New place to learn Canadian French online: Frenchcanada on Wordpress

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There's a new blog here devoted to teaching people how to speak Canadian French as opposed to standard Parisian French that you might want to keep an eye on. Why would one want to learn Canadian French instead of Parisian French you might ask? The blog answers the question thus:

Your French teachers don’t (or didn’t) want you to speak real French, or at least not the real French that’s spoken in Canada. French teachers think there’s only one way to speak, and that’s by following all the proper rules of “good, standard French.” There are two problems with this approach:

1. You won’t ever learn to understand French as it’s really spoken.
2. You’ll talk like a book, not a person. People won’t like you. (People like people who talk like people, not textbooks.)

You won’t sound like a native speaker or understand everything spoken around you just by reading this blog, but it will give you a great headstart by drawing your attention to the main features that distinguish Canadian French from the French used in Europe and, most likely, the stuffy French used in your classroom by your teacher.

Both are good reasons if one intends to learn French to communicate with people in Quebec (let's say you're in government / work in a call centre / something else related to French in Canada); the first because being able to prepare a bit by yourself before spending some time in Quebec is a good thing (compared to realizing after arrival that people don't sound like you expected) and...well, the second is actually probably not crucial to being liked by people, but if you want to blend in then yes. Some people are charming regardless of how their accent sounds so reason #2 probably isn't of utmost importance.

The most recent post on forming the imperative shows Canadian French to be a bit easier grammatically than what one encounters in textbooks:

In spoken Canadian French, the above examples are said the same way. But look at what happens when the imperative is in the negative.

Ne chante pas! → Chante pas!
Ne marchez pas! → Marchez pas!
Ne partez pas! → Partez pas!
Ne parle pas! → Parle pas!
Ne raccroche pas! → Raccroche pas!

Just drop the ne. Easy, no? Now take a look at these examples.

Ne me regarde pas. → Regarde-moi pas.
Ne me touche pas. → Touche-moi pas.
Ne t’inquiète pas. → Inquiète-toi pas.
Ne te retourne pas. → Retourne-toi pas.

Did you see what happened? The ne was dropped, but look at the moi and toi in the examples. They’re in the same place as if the sentence were in the affirmative. (Regarde-moi, regarde-moi pas. Touche-moi, touche-moi pas.)

The whole blog is written in this nice informal style, just as if you had a person next to you explaining the differences point by point. That's my favourite style for explaining a language.