Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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]
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
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 language. [ 2 ] Language death is a process in which the level of a speech community 's linguistic competence in their language variety decreases, eventually resulting ...
Françafrique has been characterised by several features that emerged during the Cold War, the first of which was the African cell, a group that comprised the French President and his close advisors who made policy decisions on Africa, often in close collaboration with powerful business networks and the French secret service. [1]
In June 2023, Mali removed French, the language of its former colonizer, as an official language with the approval of a new constitution by 97% of voters in a referendum conducted by the junta. [102] On 7 September 2023, al-Qaeda linked JNIM militants attacked a vessel on the Niger River, killing at least 154 civilians. [103]
Pages in category "French language in Africa" ... Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.
The existing "hexagon" was the result of a long series of wars and conquests involving the triumph of the French language and the French culture over what once were autonomous and culturally distinctive communities, especially the Occitan-speaking areas of Southern France, whose language (langue d'oc), distinct from French, was banned from ...