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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 60 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. [1]
The Canadian province of Quebec, (7.9% English-speaking) [citation needed] Note: Quebec's largest city, Montreal, is a multilingual city with half the population having French as their mother tongue, and the other half having other languages (including English) as their mother tongue (see Language demographics of Quebec).
French is still a lingua franca in most Western and Central African countries and an official language of many, a remnant of French and Belgian colonialism. These African countries and others are members of the Francophonie. French is the official language of the Universal Postal Union, with English added as a working language in 1994. [46
The Francophonie 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 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 ...
~2% of the population speaks French as a foreign language as of 2014. Dominican Republic: 2010: Spanish: French colony from 1795 to 1808. Estonia: 2010: Estonian ~1% of the population speaks French as a foreign language as of 2014. Gambia: 2018: English: Border with Senegal, a French-speaking country. Georgia: 2004: Georgian
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.
The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF; sometimes shortened to the Francophonie, French: La Francophonie [la fʁɑ̃kɔfɔni], [3] [note 3] sometimes also called International Organisation of La Francophonie in English [4]) is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a lingua franca or customary language, where a significant proportion ...