French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. Over time, French largely supplanted most regional Romance varieties across France, Belgium and Switzerland. Countries, regions, and territories where French is an administrative or wizebets casino login cultural language but with no official status
Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of the language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands; it is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words.
- As of 2008, the French national institute of statistics INSEE estimated that 5.3 million foreign-born immigrants and 6.5 million direct descendants of immigrants (born in France with at least one immigrant parent) lived in France representing a total of 11.8 million and 19% of the total population in metropolitan France (62.1 million in 2008).
- They settled with Anglo-Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons from the Danelaw in the region known today as Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries.
- Facing a crisis of authority during the War of the Lombards of the mid-13th century, the nobility replaced Latin with Outremer French—a koiné of Parisian, Norman, and Picard dialects—to codify the Assizes of Jerusalem.
- It’s the program I send my own students to when they’re ready for a bigger leap.
- Thus the historian John F. Drinkwater states, «The French are, paradoxically, strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation, but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge.»
- Several non-Francophone countries, including Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana, and even countries outside Africa such as Moldova and the United Arab Emirates, have joined or expanded their involvement in the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).
The acute accent occurs in native French principally on ⟨é⟩ and normally indicates a close-mid front vowel, /e/. French uses numerous multiletter graphemes, such as ⟨ou⟩, ⟨au⟩, ⟨eau⟩, ⟨ch⟩ and vowel–nasal-consonant sequences. Liaison is a morphophonological process that occurs only in particular syntactic and lexical contexts before a vowel-initial word; depending on the context, it can be obligatory, optional or prohibited.
Nationality, citizenship, ethnicity
- It was estimated that 10,000 Frenchmen were living in Chile in 1912, 7% of the 149,400 Frenchmen living in Latin America.
- The Lycée Français René-Descartes in Phnom Penh has over a thousand students, the majority of which are Cambodian, is part of the Agency for French Education Abroad (AEFE) among other francophone schools affiliated with the AEFE including the EFI French International School.
- Scribes commonly represented the final sequence ⟨us⟩ by an abbreviation resembling ⟨x⟩; the abbreviation was later interpreted as the letter ⟨x⟩, while ⟨u⟩ was restored in writing, producing the modern spelling chevaux.
- Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in the 7th century BCE or earlier, and non-Celtic peoples including the Ligures, Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine.
- The acute accent occurs in native French principally on ⟨é⟩ and normally indicates a close-mid front vowel, /e/.
- It is estimated that 20,000 settlers were living in Saigon in 1945, and there were 68,430 European settlers living in Madagascar in 1958.
- The debate concerning the integration of this view with the principles underlying the European Community remains open.
The Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture. Over the next six centuries, the two cultures intermingled, creating a hybridized Gallo-Roman culture. Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in the 7th century BCE or earlier, and non-Celtic peoples including the Ligures, Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine. that France adheres to the ideal of a single, homogeneous national culture, supported by the absence of hyphenated identities and by avoidance of the very term «ethnicity» in French discourse.}
History
Political integration (which includes but is not limited to racial integration) is based on voluntary policies which aims at creating a common identity and the interiorization by each individual of a common cultural and historic legacy. Furthermore, regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages, languages and cultures such as Bretons in Brittany, Occitans in Occitania, Basques in the French Basque Country, Catalans in northern Catalonia, Germans in Alsace, Corsicans in Corsica and Flemings in French Flanders. It is estimated that 12% (4,200) of common French words found in a typical dictionary such as the Petit Larousse or Micro-Robert Plus (35,000 words) are of foreign origin (where Greek and Latin learned words are not seen as foreign).
Word of the Day
It is estimated that there are 1 million to 2 million or more Brazilians of French descent today. Former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet is of French origin, as was Augusto Pinochet. It was estimated that 10,000 Frenchmen were living in Chile in 1912, 7% of the 149,400 Frenchmen living in Latin America.
Students
Nowadays, while the government has let newcomers retain their distinctive cultures since the mid-1980s and requires from them a mere integration, French citizens still equate their nationality with citizenship as does French law. With enseignant, however, for both singular forms the le/la becomes l’, and so the only difference in pronunciation is that the ⟨t⟩ on the end of masculine form is silent, whereas it is pronounced in the feminine. Depending on the word and variety of French, it can correlate with a difference in vowel quality, distinguish otherwise identical written forms (for example sur and sûr, du and dû), mark particular verbal forms, or reflect the history of the spelling. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as the other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language.
This definition of the French nation-state contradicts the common opinion, which holds that the concept of the French people identifies with one particular ethnic group. Henceforth, contrary to the German definition of a nation based on objective criteria, such as race or ethnic group, which may be defined by the existence of a common language, among other criteria, the people of France is defined as all the people living in the French nation-state and willing to do so, i.e. by its citizenship. Since in France, the state preceded the nation, voluntary policies have taken an important place in the creation of this common cultural identity. This has led to language and regional cultural variegation, but the extent to which this pattern of migrations showed up in population genetics studies was unclear until the publication of a study in 2019 that used genome wide data. Since the beginning of the Third Republic (1871–1940), the state has not categorized people according to their alleged ethnic origins.
The INSEE does not collect data about language, religion, or ethnicity – on the principle of the secular and unitary nature of the French Republic. The second Pasqua law on «immigration control» makes regularisation of illegal aliens more difficult and, in general, residence conditions for foreigners much harder. With the 7 February 1851 law, voted during the Second Republic (1848–1852), «double jus soli» was introduced in French legislation, combining birth origin with paternity. However, according to Patrick Weil, it was not «ethnically motivated» but «only meant that family links transmitted by the pater familias had become more important than subjecthood».
On 30 December 1687, a community of French Huguenots settled in South Africa. However, significant emigration of mainly Roman Catholic French populations led to the settlement of the Province of Acadia, Canada (New France) and Louisiana, all (at the time) French possessions, as well as colonies in the West Indies, Mascarene islands and Africa. They settled with Anglo-Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons from the Danelaw in the region known today as Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Vulgar Latin in the region of Gallia took on a distinctly local character, some of which is attested in graffiti, which evolved into the Gallo-Romance dialects which include French and its closest relatives.

