behalf Of Jon Saxton >Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2005 10:49 >To: U.S. Metric Association >Subject: [USMA:34635] Canada: three observations > > >1. In June we went to Montréal for the Canadian F1 Grand Prix. One >evening while watching the news (in French) I noted that wind speed was >given in m/s instead of km/h. I had never heard it expressed that way >before but to my surprise I found it intuitively more obvious. I can >mentally picture something travelling a distance of 5 meters in one >second but I cannot do the same for something covering a distance of >18 km in an hour. On a more recent visit to the province of Québec >(Charlevoix and Gaspésie) I only saw km/h being used. > >2. On that same, recent visit to the province where the people are >sometimes more French than the French themselves ("Stationment" vs >"Parking", "Arrêt" vs "Stop") I was surprised to see an advertisement >in a Sunday paper for fruits and vegetables with weights expressed in >livres (pounds). I was going to attach a scan of the ad but in view of >its size I posted it to my web site insted. You can see it at >http://triton.vg/images/440.jpg Note that most of the bulk item prices >have small notations giving the price per kg but the carrots come in 5 >lb bags with no metric equivalent. And this in Québec! > >3. At a final stop at the Atlantic Superstore in Woodstock, NB before >crossing the border to Maine we found that most of the bulk produce was >displayed with signs giving prices per lb with small notations showing >the price per hectogram. To me that seems an abomination and compounds >the difficulty of the switch to metric. The Australian model using kg >pricing only seems much more natural to me. Interestingly, the prices >on printed labels for items such as cheese which were cut and repacked >from larger blocks showed price per kg exclusively. >
