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According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth [101] most-spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all languages of Chinese are similarly combined. French remains the second most-spoken language in the states of Louisiana and Maine.
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.
Until the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon, French was spoken by the upper-class Christian population. 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 ...
Within Old French many dialects emerged but the Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). [29] Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. [29] Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules.
Polish: spoken by about 130,000 people [13] [better source needed] Tamil: spoken by about 125,000 people [14] Turkish: spoken by about 221,000 people [15] [better source needed] Vietnamese: the most spoken Asian language in France, spoken by about 324,000 people [16] [better source needed] German and German dialects: spoken by about 300,000 people.
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]
[46] [53] The French occupation laid the foundations for a Francization of the Flemish middle class aided by an exceptional French-language educational system. [54] At the beginning of the 19th century, the Napoleonic Office of Statistics found that Dutch was still the most frequently spoken language in both the Brussels arrondissement and Leuven.
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.