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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
Other major languages are Russian (23%), Turkish (9.1%), and Romani (4.2%) [3] (the two main varieties being Balkan Romani and Vlax Romani). There are smaller numbers of speakers of Armenian, Aromanian, Romanian, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz and Balkan Gagauz, Macedonian and English. Bulgarian Sign Language has an estimated 37,000 signers. [4]
The Canadian province of Quebec, (7.9% English-speaking) [citation needed] Note: Quebec's largest city, Montreal, is a multilingual city with half the population having French as their mother tongue, and the other half having other languages (including English) as their mother tongue (see Language demographics of Quebec).
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]
~1% of the population speaks French as a foreign language as of 2014. French Polynesia: 2024: French and Tahitian: Overseas collectivity and overseas country of France. Gambia: 2018: English: Border with Senegal, a French-speaking country. Georgia: 2004: Georgian ~0.4% of the population speaks French as a foreign language as of 2014. Hungary ...
English is used as a second language in parts of southern Europe. As a primary language, however, English has only a small presence in southern Europe, only in Gibraltar (alongside Spanish) and Malta (secondary to Maltese). English is also widely spoken in Cyprus. [citation needed] There are other language groupings in southern Europe.
A lingua franca (/ ˌ l ɪ ŋ ɡ w ə ˈ f r æ ŋ k ə /; lit. ' Frankish tongue '; for plurals see § Usage notes), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect ...
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 ...