Avanzi: “The Vaudois accent is distinguished by its long vowels”

Innovative study on accents –

“The Vaudois accent is distinguished by its long vowels”

Mathieu Avanzi directs the Center for Gallo-Roman dialectology and the study of regional French at UNINE. There he supervised the unpublished master’s work of Romane Bettex.

BotTalk

In your opinion, what are the specificities of the Vaudois accent?

The specificity of the Vaudois accent is found above all at the level of the vowel system, notably with the production of excessively long vowels, which can diphthongize (change timbre along the way). In French-speaking Switzerland, everywhere we observe an opposition in length between the final vowels of masculine and feminine words. For example, the word “nu” is pronounced with a short vowel, while “nue” is pronounced with a long vowel. It also works with pairs of words like “bout” and “mud” or “bed” and “lie”. In the French of the canton of Vaud, this distinction is even more marked: the vowel of the word that ends in “e” is not just long, it is very long. It is sometimes accompanied by a diphthong, which gives things like “nuue” or “anée”. This exists sporadically in Valais and Geneva, but it is disappearing.

And from Fribourg?

In terms of vowels, Friborg French is the only one where the oppositions in length between masculine words and feminine words are the least strong. The proportion of people who pronounce “collé” and “collée” or “bout” and “mud” in a similar way is greater than in other cantons.

In this context, what new does Romane Bettex’s work bring?

Innovative, this work highlights, for the first time in the history of the discipline, the fact that the cantonal border is also a linguistic border in French. What is interesting is that she studies populations established in two neighboring villages, and that despite the zero distance between these speakers, the differences remain…

At the French-speaking level, are there other particularities elsewhere?

Yes, the duration of vowels (or rather their ability to diphthongize) is not the only cantonal curiosity. In the canton of Jura, we tend to open all the o’s at the end of words that end with this vowel (euro, bicycle, piano, etc.). They are pronounced with the same o as in pot, mot, sot, etc. In Valais, we pronounce je and je, de and deux in the same way. In Neuchâtel, some speakers do not pronounce the final s of the word “bear” when it is in the plural, although they pronounce it in the singular. We could extend the list even further.

You study the accents of the entire French-speaking world, what makes French-speaking Switzerland attractive to you?

It is a territory which is relatively small, but which due to its history, its peripheral position in relation to France and its political system (federalism) is a real laboratory for studying the way in which language is invoked by the French-speaking people to assert their identity.

Do you know of other typical examples, such as that of Missy and Saint-Aubin, with differences in the pronunciation of words a few hundred meters apart between residents?

No. Some studies dating from the 70s say that in Valais, speakers could tell the difference between people living in neighboring villages, but in my opinion this is a myth! This must have been possible when people spoke patois, but in French it is less obvious. That said, I think we can perhaps get results comparable to Romane’s by looking at the differences between Vaumarcus (NE) and Concise (VD).

How to study all this?

The “Say see!” application allows us to collect authentic data and test linguistic hypotheses about the French we currently speak. Since October 2024, we have already collected more than 55,000 sound recordings, made by nearly 10,000 users. Anyone can participate: we see images or words, and we register ourselves by describing or reading them. We can then listen to the productions of other speakers, and thus measure the diversity of pronunciations of French in French-speaking Switzerland!

As part of a conference, Mathieu Avanzi offers a journey to the heart of the words and expressions of the canton of Vaud, Friday January 24 at 8:15 p.m. at the Rueyres Casino.