French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 84 countries which share the official use or teaching of French. French is also one of six official languages used in the United Nations.
French is the official language** in Belgium, Benin, Burkina, Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central, African, Republic, Chad, Comoros, Côte, d'Ivoire, Democratic, Republic, of, the, Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial, Guinea, France, Guinea, Haiti, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Monaco, Niger, Republic, of, the, Congo, ...
It is the official language in 29 countries, the procedural language for the European Union (EU), and the only language used for deliberations at the Court of Justice for the EU.
Instagram will load in the frontend. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has the largest concentration of French speakers in all of Africa, and has the largest population of any country with French as the official language. This means that even France doesn't contain as many Francophones as this former Belgian colony.
The latest U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey reports that 1,203,941 people in the U.S. speak French at home.
French Americans are concentrated in several states across the U.S. Maine has the highest number of French Americans with 174,157 individuals, comprising 12.5% of the state's population.
French is relatively easy to learn but it does take some time and effort. As French is closely related to English, I have to agree with the Foreign Language Institute that says that French belongs to the easiest group of languages to learn for English speakers. Having so much common vocabulary helps a lot!
French is the official language in Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, the Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, the Seychelles, and Togo.
Monaco - Everybody in this very small country of 40,000 people can speak French. French is the only official language of the country.
Louisiana French, spoken in Louisiana by descendants of colonists in French Louisiana. New England French, spoken in New England by descendants of 19th and 20th-century Canadian migrants. Missouri French, spoken in Missouri by descendants of French settlers in the Illinois Country.
Someone from France is called French. Citizens of France, whatever their specific national or ethnic origin may be, are called French or French people. This is the simple answer, but the reality is a bit more complex; French speaking people are spread across the world and France itself is highly ethnically diverse.
There are large populations of French-speakers from Canada to Louisiana down to the overseas department of French Guiana in South America and Haiti in the Caribbean. In fact, French is the third most spoken language in North America. All together, there are over sixteen million native French speakers on the continent.
French arrived in Africa during the colonial era and it left a strong mark. In many parts of the continent, French is often considered a lingua franca, meaning that it is used for business, trade, culture, and diplomacy even in countries where it is not an official language.
French has an estimated 220 million native speakers and around 320 million total speakers according to the Organization of International Francophonie. French is the language of instruction for 93 million students. French is spoken by about 3.6 percent of the world's population.
African French (French: français africain) is the generic name of the varieties of the French language spoken by an estimated 167 million people in Africa in 2023 or 51% of the French-speaking population of the world, spread across 34 countries and territories.
Why are more people speaking French? French is spoken in many countries in Africa, which currently have some of the largest rates of population growth, and it's this that makes French one of the fastest-growing languages in the world.
Arabic. Arabic is fifth out of the most spoken languages in the world, with the number of native speakers amounting to 319 million. Originating in the Arabian Peninsula, Arabic has several dialects that are not necessarily compatible with each other and the dialects do differ from one another.
With 63.41 million native speakers, French has the highest prevalence in France. A total of about 97.6 million people worldwide speak French as their mother tongue.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
Spanish grammar is considered more difficult to understand than French grammar. The vocabulary of the French language is less challenging because of the similar words French and English share. Vocabulary is harder to learn in Spanish because there are less similar words to the English language.
The three issues mentioned above – gender, conjugation, and subjunctive mood – are the most challenging aspects of French grammar. Once you manage them, your journey of learning French will get much easier.
Babbel actually ranked the easiest languages for English speakers to learn though, and technically, Spanish is higher on that list than French (Spanish came in third, versus eighth for French). This is mostly thanks to Spanish's easier pronunciation.