This course has compared France and Québec in every lesson since A1. That comparison has quietly taught you something important — that French has more than one centre — but it has also left a gap. Between Paris and Montréal there are four million francophone Belgians, two million francophone Swiss, a bilingual Grand Duchy, an Italian Alpine valley, and the largest concentration of professional French-writing in the world: the European institutions.
None of these speak "French with mistakes in it". They have standard varieties, with their own dictionaries, their own official terminology and their own unremarkable usages. A C1 speaker recognises them.
| French | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| septante | sep-TAHNT | 70 — 🇧🇪 🇨🇭 (France: soixante-dix) |
| octante | ok-TAHNT | 80 — rare, some 🇨🇭 regions |
| huitante | wee-TAHNT | 80 — Vaud, Valais, Fribourg |
| nonante | no-NAHNT | 90 — 🇧🇪 🇨🇭 (France: quatre-vingt-dix) |
| septante-cinq | sep-tahnt SANK | 75 |
| nonante-neuf | no-tahnt NUHF | 99 |
Geneva and Neuchâtel say quatre-vingts like France; Lausanne says huitante. Brussels says quatre-vingts too — Belgium innovated on 70 and 90 but not on 80. The forms are historically older than France's, not newer: septante and nonante are regular Latin-derived numerals, and it is France's vigesimal quatre-vingts that is the oddity.
| Meal | 🇫🇷 France | 🇧🇪 🇨🇭 🇨🇦 |
|---|---|---|
| Morning | le petit-déjeuner | le déjeuner |
| Midday | le déjeuner | le dîner |
| Evening | le dîner | le souper |
This is the single most practical thing on this page. On dîne à midi in Brussels, Geneva and Montréal; in Paris it means the evening. An invitation for souper is not a late snack.
| French | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| une drache | ün DRAHSH | a downpour |
| s’il vous plaît | seel voo PLAY | also = "here you are" when handing something over |
| une farde | ün FARD | a folder, a ring binder |
| un GSM | uhn zhay-es-EM | a mobile phone |
| une aubette | ün oh-BET | a bus shelter, a kiosk |
| savoir (= pouvoir) | sah-VWAHR | to be able to — je ne sais pas venir |
| tantôt | tahn-TOH | earlier / later today |
| une pistolet | uhn pees-to-LAY | a round bread roll |
| un bourgmestre | uhn boorg-MESTR | a mayor |
| un échevin | uhn ay-shuh-VAN | a municipal alderman |
| le kot | luh KOT | a student room (from Dutch) |
| avoir facile | ah-vwahr fah-SEEL | to find something easy |
Belgian savoir can mean pouvoir. Je ne sais pas venir demain in Brussels means I can't come tomorrow, not I don't know how to come. Dutch kunnen covers both senses, and the contact has left its mark.
| French | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| le natel | luh nah-TEL | a mobile phone |
| une panosse | ün pah-NOS | a floor cloth |
| un cornet | uhn kor-NAY | a carrier bag |
| une votation | ün vo-tah-SYOHN | a popular vote, a referendum |
| un cycle d’orientation | uhn seekl do-ryahn-tah-SYOHN | lower secondary school |
| la maturité | lah mah-tü-ree-TAY | the school-leaving certificate |
| un service militaire | uhn sair-vees mee-lee-TAIR | military service (still universal for men) |
| attendre sur quelqu’un | ah-tahndr sür kel-KUHN | to wait for someone |
| une action | ün ak-SYOHN | a special offer in a shop |
| le foehn | luh FUHN | a hairdryer; also the Alpine wind |
| un carnotzet | uhn kar-no-TZAY | a cellar room for eating and drinking |
| ça joue | sah ZHOO | that works, that's fine |
Vocabulary for everyday objects varies a little. Vocabulary for the state varies a lot, because the states are different.
| Concept | 🇫🇷 France | 🇧🇪 Belgium | 🇨🇭 Switzerland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mayor | le maire | le bourgmestre | le syndic / le maire |
| Region | la région | la Région / la Communauté | le canton |
| Parliament | l’Assemblée nationale | la Chambre | le Conseil national |
| Referendum | le référendum | la consultation populaire | la votation |
| Secondary school | le lycée | l’humanité / le secondaire | le gymnase / le collège |
| University degree | la licence | le bachelier | le bachelor |
Note le collège: in France it is lower secondary, in Switzerland it is upper secondary, in Québec it is post-secondary (the cégep system), and in Belgium it can be a private secondary school. One word, four education systems.
Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg generate an enormous quantity of French written largely by non-native speakers and by translators. It is its own register, and if you read EU documents you will meet it constantly.
| Feature | Example |
|---|---|
| Heavy nominal style (lesson 3, at maximum) | la mise en œuvre du dispositif de suivi de la conformité |
| Calques from English | agenda for ordre du jour, opportunité for possibilité |
| Acronym density | le CFP, la DG, le COREPER, la PAC |
| Fixed procedural verbs | il est proposé de, il convient de, sans préjudice de |
| Hedged obligation | les États membres veillent à ce que + subj. |
Read the same news story on RTBF (Belgium), RTS (Switzerland), France Info and Radio-Canada. The events will be identical; the numerals, the meal names, the institutional nouns and the register will not. Fifteen minutes of that is worth a chapter of any textbook on variation.
There is no neutral international French, and pretending otherwise is a mistake learners make for years. In practice:
French speakers are often genuinely unaware of the status of these varieties, and septante is frequently heard as quaint rather than standard. France's centralised norm — Paris, the Académie, national broadcast — gives metropolitan French an implicit prestige that Belgians and Swiss notice and sometimes resent. It also means French speakers get less exposure to variation than Belgians or Swiss, who consume French media from France daily.
Québec shares with Belgium and Switzerland the experience of being a French-speaking society outside France, and shares specific usages with them — souper, déjeuner for breakfast, and a preference for translating anglicisms rather than importing them. Québec's relationship to the metropolitan norm has been explicitly debated since the 1960s, and Québécois dictionaries such as Usito now describe Québec usage as standard in its own right, exactly as Belgian and Swiss references do.
What is the Belgian or Swiss word?
Write belgicisme or helvétisme.
1. Septante and nonante are:
2. A Geneva colleague invites you to souper. When do you turn up?
3. Where do the biggest differences between these varieties actually lie?