French

French belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. Like all Romance languages, it developed from Vulgar Latin spoken by the Roman invaders.

Before the Roman invasion of what is France today, the territory was inhabited by a Celtic people whom the Romans called Gauls. The language of the Gauls had little impact on French.

From the 3rd century on, Gaul was invaded by Germanic tribes whose languages had a profound effect on the Vulgar Latin of the region, especially on its vocabulary. In 1539, King Francis I made French the official language of administration and court proceedings in France, replacing Latin as the official written language of the country. Following a period of unification and standardisation, the language spoken in the 17th-18th centuries became the basis of modern French. During the 17th-19th centuries, French was the lingua franca of the European elite. Monarchs such as Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia could speak and write in French. Russian nobility used French for everyday communication.

French is the official or co-official language of 26 countries. Four of them are in Europe: France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. Two are in the Americas: Canada and Haiti. There are also two overseas departments of France: Martinique and Guadeloupe. The rest are former French colonies in Africa and in the islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. French is a major second language in Arabic-speaking Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco. Worldwide, it is spoken in 53 countries, making it one of the most wide-spread languages of the world.

Ethnologue estimates that there are 51 million first-language speakers of French in France. The worldwide population of first-language speakers of French is estimated at 77 million plus an additional 50 million second-language speakers.

Dialects
Not everyone speaks the kind of French you may have learned in high school or college. There are many varieties spoken in France (e.g., in Paris, Marseille, Lyon), other European countries (Belgium, Switzerland), Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam), Africa (Morocco, Tunis, Algeria, Senegal), and in Canada. In addition, there are many French-based creoles. One of them, Haitian Creole is the official language of Haiti. Standard French is based on, but is not identical to the variety spoken in Paris.

The foundation of the Académie Française in 1634 created an official body whose goal ever since then has been the purification and preservation of the French language. This group of 40 members still exists today. It establishes norms for standard usage and wages a war against the importation of English words into French.

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