French has been spoken today all over the world as one of the native languages. The number of people speaking this language is between 65 and 80 million. Moreover, it is being spoken by around 190-200 m people as one of the 2nd or 3rd languages. French can boast of significant speakers with respect to 54 nations. Majority of the native speakers relating to French reside in France, which is, in actual sense, the origin of it. Most of rest of the population stays in Belgium, Canada, United States, Monaco, Luxembourg, Francophone Africa, or Switzerland.
Many of you might not be aware of the fact that French is nothing but amongst the descendants of Roman Empire’s Latin language, as are the languages like Catalan, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.
Development of French had also been influenced by Roman Gaul’s inhabitant Celtic languages, and also by post-Roman Frankish invaders’ Germanic language. French is one of the official languages in 29 nations, majority of which go on with the formation of the so called ‘La Francophonie’, i.e. community consisting of French-speaking countries. In fact, French is the official language concerned with every agency of United Nations, and also a huge number of organizations of international acclaim. As per European Union, around 129 million, i.e. around 26% of 497,198,740 people amongst 27-member states move ahead with speaking in French, out of which around 12%, i.e. 59 million converse in it on the native basis, and around 14%, i.e. 69 million claim of having spoken it in the form of 2nd language. All of this goes on to make it the 3rd most frequently spoken 2nd language in Union, following English, German.
Geographic distribution
Europe – Attainment of the legal status (in France)
As per ‘Constitution of France’, this language, i.e. French is regarded as official language for the last 16 years, i.e. since the year 1992. France has made usage of French mandatory in the government publications, education out of the specific cases, and, last, but not the least, legal contracts. Even advertisements have been told to bear translation of the foreign words.
Apart from French, there’re also wide varieties of the regional languages. This country, France has moved ahead to sign the ‘European Charter for regional Languages’. However, it hasn’t got it ratified as that would be going against Constitution brought in to effect from the year 1958.
Switzerland
French has been one amongst the 4 official languages in Switzerland, including Romansh, Italian, and German. It’s spoken in Romandie, a portion of Switzerland. Around 20% of the population of Switzerland speaks French.
Belgium
Here, i.e. in Belgium, Walloinia has French as its official language. Brussels has 2 official languages-Dutch and French.
Andorra and Monaco
Even though Monegasque is Principality of Monaco’s national language, French is its only language, on the official basis. Besides, French nationals go on to make up around 47% of population. Andorra has only Catalan as the official language. French, however, is usually made use of owing to France’s proximity. Nationals of France go on to make up around 7% of population.
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