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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 ...
Isle of Man: the main language is English, but a small percentage of the population have some knowledge of Manx Gaelic, which is used officially to a limited extent, e.g. in bilingual street signs, some official documents and for ceremonial purposes. Guernsey: the main language is English. French is spoken as well.
The English version is followed by variants in other languages, in alphabetical order by name, and then by any historical variants and former names. Several cities have diacritics in their listed name in English. It is very common that the press strip the diacritics and that means a parallel diacritic-free version is very often used in English.
French is an official language in 27 independent nations. French is also the second most geographically widespread language in the world after English, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. [1]
The European Union is a supranational union composed of 27 member states. The total English-speaking population of the European Union and the United Kingdom combined (2012) is 256,876,220 [70] (out of a total population of 500,000,000, [71] i.e. 51%) including 65,478,252 native speakers and 191,397,968 non-native speakers, and would be ranked 2nd if it were included.
Other major languages are Turkish (9.1%), and Romani (4.2%) [3] (the two main varieties being Balkan Romani and Vlax Romani). There are smaller numbers of speakers of Armenian, Aromanian, Romanian, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz and Balkan Gagauz, Macedonian and English. Bulgarian Sign Language has an estimated 37,000 signers. [4] Ethnicity map of Bulgaria
As of 2024, there are 57 sovereign states and 28 non-sovereign entities where English is an official language. Many administrative divisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level. Most states where English is an official language are former territories of the British Empire.
~1% of the population speaks French as a foreign language as of 2014. French Polynesia: 2024: French and Tahitian: Overseas collectivity and overseas country of France. Gambia: 2018: English: Border with Senegal, a French-speaking country. Georgia: 2004: Georgian ~0.4% of the population speaks French as a foreign language as of 2014. Hungary ...