Quebec French as la langue québécoise (the Québécois language); most speakers, however, would reject or even take offence to the idea that they do not speak French. New France The French language established itself permanently in North America with the foundation of Quebec City by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. However, it was after the creation of the Sovereign Council of New France in 1663 that the colonies really started to develop. Between 1627 and 1663, a few thousand colonists landed in New France, either in Acadia or Canada. The provinces that contributed the most to these migrations were those in the northern and western regions of France. The migrants came from Normandy, Aunis, Perche, Brittany, Paris and Île-de-France, Poitou, Maine, Saintonge, and Anjou, most of those being regions where French was seldom spoken at the time (see article Languages of France). According to Philippe Barbaud (1984), the first colonists were therefore mostly non-francophone except for the immigrants from the Paris area, who most likely spoke a popular form of French; and the following dialect clash (choc des patois) brought about the linguistic unification of Quebec. Among the speakers of Norman, Picard, Aunis, Poitevin and Saintongeais and the Celtic language Breton, many might have understood French as a second language. Gradually, a linguistic transfer towards French occurred, leading to the linguistic unification of all the ethnic groups coming from France. According to Henri Wittmann (1997) (based on earlier work of his), the overwhelming similarities between the different varieties of Colonial French clearly show that the linguistic unity triggering dialect clash occurred before the colonists exported their French into the colonies of the 17th and 18th centuries; and that the koiné-forming dialect clash must have occurred in Paris and other related urban centers of France. In any event, according to contemporary sources, the Canadians were all speaking French natively by the end of the 17th century, long before France itself outside its large urban centers. British regime On September 13, 1759, Quebec City, then the political capital of New France, was taken by the British Army. New France fell a year later. According to the terms of 1760 Articles of Capitulation of Montreal, the French Army was to leave the conquered territory. The ruling elite (French nobles and leading merchants) also left. Ordinary people, the Roman Catholic clergy, lesser merchants, and some members of the civil administration, the majority having been