For one language, there are many accents, regarding the country they are spoken. For example, French isn’t spoken the same way in France, Canada, Switzerland or Belgium… Even in France, depending of the regions, people have different accents.

The Parisian accent is considered as the “neutral” french accent as it is the one taught to children in foreign schools and the most common in the all France. There are 3 variations of the Parisian accent: The working class sounds coarse, the upper class sounds snobbish, the middle class sounds neutral. Even though they pronounce the words quite the same way, the attitude and the way they talk changes the feeling when heard.
People from the south of France, are easily identified. Indeed, after pronouncing a few words, you can know they are from the south because of their singing accent. They make vowel sound less nasal, they pronounce the silent “e” at the end of the words. People from Lyon region are also pronouncing the silent “e”. They are mixing some vowels pronunciation. They also tend not to pronounce the last consonants of proper nouns.
At the opposite of the country, in the north of France, people are speaking with an accent getting close to Belgium accent. Indeed, the closer you get to Germany, Spain, Italy….the closer the way of speaking and accent are going to be to these countries inhabitants.
You can also notice that, in France, to designate something, depending on where you are, you can use different words.

A few examples:

– Chocolate croissant is Pain au chocolat or Chocolatine… and it is a real actual debate in France.

– Mop (cf picture)

– Party (cf picture)

– Pencil (cf picture)

By AB