Francophonie is the quality of speaking French. The term designates the ensemble of people, organisations and governments that share the use of French on a daily basis and as administrative language, teaching language or chosen language. The term was coined by

Onésime Reclus Onésime Reclus (22 September 1837 – 30 June 1916) was a French geographer who specialized in the relations between France and its colonies. In 1880 he coined the term " Francophonie" as a means of classification of peoples of the world, bein ...

in 1880 and became important as part of the conceptual rethinking of cultures and geography in the late 20th century.

Denominations

Francophonie, francophonie and francophone space are

syntagmatic In linguistics, a syntagma is an elementary constituent segment within a text. Such a segment can be a phoneme, a word, a grammatical phrase, a sentence, or an event within a larger narrative structure, depending on the level of analysis. Syntagma ...

. This expression is relevant to countries which speak French as their national language, may it be as a mother language or a secondary language. These expressions are sometimes misunderstood or misused by English speakers. They can be synonymous but most of the time they are complementary. * "francophonie", with a small "f", refers to populations and people who speak French for communication or/and in their daily lives. * "Francophonie", with a capital "F", can be defined as referring to the governments, governmental and non-governmental organisations or governing officials that share the use of French in their work and exchange. * "Francophone space", "Francosphere" represents not only a linguistic or geographic reality, but also a cultural entity: for example describing any individual who identifies with one of the francophone cultures, may it be Slavic,

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, Creole,

North American North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...

Oceanian Oceania (, , ) is a geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of and a population of around 44.5 million as of ...

for example.L'année francophone internationale, Québec, ACCT, 1994

References

French language Country classifications {{romance-lang-stub

Denominations

See also

References