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French (le francais or la langue francaise) is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick (Acadia region) in Canada, the U.S. state of Maine, the Acadiana region of the U.S. state of Louisiana, and by various communities elsewhere.
Moreover, French also has speakers who often speak it as a second language, are distributed throughout many parts of the world, having the largest numbers of whom reside in Francophone Africa which 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 110 million native speakers and 190 million more second language speakers.
History of the French Language
French is a descendant of the spoken Latin language of the Roman Empire, such as languages like Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Lombard, Catalan, Sicilian and Sardinian. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages which are historically spoken in northern France and Belgium, which French has largely supplanted.
French was also influenced by 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.
Enjoy the basic French video below:
French as a Language
French has an official language status in 29 countries, most of which form la francophonie (in French), 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, can 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.
In fact, twenty percent of non-Francophone Europeans know how to speak French, totaling roughly 145.6 million people in Europe alone. As a result of extensive colonial ambitions of France and Belgium during the time governed by a French-speaking elite, between the 17th and 20th centuries, French gained it's introduction to the Americas, Africa, Polynesia, the Levant, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.
Moreover, as a matter of French is known as the international language of the theater, the visual arts, dance, architecture, haute cuisine, and fashion and therefore Knowing French gives us direct access to the great literature, films, and songs of French and francophone culture.
French is undoubtedly a language of romance yet also the most artistic language in the world!
(AW:Samrat Biswas)
