Long and short vowels in Swiss French: Their production and perception

Abstract

Contrary to what is stated in much of the literature which is based in large part on Parisian French, many dialects of French still have long and short vowels (e.g. in Switzerland and Belgium). This study had two aims. The first was to show that Swiss French speakers, as opposed to Parisian French speakers, produce long vowels with durations that are markedly different from those of short vowels. The second aim was to show that, for these two groups, vowel duration has a different impact on word recognition. A production study showed that Swiss French speakers make a clear duration difference between short and long vowels (the latter are more than twice the length of the former on average) whereas the Parisian French do not. In an identification study which used stimuli pronounced in Swiss French, it was shown that words articulated with long vowels created no recognition problem for Swiss French listeners whereas they did so for Parisian French listeners. These results are discussed in terms of models of speech perception and word recognition.