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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 167 million people in Africa in 2023 or 51% of the French-speaking population of the world [4] [5] [6] spread across 34 countries and territories.
Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent. At about 30.2 million km 2 (11.7 million sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth 's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. [ 2 ]
French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.As of 2023, an estimated 350 million African people spread across 34 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, mostly as a secondary language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. [2]
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 ...
Pages in category "French language in Africa" The following 16 pages are in this category, out of 16 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. ...
By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers, when it becomes known as an extinct language. A related term is linguicide , [ 1 ] the death of a language from natural or political causes, and, rarely, glottophagy , the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major ...
In July 2023, French was dropped as an official language, becoming instead a working language. [2] At the same time, the 13 national languages, [ 3 ] namely Bambara , Bobo , Bozo , Dogon , Fula , Hassaniya Arabic , Kassonke , Maninke , Minyanka , Senufo , the Songhay languages , Soninke and Tamasheq , became official languages. [ 2 ]
Major Horn of Africa languages are Somali, Amharic and Oromo. Lingala is important in Central Africa. Important South African languages are Sotho, Tswana, Pedi, Venda, Tsonga, Swazi, Southern Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans. [36] French, English, and Portuguese are important languages in Africa due to colonialism.