For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo , which was a Belgian colony, there are 28 million French speakers. Returning to Europe, about 9. If you add all these French speakers together, you come to around 80 million, which makes French the third most widely spoken mother tongue in Europe after Russian and German. The mathematicians among you will have already established that European French speakers constitute approximately 40 percent of the global total. That said, the official status of both languages does differ from province to province.
In Quebec , for example, French is the only official language. The province is home to 7 million French speakers. Nationwide, there are nearly 4 million speakers of French as a second language, which means approximately 23 percent of the population of 38 million is conversant in French. Interestingly, Montreal is also the fourth largest Francophone city in the world.
And how many people speak French in the United States? According to the U. Census Bureau, French is the fourth most widely spoken language in the country , with about 2.
Haitian immigration increased rapidly between and , and there are now approximately half a million Haitian Creole speakers in the United States. In the state of Louisiana, some , residents speak French at home as a first language, which equates to about 4 percent of the population. This language is believed to have originated in the northern region of present-day France and gradually evolved into Old French and Middle French, respectively.
Today, Modern French is considered part of the Indo-European language family and belongs to the Romance language subgroup. As the official language, French is the primary form of communication used by government and the education system. Additionally, the law dictates that all legal contracts and commercial advertising must be available in French, although other languages are also permitted with a French translation.
Over 25 regional languages are spoken throughout Metropolitan France and some of these are spoken in neighboring countries such as Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Belgium.
The Gallo-Romance language subgroup is further divided into the largest number of regional languages and has the largest number of speakers. The most widely spoken regional language in France is Occitan, a Gallo-Romance language, which can be heard throughout the southern region of the country.
It is the official language of 29 countries. With a population of 67 million, France has the largest number of French speakers in the world. It is also the country of origin of the language, and the country most commonly associated with French.
The DRC is the second most French-speaking country with an estimated 37 million people, followed by Canada and Cameroon with 10 and 9 million respectively. French is recognized as an official language in 29 countries around the world, listed below in descending order of the number of people speaking the language.
Most of the French-speaking countries are part of La Francophonie , and many of them are former French colonies.
It is important to note that some of these countries, like Canada, have more than one official language. As a result, French is not especially the first language of all these countries.
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