ABSTRACT
Diversity of usage, of which only a few aspects have been covered in the preceding pages, is not spécific to French. All languages have varieties: a Bavarian does not speak like a Prussian, an English man or woman does not speak like an American or an Australian, nor do they speak like the Scots or the Irish, an Egyptian does not speak like a Moroccan, and a Chinese from Peking does not speak like a Chinese from Hong Kong. And yet linguists themselves do not hesitate to talk about English, German, Arabic or Chinese as if it were a single entity, as if they had forgotten the diversity.
