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Swiss French (French: français de Suisse or suisse romand) is the variety of French spoken in the French-speaking area of Switzerland known as Romandy. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, the others being German, Italian, and Romansch. In 2020 around 2 million people, or 22.8% of the population, in Switzerland spoke ...
While the French-speaking Swiss prefer to call themselves Romands and their part of the country is Romandy, the German-speaking Swiss used to (and, colloquially, still do) refer to the French-speaking Swiss as "Welsche", and to their area as Welschland, which has the same etymology as the English Welsh (see Walha). [12]
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]
Formed by analogy is Suisse italienne ("Italian Switzerland"), which is composed of Ticino and of a part of Grisons. In Swiss German, French-speaking Switzerland is known as Welschland or Welschschweiz, and the French-speaking Swiss as Welsche, using the old Germanic term for non-Germanic speakers also used in English of Welsh (see *Walhaz).
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.
Switzerland, [d] officially the Swiss Confederation, [e] is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. [f] [13] It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east.
An initiative to enshrine neutrality in the Swiss constitution garnered enough signatures to get a vote as debate over the policy has sharpened in recent years.
Many countries, such as Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Finland, India, Ireland, South Africa and Switzerland, which are officially multilingual, may have many monolinguals in their population. Officially monolingual countries, on the other hand, such as France, can have sizable multilingual populations.