Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:41 on 2024-03-31 Permalink Reply  

• jeather 11:36 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  I don’t think these are slang words necessarily, they’re just varying levels of local terminolgy (“loonie” is not a Montreal word, for instance).

• Nicole 11:40 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  I think a lot of them are regionalisms, but not exactly slang in the sense that there’s a more formal term (e.g. poutine). I don’t think I’ve heard “enwaye” (#20), which I assume comes from “envoye”—although maybe I misunderstood it as “ah, ouais” or something. I note that #7 (guichet) refers in franglais to “Montrealers and Québécois alike,” implying that Montrealais aren’t really Quebecers

• Blork 15:32 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  I love how it’s presented as slang that “every Montrealer should know” and then proceeds to list things from a 100% anglo perspective. Such as “all dressed” being “poached” as a direct translation from “toute garnie.”

  And since when is “autoroute” a slang word, unless you’re talking about angos?

  Ditto “dep.” I don’t know how many francophones I’ve said “dep” to, who had no idea what I meant (hint: many). “Dep” is straight-up an anglo thing. (Francos use the full word.)

  And an aside: I wish we would kill once and for all the apartment lingo of “x-and-a-half.” I cannot imagine a more vague and ambiguous way to describe an apartment. In the rest of the world the FIRST THING people want to know about an apartment is “how many bedrooms?” The “x-and-a-half” slang doesn’t tell you that.

  For example, I once looked at a 3-1/2 on Parc that had two closed bedrooms. I lived for four years in a 5-1/2 that had one closed bedroom. CAN WE PLEASE STOP?

• Kate 15:56 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  My place is listed as a 4½ on the lease, but there’s only the one bedroom, and no way two people not in a close relationship could share this place. There’d be no privacy with a nonromantic housemate.

  But a lot of places here with the long double room get counted that way, I think, even though an arch is not the same thing as a wall.

• jeather 16:57 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  I never actually heard anyone use dep until I got to McGill and met non-locals, and it isn’t like I grew up in a francophone milieu.

• Blork 18:28 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  I just realized that I also lived in another 5-1/2 that had only one bedroom.

  @jeather, I think it might actually be a McGill thing, as that’s where I first heard it too. As in, it started with anglos “from away” (McGill students) and then just sort of trickled over into the anglos not from away.

• Kevin 18:39 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  I was 16 before I learned that dep was not an English word.

• Blork 18:48 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  Although it kind of is, because Francophones don’t use it. At least “Montreal English.”

• MarcG 19:18 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  It’s not “all dressed” it’s “all dress”.

• DeWolf 22:38 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  These aren’t slang words, they’re just local vocabulary, but if you get past the misnomer this is a useful list for someone moving here from abroad.

• Blork 23:57 on 2024-03-31 Permalink

  “All dress” for Francophones, “all dressed” for Anglophones and most allophones. For Eastern Canadians it’s “combination” when referring to pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and green peppers and “the works” or simply “with everything” when referring to anything else.

• GC 08:13 on 2024-04-01 Permalink

  Everyone I knew, while growing up in Ontario, would say “all-dressed” for the pizza. (This was before the chip flavour, which I feel was introduced at some point in my lifetime…)

  My brother and I always used “dep” growing up, but we didn’t expect most people to understand what we meant.

  “Loonie” and “tuque” are also not even remotely specific to Montreal or even Quebec. I can’t say for sure that they are used *everywhere* in Canada, but definitely very common in Ontario, at least. “Poutine” was largely unknown outside Quebec in the early eighties, but then it became more common on restaurant menus all over the country. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who spent much time in a city in Canada who didn’t know about it, at this point.

• Mozai 09:07 on 2024-04-01 Permalink

  The title “29 slang words” is contradicted by the actual list since some of the numbered “words” are categories like “Shop Talk” and “Neighbourhood Nicknames.” “Timmie’s” isn’t slang it’s a nickname. “NDG” isn’t slang it’s an acronym.

  “and-a-half” I learned when I moved here that the ½ means an ensuite bathroom — I don’t have to share a bathroom with my neighbours. I’ve wondered if I”ll see an apartment for lease someday that doesn’t have a bathroom labelled a “2-room”, but I suspect even landlords have forgotten what the ½ means.

• Ian 13:25 on 2024-04-01 Permalink

  Coming here from Ontario there are a lot of regionalisms, not necessarily slang, but very particular to Quebec anglos. Tons of loanwords of course like “guichet” or “garderie” – but many words in “English” are just direct translations from French that people outside Quebec might not even recognize –

  Dep instead of corner store
  Close the lights instead of turn out the lights
  Autoroute instead of highway
  Derogation instead of waiver (ironically both are of French origin)
  Subvention instead of grant
  Me, I instead of myself, I
  Manifestation instead of protest (in most other English-speaking places a manifestation means you are having trouble with ghosts)
  … and of course many, many more.

  I think we need to start to separate French-inflected English and English-inflected French – maybe “franglais” and “frenglish”? Mon truck et tout rustée, peu plus, c’est tout fuckée, là. Me, I need the derogation or my kid is stuck in garderie for another year.

  Another one I’ve noticed is a lot of maritimers here say “going for a dep run” meaning they’re headed out for smokes and beer so if you want in, give them some money.

  The “and a half” thing is funny for sure, especially since so many landlords pretend the window in a bedroom rule isn’t a real thing so a front room with an arch counts as two rooms.”5 1/2, 2 closed bedrooms” is much more useful. I had one apartment that was technically a 2 bed 5 and a half on two floors, with both a wc and a separate bathroom which was also the laundry room, a double room on the first floor, and a kitchen.
  The landlady listed it as an 8 room apartment.

• Blork 13:48 on 2024-04-01 Permalink

  Well, technically that front room with an extra area beyond the arch is two rooms (if each section has its own door). It’s just not a BED room. In my one-bedroom 5-1/2s that room was my home office. The problem is that x-number of rooms doesn’t correspond to the IMPORTANT information of “x-number of bedrooms.”

  I occasionally see ads written badly in English like “800 sq feet, 2 rooms.” That sounds like a large studio or maybe a one bedroom, but upon investigation it always turns out to be “two bedrooms” (plus kitchen, living room, etc.). This is half way to correcting the problem but also turns left towards another problem, which is you need to specify BED rooms! As if a living room or kitchen isn’t a “room” FFS!

• Kate 20:38 on 2024-04-01 Permalink

  The “2 rooms” is probably a poor translation of “2 chambres” which any francophone would understand as bedrooms, but the meaning doesn’t carry over into the English.

• DavidM 22:10 on 2024-04-01 Permalink

  I’ve lived in one 4 1/2 in the plateau, and a 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 in the Shaughnessy Village. All rentals.

  I really enjoyed this list, but they missed one good one:

  T’say (sic) la la. 🙂