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A man from Labé, Guinea, speaking Pular and West African French. African French (French: français africain) is the generic name of the varieties of the French language spoken by an estimated 320 million people in Africa in 2023 or 67% of the French-speaking population of the world [1] [2] [3] spread across 34 countries and territories.
The French language became an international language, the second international language alongside Latin, in the Middle Ages, "from the fourteenth century onwards".It was not by virtue of the power of the Kingdom of France: '"... until the end of the fifteenth century, the French of the chancellery spread as a political and literary language because the French court was the model of chivalric ...
This is a list of the member states of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.These governments belong to an international organisation representing countries and regions where French is the first ("mother") or customary language, where a significant proportion of the population are francophones (French speakers) or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture.
The Francophone or Francophone world is the whole body of people and organisations around the world who use the French language regularly for private or public purposes. The term was coined by Onésime Reclus [1] in 1880 and became important as part of the conceptual rethinking of cultures and geography in the late 20th century.
The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF; sometimes shortened to La Francophonie, French: La Francophonie [la fʁɑ̃kɔfɔni], [4] [note 3] sometimes also called International Organisation of La Francophonie in English [5]) is an international organization representing where there is a notable affiliation with French language and culture.
The majority of the world's French-speaking population lives in Africa; while it is an official language in 18 countries, it is not spoken as a first language by the majority, acting mainly as a second one or a lingua franca due to the many indigenous languages spoken in the territories. [64]
Map showing French colonies, protectorates and mandates (in blue) in Africa in 1930; namely French Equatorial Africa, French North Africa, French Somaliland and French West Africa. Along with former Belgian colonies (shown in yellow), these areas today make up the bulk of francophone Africa .
The Canadian province of Quebec (2006 census population of 7,546,131), where more than 95 percent of the people speak French as either their first, second or even third language, is the center of French life on the Western side of the Atlantic; however, French settlement began further east, in Acadia. Quebec is home to vibrant French-language ...