That's sort of an oversimplification, but that's basically the thrust of the thesis of Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen, which is a seminal study in the modernization of France. There is a large literature on Weber and not all of his findings have gone uncontested in the intervening 40 years, but his work is influential enough to still be standard fair in graduate school history programs to this day.

Weber basically argues that railroads, schools, and military service, along with the circulation of printed matter (like newspapers) enabled the elites in Paris to impose upon the masses of the countryside the culture of the center, thereby making them French. I don't recall what he had to say about other languages, but it wouldn't surprise me if he included that as well. It is certainly true that the languages formerly spoken on the periphery, like Occitan and Breton, were replaced through imposed use of Parisian French.

Yes and no.

First why french? French king François 1^er imposed french as the national language in 1539 in his Villers-Côtterets order. This was a way to undermine the influence of latin and other regional languages and unite France. It just so happens François 1^et spoke french, had he spoken Breton, Occitan, Basque or any other language, that one would probably have been our official language.

Up until the 18th century though French kings would not always live in Paris and travelled alot in the french region of "Touraine" alongside the river Loire. (The Loire valley is famous in France for all of its castles) This led to the most pure french being considered the french spoken in Tours because that was where kings went to alot and where nobility stayed. The english author/tutor John Paslgrave that studied french and taught it in the 16th century mentioned the Tours french as being the purest. Other authors through history re-iterated this sentiment like Alfred de Vigny (famous french author of the 19th century) also said the tours accent tends to be the purest one. He was born in Touraine though so his opinion might come with some bias.

It is true however that as royalty and other nobles moved to Paris, the correct french was considered to be the one spoken in Versailles: During the 17th century, french linguist Vaugelas was commissioned to write the french Academy's dictionary, and as such he declared that the court's french was the correct french (In his book Remarques sur la langue française. So from then on, yes the correct french was parisian.

After the revolution, the french bourgeoisie entrusted "Normal Schools" with the role of training teachers who themselves had to pass on the french language as it was taught to them.

Then like it's mentioned in the other post, due to everything being centralized in Paris anyway, the way people spoke french in Paris was exported to the different regions, even more so with radio, television etc for which most national headquarters are in Paris.

Concerning the second part of your question, this still exists today. There were great efforts that were made during François 1^er and Louis XIV's reign to make french the only official language and this was again reinforced during the revolution. The centralization of the state to unite all of France meant to ban local dialects as they were anti-republican etc, however it is coming back slowly, and currently some regions with a strong local identity are teaching their local dialects in schools again as an optional language (like Breton in Brittany). Also in Corsica for example, many corsicans keep speaking corsican among themselves.

Then you have the question of accents which in some cases can even become some sorts of dialects. For example northern France is famous for the Ch'ti accent which sounds very peculiar to anyone outside of that region and can even be hard to understand as some local words are mixed in but I'm not sure if this falls more under the question of language or accent.

We really do have ALOT of languages, dialects and accents, some of them which differ completely from french so it's really interesting to read about them.

If you speak french, here's an interview with a person from the language department of the CNRS who goes over this question : http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2014/12/24/les-accents-participent-a-la-richesse-de-notre-langue_4545939_3246.html

Here's another one with Claude Hagège who is a very famous french linguist: http://www.lexpress.fr/region/claude-hag-egrave-ge-ne-m-eacute-prisons-pas-les-langues-r-eacute-gionales_477325.html

The "The Discovery of France" by Graham Robb refers to this and may even have been your source.

There's a passage which mentions that during the 19th Century the French Army would conscript men from all over France to serve in the Army. At the point of joining the army a record was kept (or perhaps a one off survey was taken) which revealed what word the conscript used for various, very straightforward, terms. From memory there were 19 forms of the word "Yes" some of which are clearly related to "Oui" but others were quite radically different.

Having said that I think if you visited most, large, 19th century countries you would find, what would seem to us, a bewildering variety of speech a good deal of which has been eroded since the advent of compulsory education (imposing its own norms) and national broadcasting of radio and TV. I'm not sure at what point you would say that those people were speaking a different language or a variant of the "normal" language.

By the way "The Discovery of France" is a very interesting book which I would recommend. Also the area of France referred to as the Languedoc is called that because the residents would use the word "Oc", with a hard c, for the word "Yes".

No, it is wrong to claim that standard French is 'Parisian'. Parisian French is a working class dialect which is not standard French.

And yes, it is correct that most French people could not speak standard French as late as the 19th century. Instead, people spoke their regional patois.

The French language did not exist until certain reforms which began in the 16th and 17th century. This language, which we call 'French' nowadays, was the language spoken by the nobility and upper classes, who were based in the Ile-de-France region.

As public education spread (most from the 19th century on wards), regional dialects disappeared - but regional accents still exist. This was not only the case in France, but in many other countries as well.

An excellent book about the development of French is 'The Story of French' by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow. They also wrote an excellent book about Spanish.

Would this explain why French Canadian is so different? (The French that was spoken in 16th & 17th century France)