> As for Quebecois - they have purposefully tried to keep their French "pure" > by disallowing loan words and policing usage. So I guess it has frozen, but > this is not something that has happened naturally. It's also interesting to > note that by the time the Quebecois decided to police their language it had > already become a dialect of continental French, so their pure French is in > fact not pure at all. > > *Strange Canadian fact* The French taught in schools outside of Quebec is > not Quebecois - it is Parisian French. Figure that one out. Just my 2 cents, seeing as how I'm a resident of Quebec. I could very well be wrong, but when people refer to Quebecers speaking French in an old fashion, they are referring as much to their accents as they are to their vocabulary or diction. An example of how 'old' Quebec French is: Louis XIV said: "La loi: c'est moi." Now, an urban student educated by the Quebec governement or someone from France would pronounce that as: "Lah lwah, seh mwha' Where as Louis XIV and rural Quebecers would pronounce that as: "La lweh, seh mweh"