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.