Combien d'accents en français? Focus sur la France, la Belgique et la Suisse
Résumé
Two experiments are reported, an accent identification test and a survey aiming at mappingpronunciation variants in European French. The results of the first experiment show that French varieties spoken in Quebec and Paris (supposed to represent the norm) are identified best, before theMaghrebian accent. In Europe, southern accents are rather well distinguished from northern French,Belgian and Swiss accents. In the second experiment, which focuses on the quality of mid vowels andthe pronunciation of final consonants, a clear North-South divide is shown. The pronunciation of somewords also distinguishes Belgian and Swiss accents. Despite a certain discrepancy between productionand perception, we hypothesise that 8 accents may be considered in European French: North, East,West, South-East and South-West of France, Corsica, Belgium and Switzerland.