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Berges Institute. Retrieved 27 May 2023. Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and it is an official language, either de facto (in practice) or de jure (by law) in 20 countries. Spanish is also an official language in Puerto Rico, Gibraltar, the United Nations, the African Union, and the Organization of American States.
Country surrounded by French-speaking countries. Former Spanish colony France: 1970: French: Founder, origin of the French language Gabon: 1970: French: Former French colony Greece: 2004: Greek: French spoken as a foreign language by ~7% of the population as of 2014 Guinea: 1981: French: Former French colony. Membership suspended in 2021 due to ...
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 following is a list of sovereign states and territories where French is an official or de facto language.
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 ...
French (français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] ⓘ or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] ⓘ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest ...
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. [Note 1] This includes those who speak French as a first or second ...
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. [44
Five languages were chosen in 1946 as official languages around when the United Nations was founded: Chinese [3] English (British English with Oxford spelling) [4] French. Russian. Spanish. (Modern Standard) Arabic was later voted to be an additional official language in 1973.