french_quebec · Canada

Quebec (Montreal / Urban Quebec French)

french_quebecadvanced

Canada · Montreal

Urban Quebec French as spoken in Montreal, the variety most sharply diverged from European French of any major French dialect -- centuries of separate development since New France's 17th-18th century settlement, not a 'French accent' in the sense Metropolitan French is usually taught as. This preset renders Quebec's four nasal vowels, its consistently uvular R, its documented faster casual-register tempo, liaison, long-vowel diphthongization (père, fête), the alveolar affrication of /t d/ before /i y/ (tu, dire), and checked-syllable vowel laxing -- the full set of features this file's earlier drafts had to leave unrendered until the engine grew the fields for them (see this file's module docstring for what's genuinely still simplified: French schwa-deletion is not modeled, and liaison approximates which contexts are near-obligatory by word length rather than by grammar).

Consistently uvular R ([ʁ]), never the tapped/trilled R Spanish or Italian speakers reach forFour nasal vowels distinct in quality from Metropolitan French'sLong stressed vowels diphthongize (père -> [pɛɪ̯ʁ], fête -> [fɛɪ̯t]) -- a hallmark of Quebec French largely absent from Metropolitan French in the same words (Walker 2001)/t d/ affricate to alveolar [ts]/[dz] before /i y/ (tu -> [tsy]) -- phonetically distinct from Brazilian Portuguese's palatal [tʃ]/[dʒ] affrication (Ostiguy & Tousignant 1993)Liaison, but at a lower rate in casual registers than Metropolitan French (Ostiguy & Tousignant 1993)Faster, more clipped casual-register tempo (Dumas 1987)

Live example

Transformed live against this preset's phonetic matrix.

Transforming…

Hear it

A/B where you're starting from against this accent, for the same sentence. That first clip is your own accent when you've said how you speak, and your language's reference variety when you haven't — the player says which.

Compare — Where you're starting from vs. the accent you're building

Synthetic/robotic voice (espeak), not a native speaker.

Active features

Every phonetic parameter that deviates from this schema’s diffing anchor, with a plain-English gloss.

Feature	Value	Drill
Languagelanguage	fr	Drill
Mixed Languagesmixed_languages	—	Drill
S Treatments_treatment	standard	Drill
D Intervocalicd_intervocalic	standard	Drill
D Finald_final	standard	Drill
R Infinitiver_infinitive	standard	Drill
N Final Velarizationn_final_velarization	No	Drill
Final Consonant Dropfinal_consonant_drop	none	Drill
Vowel Reductionvowel_reduction	crisp_open	Drill
Speech Ratespeech_rate	fast	Drill
Vowel Nasalizationvowel_nasalization	phonemic	Drill
R Guttural Strengthr_guttural_strength	strong_uvular	Drill
Long Vowel Diphthongizationlong_vowel_diphthongization	Yes	Drill
T D Affricationt_d_affrication	alveolar_ts_dz	Drill
Checked Vowel Laxingchecked_vowel_laxing	Yes	Drill