French (le français [lə fʁɑ̃sɛ] ( listen) 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, the north of
the U.S. state of Maine, the Acadiana region of the U.S. state of Louisiana, and
by various communities elsewhere. Other speakers of French, who often speak it
as a second language,[3] are distributed throughout many parts of the world,
the largest numbers of whom reside in Francophone Africa.[4] In Africa, French
is most commonly spoken in Gabon (where 80% report fluency),[4] Mauritius(78%),
Algeria (75%), Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire (70%). French is estimated as having
110 million[5] native speakers and 190 million more second language
speakers.[6]
French is a descendant of the spoken Latin language of the
Roman Empire, as are languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish,Romanian,
Lombard, Catalan, Sicilian and Sardinian. Its closest relatives are the other
langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and Belgium, which
French has largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic
languages of RomanGaul, 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.
It is an official language in 29 acountries, 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[citation needed],
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. Twenty percent of
non-Francophone Europeans know how to speak French, totaling roughly 145.6
million people in Europe alone.[7] As a result of extensive colonial ambitions
of France and Belgium (at that time governed by a French-speaking elite), between
the 17th and 20th centuries, French was introduced to the Americas, Africa,
Polynesia, the Levant, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.
According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la francophonie, French speakers will number approximately 500 million people in 2025 and 650 million people, or approximately 7% of the world's population by 2050.
