Did You Know?
French is used by more than 128 million people around the world (77 million of whom count it as their first language), and is the second most studied foreign language in the United States.
Overview:
French (le français, la langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother tongue, and 128 million including second language speakers, in 1999. It is an official or administrative language in various communities and organizations (such as the European Union, IOC, United Nations and Universal Postal Union).
Classification:
The French language is a Romance dialect, meaning that it is descended from Latin. Before the Roman invasion of what is modern-day France by Julius Cæsar (58-52 B.C.), France was inhabited largely by a Celtic people that the Romans referred to as Gauls.... From the third century on, Western Europe was invaded by Germanic (or "Barbarian") tribes from the east, and some of these groups settled in Gaul. For the history of the French language, the most important of these groups are the Franks (northern France), the Alemanni (German/French border), the Burgundians (the Rhone valley) and the Visigoths (the Aquitaine region and Spain). These Germanic-speaking groups had a profound effect on the Latin spoken in their respective regions, altering both the pronunciation and the syntax. They also introduced a number of new words: perhaps as much as 15% of modern French comes from Germanic words.
Geographic Distribution:
French is an official language in the following countries (listed in order of decreasing population): France, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Canada, Madagascar, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Belgium, Rwanda, Haiti, Switzerland, Burundi, Togo, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Comoros, Djibouti, Luxembourg, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mauritius, Vanuatu and Seychelles.
Although not an official language, it is also a major secondary language of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
Finally, there are some French-speakers in Cambodia, Egypt, India (Pondicherry), Italy (Aosta Valley), Laos, Mauritania, United Kingdom (Channel Islands), United States of America (mainly Louisiana & New England) and Vietnam.
La Francophonie is an international organization of French-speaking countries and governments.
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Did You Know? statistics come from Infoplease, "All the knowledge you need" and Ethnologue, "Languages of the world, and a whole lot more!"
Overview information comes directly from Wikipedia, "The free encyclopedia"; Classification and Geographic Distribution information is adapted from Wikipedia.
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