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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.
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 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 ...
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 ...
This category lists countries and territories where French is used as either a first or native language or an official language The main article for this category is Francophonie . See also: Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
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
His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations, the economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the ...