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Geographical Distribution Of French Speakers
French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the language of European diplomacy and international relations. According to the 2022 report of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), 409 million people speak French. The OIF states that despite a decline in the number of learners of French in Europe, the overall number of speakers is rising, largely because of its presence in African countries: of the 212 million who use French daily, 54.7% are living in Africa. The OIF figures have been contested as being inflated due to the methodology used and its overly broad definition of the word francophone. According to the authors of a 2017 book on the world distribution of the French language, a credible estimate of the number of "francophones réels" (real francophones), that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Language
French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) largely supplanted. French was also substratum, influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic languages, Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Franks, Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's French colonial empire, past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole language, Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is an official language in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
