French language: Difference between revisions

| nativename      = {{lang|fr|français}}

| pronunciation    = {{IPA-fr|fʁɑ̃sɛ|}}

| speakers        = Native: {{sigfig|79.867770|2}} million

| date            = 2022

| fam3            = [[Latino-Faliscan languages|Latino-Faliscan]]

| fam4            = [[Romance languages|Romance]]

| ancestor        = [[Old Latin]]

| ancestor5        = [[Old French]]

| ancestor6        = [[Middle French]]

|[[Vanuatu]]

}}

|[[Aosta Valley]] <small>([[Italy]])</small>

|[[French Polynesia]]

|[[United Nations]]

|[[International Olympic Committee]]

|[[European Union]]

|[[African Union]]

| iso3            = fra

| lingua          = 51-AAA-i

| notice          = IPA

| sign            = [[Signed French]]<br />''(français signé)''

{{French language}}

French is an [[official language]] in [[List of countries where French is an official language|29 countries]] across multiple continents,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries_by_languages.htm|title=In which countries of the world is this language spoken...|access-date=21 November 2017}}</ref> most of which are members of the ''[[Organisation internationale de la Francophonie]]'' (OIF), the community of 84 countries which share the official use or teaching of French. French is also one of six official languages used in the [[United Nations]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.un.org/en/sections/about-un/official-languages/|title=Official Languages|date=2014-11-18|website=www.un.org|language=en|access-date=2020-04-19}}</ref> It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the [[Provinces and territories of Canada|provinces]] of [[Quebec]], Ontario, and [[New Brunswick]], as well as other [[French language in Canada#Francophones across Canada|Francophone regions]]); Belgium ([[Wallonia]] and the [[Brussels]]-Capital Region); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the [[Romandy]] region); parts of [[Luxembourg]]; parts of the United States (the states of [[Louisiana]], [[Maine]], [[New Hampshire]] and [[Vermont]]); [[Monaco]]; the [[Aosta Valley]] region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016011/98-200-x2016011-eng.cfm|title=Census in Brief: English, French and official language minorities in Canada|website=www12.statcan.gc.ca|language=en|access-date=2018-03-25|date=2017-08-02}}</ref>

In 2015, approximately 40% of the francophone population (including [[Second language|L2]] and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in [[sub-Saharan Africa]] and the [[Indian Ocean]], 15% in [[North Africa]] and the [[Middle East]], 8% in the [[Americas]], and 1% in Asia and [[Oceania]].<ref name=OIF>{{cite web|url=http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy-1/francophony-1113/the-status-of-french-in-the-world/|title=The status of French in the world|access-date=23 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150922033256/http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/francophony-1113/the-status-of-french-in-the-world|archive-date=22 September 2015}}</ref> French is the second-most widely spoken mother tongue in the [[European Union]].<ref name=nativeLanguages>{{citation|work=Special [[Eurobarometer]] 386|title=Europeans and their Languages|publisher=[[Europa (web portal)|Europa]]|author=European Commission|url=http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf|pages=5|access-date=7 September 2014 |date=June 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160106183351/http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf |archive-date=2016-01-06}}</ref> Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as a second language.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cpfalta.ab.ca/Learning/whyfrench.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080619042509/http://www.cpfalta.ab.ca/Learning/whyfrench.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=2008-06-19 |title=Why Learn French }}</ref> French is the second-most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German; in certain institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the [[Court of Justice of the European Union]]).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/2017/02/25/37002-20170225ARTFIG00101-le-francais-est-la-deuxieme-langue-la-plus-etudiee-dans-l-union-europeenne.php|title=Le français est la deuxième langue la plus étudiée dans l'Union européenne|first=Alice|last=Develey|date=25 February 2017|via=Le Figaro}}</ref> French is also the 18th [[List of languages by number of native speakers|most natively spoken language]] in the world, fifth [[List of languages by total number of speakers|most spoken language by total number of speakers]] and the second or third most studied language worldwide (with about 120 million learners as of 2017).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-french-and-where-is-french-spoken|title=How many people speak French and where is French spoken|access-date=21 November 2017}}</ref> As a result of French and Belgian [[colonialism]] from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Most second-language speakers reside in [[Francophone Africa]], in particular [[Gabon]], [[Algeria]], [[Morocco]], [[Tunisia]], [[Mauritius]], [[Senegal]] and [[Ivory Coast]].<ref name=2005_report>{{in lang|fr}} [https://www.amazon.fr/dp/2098821778 ''La Francophonie dans le monde 2006–2007''] published by the [[Organisation internationale de la Francophonie]]. [http://www.nathan.fr Nathan] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180114144601/http://www.nathan.fr/ |date=14 January 2018 }}, Paris, 2007.</ref>

  |url=http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm

  |title=The World's Most Widely Spoken Languages

  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927062910/http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm

  |archive-date=27 September 2011

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Due to Roman rule, Latin was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul, and as the language was learned by the common people it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which being attested on graffiti.<ref name=Adams/> This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as [[Arpitan language|Arpitan]].

The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the ''[[Petit Robert]]'',<ref name=SchmittLex>{{cite journal |author=Christian Schmitt |date=1997 |title=Keltische im heutigen Französisch|journal=Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie |volume=49-50 |pages=814–829}}</ref> which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Müller |first1=Bodo |editor1-last=Winkelmann |editor1-first=Otto |title=Festschrift für Johannes Hubschmid zum 65. Geburtsag. Beiträge zur allgemeinen, indogermanischen und romanischen Sprachwissenschaft. |date=1982 |pages=603–620 |chapter=Geostatistik der gallischen/keltischen Substratwörter in der Galloromania}}</ref> Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life (''chêne'', ''bille'', etc.), animals (''mouton'', ''cheval'', etc.), nature (''boue'', etc.), domestic activities (ex. ''berceau''), farming and rural units of measure (''arpent'', ''lieue'', ''borne'', ''boisseau''), weapons,<ref name=HolmesSchutz30>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jbjX4ebc2lsC&q=gAULISH&pg=PR5|author=Urban Holmes and Alexander Herman Schutz|publisher=Biblo & Tannen Publishers|page=30|title=A History of the French Language|date=June 1938|isbn=9780819601919|quote="...sixty-eight or more Celtic words in standard Latin; not all of these came down into Romance.... did not survive among the people. Vulgar speech in Gaul used many others... at least 361 words of Gaulish provenance in French and Provençal. These Celtic words fell into more homely types than... borrowings from Germanː agriculture... household effects... animals... food and drink... trees... body -- 17 (''dor'' < ''durnu''), dress... construction... birds... fish... insects... ''pièce'' < *''pettia'', and the remainder divided among weapons, religion, literature, music, persons, sickness and mineral. It is evident that the peasants were the last to hold to their Celtic. The count on the Celtic element was made by Leslie Moss at the University of North Carolina... based on unanimity of agreement among the best lexicographers...}}</ref> and products traded regionally rather than further afield.<ref name=Roegiest82>Eugeen Roegiest, ''Vers les sources des langues romanes: Un itinéraire linguistique à travers la Romania'' (Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 2006), page 82.</ref> This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being the last to hold onto Gaulish.<ref name=Roegiest82/><ref name=HolmesSchutz30/>

=== Old French ===

Up until its later stages, [[Old French]], alongside [[Old Occitan]], maintained a relic of the old nominal [[case system]] of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated [[diphthong]]s such as ''-eau'' which would later be leveled to monophthongs.{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}}

=== Modern French ===

During the [[Grand Siècle]] (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as [[Cardinal Richelieu]] and [[Louis XIV of France|Louis XIV]], enjoyed a period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the [[Académie française|Académie Française]] to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France.

{{legend|#00AAE2|Countries sometimes considered as Francophone Africa}}{{legend|#008080|Countries that are not Francophone but are Members or Observers of the [[Organisation internationale de la Francophonie|OIF]]}}]]

[[Sub-Saharan Africa]] is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth.<ref>[http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/France-priorities_1/francophony-french-language_1113/french-language_1934/french-language-in-the-world_3441/the-french-language-in-the-world-an-expanding-community_4289.html France-Diplomatie] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090727195522/http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/France-priorities_1/francophony-french-language_1113/french-language_1934/french-language-in-the-world_3441/the-french-language-in-the-world-an-expanding-community_4289.html |date=27 July 2009 }} "Furthermore, the demographic growth of Southern hemisphere countries leads us to anticipate a new increase in the overall number of French speakers."</ref> It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years.<ref>{{in lang|fr}} [http://www.cecif.com/?page=la_francophonie "Le français, langue en évolution. Dans beaucoup de pays francophones, surtout sur le continent africain, une proportion importante de la population ne parle pas couramment le français (même s'il est souvent la langue officielle du pays). Ce qui signifie qu'au fur et à mesure que les nouvelles générations vont à l'école, le nombre de francophones augmente : on estime qu'en 2015, ceux-ci seront deux fois plus nombreux qu'aujourd'hui.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130117012244/http://www.cecif.com/?page=la_francophonie |date=17 January 2013 }}"</ref><ref>{{in lang|fr}} [http://www.cecif.com/?page=la_francophonie#francaisafrique c) Le sabir franco-africain] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130117012244/http://www.cecif.com/?page=la_francophonie#francaisafrique |date=17 January 2013 }}: {{lang|fr|"C'est la variété du français la plus fluctuante. Le sabir franco-africain est instable et hétérogène sous toutes ses formes. Il existe des énoncés où les mots sont français mais leur ordre reste celui de la langue africaine. En somme, autant les langues africaines sont envahies par les structures et les mots français, autant la langue française se métamorphose en Afrique, donnant naissance à plusieurs variétés."}}</ref> Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries,<ref>{{in lang|fr}} [http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/afrique/centrafrique.htm République centrafricaine] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070405113112/http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/afrique/centrafrique.htm |date=5 April 2007 }}: {{lang|fr|Il existe une autre variété de français, beaucoup plus répandue et plus permissive : le français local. C'est un français très influencé par les langues centrafricaines, surtout par le sango. Cette variété est parlée par les classes non-instruites, qui n'ont pu terminer leur scolarité. Ils utilisent ce qu'ils connaissent du français avec des emprunts massifs aux langues locales. Cette variété peut causer des problèmes de compréhension avec les francophones des autres pays, car les interférences linguistiques, d'ordre lexical et sémantique, sont très importantes.}} (''One example of a variety of African French that is difficult to understand for European French speakers'').</ref> but written forms of the language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world.

====United States====

[[File:French in the United States.png|thumb|French language spread in the United States. Counties marked in lighter pink are those where 6–12% of the population speaks French at home; medium pink, 12–18%; darker pink, over 18%. [[French-based creole languages]] are not included.]]

====Caribbean====

[[File:Bienvenue a Rechmaya.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.7|Town sign in [[Modern Standard Arabic|Standard Arabic]] and French at the entrance of [[Rechmaya]] in Lebanon]]

Today, French and English are secondary languages of [[Lebanon]], with about 40% of the population being [[Francophone]] and 40% Anglophone.{{sfn|OIF|2014|p=217}} The use of English is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French.{{sfn|OIF|2014|p=218}} Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value.{{sfn|OIF|2014|p=358}}

** [[Cajun French]]

* [[Missouri French]]

* [[Swiss French]]

* [[French language in Vietnam|Vietnamese French]]

In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the [[UN Secretariat]]'s only two working languages<ref name="dawnmarley">Rodney Ball, Dawn Marley, ''The French-Speaking World: A Practical Introduction to Sociolinguistic Issues'', Taylor & Francis, 2016, page 6</ref>), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the [[European Union]], an official language of [[NATO]], the [[International Olympic Committee]], the [[Council of Europe]], the [[Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development]], [[Organization of American States]] (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the [[Eurovision Song Contest]], one of eighteen official languages of the [[European Space Agency]], [[World Trade Organization]] and the least used of the three official languages in the [[North American Free Trade Agreement]] countries. It is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the [[International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement|Red Cross]] (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), [[Amnesty International]] (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), [[Médecins sans Frontières]] (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and [[Médecins du Monde]] (used alongside English).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/article_imprim.php3?id_article=15179|title=France-Diplomatie |author=The French Ministry of Foreign affairs|work=France Diplomatie: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development}}</ref> Given the demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future".<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/03/21/want-to-know-the-language-of-the-future-the-data-suggests-it-could-be-french/ |title=Want To Know The Language of the Future? The Data Suggests It Could Be...French |last=Gobry |first=Pascal-Emmanuel |date=21 March 2014 |website=Forbes |access-date=2018-11-18}}</ref>

In 1997, George Weber published, in ''Language Today'', a comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages".<ref name="weber">[https://web.archive.org/web/20130507110651/http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm The World's 10 most influential languages], George Weber, 1997, ''Language Today'', retrieved on scribd.com</ref> In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most ''influential'' language of the world, ahead of Spanish.<ref name="weber"/> His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations, the economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the [[linguistic prestige]] associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige).<ref name="weber"/> In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged."<ref name="weber"/>

* Old French ''pie'' > French ''pied'' "foot" [Latin ''pes'' (stem: ''ped-'')]

As a result, it can be difficult to predict the spelling of a word based on the sound. Final consonants are generally silent, except when the following word begins with a vowel (see [[Liaison (French)]]). For example, the following words end in a vowel sound: ''pied'', ''aller'', ''les'', ''{{lang|fr|finit}}'', ''beaux''. The same words followed by a vowel, however, may sound the consonants, as they do in these examples: ''beaux-arts'', ''les amis'', ''pied-à-terre''.

===== Finite moods =====

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="9" |Indicatif

It can be difficult to identify the Latin source of native French words because in the evolution from [[Vulgar Latin]], unstressed syllables were severely reduced and the remaining vowels and consonants underwent significant modifications.

* ''mercatique ''/ ''marketing''

* ''finance'' ''fantôme'' / ''shadow'' ''banking''