Paris, vu d'ailleurs — Paris, Seen from Elsewhere

Paris and the French-Speaking World

For centuries, the French of Paris and of the educated classes was treated as the model for the language as a whole, and the institutions that codified French, from the Académie française to the great dictionaries and grammars, were based there. That history is why speakers elsewhere have so often measured their French against Paris. Today the picture looks very different in numbers. According to the OIF, the international organization of French-speaking countries, there are more than 300 million French speakers worldwide, and most of them live outside France, with a large and growing share in Africa. Many linguists now describe French as a pluricentric language, with several legitimate centers, much as English or Spanish are. Within France, too, the Parisian way of speaking is one variety among many, and it has its own features, though Parisians are often the last to hear them. Regional accents have long been mocked or penalized in some settings, and the sociolinguist Philippe Blanchet popularized the word glottophobie for discrimination based on the way people speak. The subject has reached public debate, including proposals to treat accent explicitly as a ground of discrimination.