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One prime example can be displayed through the already established business deals with the French private sector in order to increase development in West Africa. An additional factor that connects France to its former colonies is their usage of the French language.
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
Some linguists discuss a "second French language" [69] or even an "African French language". [70] Native Speakers in Africa. According to Paul Wald, "The notion of ownership of an imported language begins when – despite its identification as a foreign and/or vernacular language – its use does not imply a relationship with the foreigner."
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. 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.
The French-speaking world is often associated with the use of the French language and one of the many French-speaking cultures, but it also has significant economic potential, which remains largely under-exploited, particularly by multinationals, private French-speaking groups and academic researchers, who still publish and communicate with the ...
Wamalwa, E. W., & Stephen, O. (2013). Language endangerment and language maintenance: Can endangered indigenous languages of Kenya be electronically preserved?. Sands, B. (2017). The challenge of documenting Africa's least known languages. Africa's endangered languages: Documentary and theoretical approaches, 11–38.
Knowledge of French is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). [115]
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]