joual

In Paris and some regions of France, the word 'cheval' was pronounced /ʒval/ ('jval') during the 17th and 18th centuries, around the time of the colonization of New FranceJean-Denis Gendron, D'où vient l'accent des Québécois? Et celui des Parisiens?, Presses de l'Université Laval, Québec, 2007. (which became Quebec). This is how this pronunciation arrived in America, to phonetically transform into 'joual' in certain circles. However, the pronunciation 'joual' for 'cheval' is non-existent today and was never the most common in Quebec. It was through derision that this word was chosen by the first critics of this speech to designate it in the 1930s.