Given its status as the social, economic, and cultural center of Quebec, the metropolitan area of Montreal plays a rather important role with respect to the sociolinguistic dynamics of the province as a whole. For instance, certain changes that have affected Quebec French over time are believed to have appeared in Montreal before having spread to other regions of the province. Such a scenario entails that Quebeckers perceive certain linguistic features as being part of Montreal French — sometimes without even being aware of it — and that these dialect markers take on social values that are prone to their further diffusion. This article aims to look further into this hypothesis by presenting the results of an exploratory dialect identification task. The perceptual test is part of a research program whose scope is to study the distribution of nasal vowels in Montreal French in general and that of the nasal vowel /ã/ in particular.
