Swiss French

Swiss French (French: français de Suisse or suisse romand) is the variety of French spoken in the French-speaking area of Switzerland known as Romandy. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, the others being German, Italian, and Romansch. In 2020 around 2 million people, or 22.8% of the population, in Switzerland spoke French as their primary language, and 28% of the population used French most often at work.^[1]

The French spoken in Switzerland is very similar to that of France or Belgium. The differences between the French of Switzerland and of France are mostly lexical, influenced by local substrate languages. While substantial phonological differences exist, as the French of Switzerland preserves many distinctions lost elsewhere, the phonetic qualities are often quite close, such as with the existence of long vowels or the distinction between /ɛ̃/ and /œ̃/. This contrasts with the differences between Standard German and Swiss German, which are largely mutually unintelligible.

Swiss French is characterized by some terms adopted from Arpitan, which was formerly spoken widely across the alpine communities of Romandy, but has far fewer speakers today. In addition, some expressions have been borrowed from both Swiss and Standard German. Although a standard form of French is taught in schools and used in the government, the media and business, there is no uniform vernacular form of French among the different cantons of Switzerland. For example, some German terms in regions bordering German-speaking communities are completely unused in the area around Geneva, a city by France's border with Switzerland.^[2]