French Canadian is french, but some of the phrases are different from european french. I was brought up in Quebec ( asbestos mining town) and we were only among about 400 english speaking people. English school, but took written and spoken french courses from 4th grade up. When I went off to college in the US, I took a french lit class and we were only 4 of us in the class. The prof was from Paris and she had us write a composition. I naturally wrote about a dog. In Que. the word for barking was " Japee"She had never heard of it and kept saying " C'est Aboie " ....