Phonetic and phonological characteristics of French spoken in Europe and Quebec

Abstract

The article highlights the phonetic and phonological characteristics of the French language spoken in Europe and in Quebec using a contrastive approach. The author first presents the historical links between the French-speaking countries and France. Then a synthesis of the main vocalic and consonantal oppositions is presented and compared to French spoken in France. Finally, the author highlights the current linguistic situation and the diversity of regional varieties of non-hexagonal French. The aim is to introduce the topic and to propose a general framework for the studies of France’s peripheral linguistic communities.

Keywords

• phonetics
• phonology
• French language
• Belgium
• Switzerland
• Quebec