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2.1 Legal status in France

France mandates the use of French in official government publications, education (though these dispositions are often ignored) and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. Contrary to a misunderstanding common in the American and British media, France does not prohibit the use of foreign words in Web pages or any other private publication, which would anyway contradict constitutional guarantees on freedom of speech.

2.2 Legal status in Quebec and Canada

French is one of Canada's two official languages, with English; various provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms deal with the right of Canadians to access services in English and French all across Canada. By law, the federal government must operate and provide services in both English and French; proceedings of the Parliament of Canada must be translated into both English and French; and all Canadian products must be labelled in both English and French.

French is an official language of New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, and is the sole official language of Quebec. (See Charter of the French Language.) In Ontario, French does not have fully official status, although the provincial government does provide full French language services in 23 designated communities where significant numbers of franco-ontarians live.

All of the other provinces do make some effort to accommodate the needs of their francophone citizens, although the level and quality of French-language service varies significantly from province to province.

2.3 Dialects of French

Acadian French
African French
Belgian French
Cajun French
Quebec French
Swiss French
Parisian French
Marseillais French
Lyonais French
Maghreb French
Vietnamese/Cambodian French

2.4 Languages derived from French

3 Sounds

French spelling is by no means phonetic. Terminal consonants have often become silent in most dialects, unless followed by a vowel sound (liaison) or silent altogether (e.g., "et" is never pronounced with the ending "t"). In many words, the "n" and "m" become silent and cause the preceding vowel to become nasalized (i.e. pronounced with the soft palate extended downward so as to cause the air to leave through the nostrils instead of through the mouth). Furthermore, French words tend to run together when spoken, with ending consonants often being chained to the start of the next word.

3.1 Vowels

Oral vowels of French (in IPA):

Traditionally, French is described as having four distinct nasal vowels: [ɛ̃], [ɑ̃], [ɔ̃], and [œ̃]; however, many speakers have merged [œ̃] and [ɛ̃].

Notes:

/ɑ/ is for many speakers no longer a phoneme.
Whether /ə/ ( Schwa), "e caduc" or "e muet" (mute) is a phoneme of French is controversial. Being more or less labialized, it's closer to [œ] than to english [ə]. Modern labialized "e caduc" comes from an unlabialized schwa once used in Old French. It's always dropped ("muet") before any vowel. In colloquial speech, it may also be dropped in any other position (except when it would make the word difficult to be pronounced).

i	si	si	'if'
e	se	ses	'his, hers' (pl)
open-mid front unrounded vowel	sɛ	sait	'knows'
	sɛʁ	serre	'greenhouse'
y	sy	su	'known'
ø	sø	ceux	'these'
œ	sœʁ	sœur	'sister'
mid central vowel	sə	ce	'this'
a	sa	sa	'his, hers' (f sg)
u	su	sous	'under'
o	so	sot	'silly'
open-mid back rounded vowel	sɔʁ	sort	'fate'
ɑ̃	sɑ̃	sans	'without'
ɔ̃	sɔ̃	son	'his, hers' (m sg)
ɛ̃	sɛ̃	saint	'saint'

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