Varieties of the French language are spoken in France and around the world. The Francophones of France generally use Metropolitan French^{[citation needed]} (spoken in Paris and considered standard) although some also use regional dialects or varieties such as Meridional French. In Europe outside France there are Belgian French, Swiss French, and in Italy Aostan French. In Canada, French is an official language along with English; the two main dialects of French in Canada are Canadian French and Acadian French. Standard French (e.g. used by Anglophones speaking French or by Francophones in Canada using a different dialect) is also commonly grouped as Canadian French. In Lebanon, French was an official language until 1941 and the main dialect spoken there is Lebanese French or Levantine French. Levantine French was also spoken by Sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki, Istanbul and Smyrna, by Armenians and Greek bourgeois in the urban centres of Asia Minor, by Syrian Catholics and Melkites in Aleppo and Beirut.

Note that the discussion here refers to varieties of the French language, not to the Romance sister languages (sometimes considered dialects) of French spoken in France (e.g. Picard, Limousin, Gascon, etc.; for these languages see: Langues d'oïl, Francoprovençal, Occitan and languages of France). See also French-based creole languages, which are also considered separate languages.

French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. As of 2023, an estimated 350 million African people spread across 34 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, mostly as a secondary language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. While there are many varieties of African French, common features include the use of an alveolar trill and use of borrowed words from local languages. Many dialects of French found in the continent of Africa are highly influenced by the native languages that are spoken in each respective country. Two examples of the various dialects of African French are Abidjan French, or more broadly Ivorian French, and Kinshasa French.

Abidjan/Ivorian French

While various indigenous African languages are still spoken within the city of Abidjan, as well as within the entire country of the Ivory Coast, French is used by a significant amount of the population as it is the main language used in commerce, education, and government. Abidjan French, or Ivorian French, is linguistically distinct from a "standard" French through its unique phonetic and phonological differences, lexical substitutions, and grammatical borrowings. Many of these linguistic differences are influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the various native African languages spoken in the Ivory Coast. Concerning the phonetics and phonology of Ivorian French, it is not uncommon for the nasal [ɑ̃] phoneme to be produced as [ɑ], specifically at the start of a word while the palato-alveolar fricatives [ʒ] and [ʃ] often possess a degree of difficulty in their pronunciation. An abundance of words from regional African languages are utilized as loanwords in Ivorian French and some meanings of French words have changed over time (ex. the term commerce which in French relates to the domain of "trade, business", in Ivorian French has evolved into meaning a large "shopping street" with many stores where "trade occurs". Additionally, differences in grammar are seen in Abidjan French, as compared to a more traditional French, such as the omission of articles and prepositions in some linguistic contexts.

Kinshasa French

Kinshasa French is the main language used in government and commerce domains in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) since independence from Belgium in 1960, however this French is highly influenced by the four national languages (Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo, and Tshiluba) that are spoken much more frequently and casually. Many elements of Kinshasa French are also influenced from Belgian French, for reasons relating back to colonial times. The French spoken in Kinshasa varies from a "standard" French in many ways; including the posteriorization of the French anterior vowel [ɥ] (converting it to the phoneme [u]), the delabialization of the phoneme [ɥ] (which becomes [i]), as well as the palatalization of apico-dental consonants that are followed by the anterior vowels [i] and [ɥ] (ex. a French word such as dix [dis] is pronounced as [dzis]).

Acadian French is a variant of French spoken by Francophone Acadians in the Canadian Maritime provinces, the Saint John River Valley in the northern part of the U.S. state of Maine, the Magdalen Islands and Havre-Saint-Pierre, along the St. Lawrence's north shore. Speakers of Metropolitan French and even of other Canadian dialects have some difficulty understanding Acadian French.