France’s dozens of regional languages may no longer be spoken by many, but they live on in regional accents, colouring vowel sounds and shaping intonation. More than half the country speaks French with an accent, yet they remain a disadvantage in the upper echelons of power and professional life.
“At school, at university or in the mass media, it's common to consider having an accent a bit of a bad thing. It's not something positive,” says Médéric Gasquet-Cyrus, a sociolinguist at the university of Aix-Marseille, who is a specialist on his own accent from Marseille.
