Canadian French

Canadian French is an umbrella term for the different dialects of French spoken in Canada and the rest of North America, including Québécois French and Acadian French.

French is one of Canada's two official languages; the other is English (see Canadian English). First-language speakers of French make up about 23% of the population of Canada and 95% of them live in Quebec. Quebec is the only province whose sole official language is French, and is the only part of Canada where this population is not in decline.

French is also an official language of the province of New Brunswick and of each of the three territories.

Québécois French is substantially different in pronunciation and vocabulary, though easily mutually comprehensible, with the French of the Académie française. This is due to the long history of French in Canada and the fact that French immigrants to Canada kept speaking the French of the Ancien Régime while in France the French revolution saw the standardization of bourgeois Parisian French.

Acadian French is spoken in the Canadian Maritimes (Acadia), and is ancestor of Cajun French. New Brunswick has the largest Acadian population, and is the only province that is officially bilingual.

French is also spoken by nearly half a million French-Canadians in Northern Ontario, however a third of them no longer speak it at home. The mining boom of the early 20th century attracted many French speaking Quebecers to Northern Ontario. Ontario has no official language, however it is de facto an English-speaking province. Government service is provided in French "where numbers warrant", but provincial laws are enacted in English.

Also related to French in North America is Michif, a unique language mixing French and Cree. It is still spoken by a small number of Métis living mostly in the province of Manitoba.