Magoua is a particular dialect of basilectal Quebec French spoken in the Trois-Rivières area, between Trois-Rivières and Maskinongé. Long before a military fort was constructed there, Trois-Rivières became in 1615 the first stronghold of the coureurs des bois outside the city of Québec. Magoua is the ethnonym applied to their descendants in the area. Magoua is the most conservative of all Quebec French varieties, including Joual. It preserves the sontaient ("étaient") characteristic of Métis French and Louisiana French, has a creole-like past tense particle tà and has old present-tense contraction of a former verb "to be" that behave in the same manner as subject clitics. Its name may derive from a word in Atikamekw: Makwa, which means loon (Gavia immer).

Morphology and vocabulary