Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
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]
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.
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 majority of the world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories [b] can speak French as either a first or a second language.
~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
Map showing French colonies, protectorates and mandates (in blue) in Africa in 1930; namely French Equatorial Africa, French North Africa, French Somaliland and French West Africa. Along with former Belgian colonies (shown in yellow), these areas today make up the bulk of francophone Africa.
Klein, Martin A. Slavery and colonial rule in French West Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Manning, Patrick. Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa 1880-1995 (Cambridge UP, 1998). Neres, Philip. French-speaking West Africa: From Colonial Status to Independence (1962) Priestley, Herbert Ingram. France overseas: a study of modern imperialism ...