|
 "French
(le français
[lə fʁɑ̃sɛ] or
la langue française
[la lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛz]) is a
Romance language
spoken as a first language in
France,
the
Romandy
region in
Switzerland,
Wallonia
and
Brussels
in
Belgium,
Monaco,
the province of
Quebec
and the
Acadia
region in
Canada,
and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French
are distributed throughout many parts of the world, the largest numbers
of which reside in
Francophone Africa.
In Africa, French is most commonly spoken in
Gabon
(where 80% report fluency)
Mauritius
(78%),
Algeria
(75%),
Senegal
and
Côte d'Ivoire
(70%). French is estimated as having between 70 million and 110 million
native speakers and 190 million second language speakers.French is the
second-most studied foreign language in the world, after
English.
French is a descendant of the spoken
Latin
language of the
Roman Empire,
as are languages such as
Italian,
Portuguese,
Spanish,
Romanian,
Sardinian
and
Catalan.
Its closest relatives are the other
langues d'oïl,
languages historically spoken in northern France and Belgium which have
largely been supplanted by French today. The development of French was
also influenced by the native
Celtic languages
of Roman
Gaul
and by the (Germanic)
Frankish
language of the post-Roman
Frankish
invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are
numerous
French-based creole languages,
most notably
Haitian Creole.
It is an
official language
in
29 countries,
most of which form what is called, in French,
la
francophonie,
the community of French-speaking countries. It is an official language
of all
United Nations
agencies and a
large number of international
organizations.
According to the
European Union,
129 million, or twenty-six percent of the Union's total population,
speak French, of whom 72 million are native speakers (65 million in
France, 4.5 million in Belgium, plus 2.5 million in Switzerland which is
not part of the EU) and 69 million are second-language or foreign
language speakers, thus making French the third language in the European
Union that people state they are most able to speak, after
English
and
German.
Twenty-percent of non-Francophone Europeans know how to speak French,
totaling roughly 145.6 million people in Europe alone."
Source:
Wikipedia |
