In the radius of accents, French is rather well served. In France alone, there are dozens of them. The figure climbs to several hundred if we consider Quebec, Belgium and all the other French-speaking countries. But one country seems to stand out for the supposed slowness of its French: Switzerland. But is it true that the Swiss speak as slowly as they say? Or is it a cliche? Researchers conducted the investigation.
To find out if the Swiss speak slowly, the best thing is to ask them. Question asked to Gaëlle, on the train between Neuchâtel and Lausanne: “I know that when I went on vacation when I was younger, I was always told ‘Why do you speak so slowly?’ That’s often what we’re told, but we don’t really feel like we’re speaking slowly.”
The idea that the Swiss, seen from France in any case, speak slowly, is not new. But it almost imposed itself after the 1980s, with the advertisement for Ovomaltine bars, since passed to posterity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMH0awGocyc
“When you ask someone to imitate the Swiss accent, you always have a slowdown in speech”, says Mathieu Avanzi, professor of linguistics at the University of Neuchâtel. “We tried to test whether it was a myth or not. In the early 1980s, researchers in Lausanne recorded Parisians and Waldensians and measured their speech speed. They showed that there was no there was no difference, so it was indeed a myth”.
But in 2008, people are trying the experiment again with results that “went in the opposite direction”explains the researcher. “So this confirmed the hypothesis that the Swiss-Romans speak more slowly”.
The Swiss speak more slowly than the French and even the Belgians. But it is ultimately logical, given the very nature of French in Roman Switzerland. Especially with, for example, a difference between “long” and “short”, according Mathieu Avanzi. “We oppose in Roman Switzerland still ‘naked’ in the masculine and ‘naked’ in the feminine or ‘young’ and ‘fasting'”, he explains.
“The Swiss-Romands skip a lot of silent ‘e’s’ and therefore produce syllables that are longer.”
Mathieu Avanzi, professor of linguistics at the University of Neuchâtelat franceinfo
“We also have initial accentuations that you hear for example in ‘Saint-Aubin’, these kinds of slowdowns which ultimately make the Swiss-Romands articulate more slowly”, says the researcher.
One nuance all the same: not all Swiss speak with the same flow. We will not see many differences between a young person from Geneva and another from Paris. Much more between an elderly person in Lausanne and another in Lyon.
Origin also plays a role. The general opinion is that the inhabitants of the canton of Vaud express themselves on average much more slowly than those of Valais. It is also probably to make fun of the slowness of the Vaudois that the expression “There’s no fire” gradually transformed into “There’s no fire at the lake” in the last century, in reference to the lake. Léman, which, it is true, invites you to relax.