Swiss French

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Swiss French is spoken in Romandy, highlighted in
purple.

Swiss French (French: français de Suisse) is the name used for the variety of French spoken in the French-speaking area of Switzerland known as Romandy. Swiss French is not to be confused with Franco-Provençal or Romansh, two other Romance languages spoken in areas not far from Romandy.

The differences between Swiss French and Parisian French are minor and mostly lexical: a Swiss French speaker would have no trouble understanding a French speaker, while a French speaker would encounter only a few unfamiliar words while listening to a Swiss French speaker. Swiss French differs from the French of France to a far lesser extent than Swiss German differs from standard German. This was not always the case; however, most of the dialects spoken in the Romandy died out and are thus no longer spoken or used.

There is not a single standardised Swiss French language: different cantons (or even different towns in some cases) will use different vocabulary, often derived from the local regional language or from German, since Switzerland is predominantly German speaking.

Many differences between Swiss French and French are due to the different administrative and political systems between Switzerland and France. For example:

The word canton has a different meaning in each country.
In France, a post office box is called a boîte postale (BP), whereas in Switzerland, it is called a case postale (CP).

Other examples:

Swiss French shares with Belgian French many distinctive lexical features, such as the use of the word septante for seventy and nonante for ninety as opposed to soixante-dix (literally 'sixty-ten') and quatre-vingts-dix (literally 'four twenties and ten') of the "vigesimal" French counting system. The words huitante and octante are also sometimes used for eighty instead of quatre-vingts (literally 'four twenties'), especially in the cantons of Vaud, Valais and Fribourg. Also, the words déjeuner (breakfast) and dîner (lunch) are used with the same meaning as in Belgian French and Quebec French, in opposition with the French usage with meanings of lunch and dinner.