Costs of items in Québec

Question

How do I say "This item costs five dollars and twenty-five cents" in Québec French? Je connais les nombres mais je ne connais pas les mots justes.

Answer 1

There are a couple of registers you can go for for "dollars" and "cents".

For dollars, you can say dollars or you can say piasses, which is a mispronunciation of the old piastre. The latter is a more casual register, but everyone understands it and you'll hear it a lot, especially from shoppers. Employees will tend to stick to dollars.

For cents, you can say cents, cennes or sous. The latter two are once again not formal, but very widely used, especially when combined with piasse, but they are used with dollars as well. Contrary to piasse though, there is not really any shopper/employee division in their usage.

So, some examples of things you could say are:

Ceci coûte cinq dollars et vingt-cinq cents.
Ceci coûte cinq dollars et vingt-cinq cennes.
Ça coûte cinq dollars et vingt-cinq sous.
Ça coûte cinq piasses et vingt-cinq cennes.
Ça coûte cinq piasses et vingt-cinq sous.
C'est cinq piasses et quart.

It is also common to simply forgo dollars and cents entirely and imply them:

Ça coûte cinq et vingt-cinq.