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[3] The French language is a Romance language derived from Latin and heavily influenced principally by Celtic and Frankish. Beginning in the 11th century, literature written in medieval French was one of the oldest vernacular (non-Latin) literatures in western Europe and it became a key source of literary themes in the Middle Ages across the ...
The nature and importance of Francophone literature in various territories of the former French Empire depends on the concentration of French settlers, the length of time spent in colonial status, and how developed indigenous languages were as literary languages. It was only following the Second World War that a distinction started to be made ...
The regional languages of France are sometimes called patois, but this term (roughly meaning "dialects") is often considered derogatory. Patois is used to refer to essentially oral languages, [ 6 ] even though some have a current and/or historical use, such as Occitan, which was already being written at a time when French was not and its ...
The modern French language does not have a significant stress accent (as English does) or long and short syllables (as Latin does). This means that the French metric line is generally not determined by the number of beats, but by the number of syllables (see syllabic verse; in the Renaissance, there was a brief attempt to develop a French poetics based on long and short syllables [see "musique ...
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 ...
French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Trade Organization, the International Olympic Committee, the General Conference ...
Although the name Franco-Provençal suggests it is a bridge dialect between French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan, it is a separate Gallo-Romance language that transitions into the Oïl languages Burgundian and Frainc-Comtou to the northwest, into Romansh to the east, into the Gallo-Italic Piemontese to the southeast, and finally into the Vivaro-Alpine dialect of Occitan to the southwest.
The Regional literature of France, besides literature written in the French language, may include literature written in other languages of France.In the medieval period many of the competing standard languages in various territories that later came to make up the territory of modern France each produced literary traditions, such as Anglo-Norman literature and Provençal literature.