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French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.As of 2023, an estimated 350 million African people spread across 34 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, mostly as a secondary language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. [2]
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Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world. This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect.
Within Old French many dialects emerged but the Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). [42] Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. [42] Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules.
"Oïl dialects" or "French dialects" are also used to refer to the Oïl languages except French—as some extant Oïl languages are very close to modern French. Because the term dialect is sometimes considered pejorative, the trend today among French linguists is to refer to these languages as langues d'oïl rather than dialects. [citation needed]
A man from Labé, Guinea, speaking Pular and West African French. African French (French: français africain) is the generic name of the varieties of the French language spoken by an estimated 320 million people in Africa in 2023 or 67% of the French-speaking population of the world [1] [2] [3] spread across 34 countries and territories.
In addition to French, several regional languages are also spoken to varying degrees, such as Alsatian, a German dialect (specifically Alemannic; spoken by 1.44% of the national population); Basque, a language isolate; Breton, a Celtic language (spoken by 0.61%); Corsican, an Italo-Dalmatian language; and various other Gallo-Romance languages ...
French is also the second most geographically widespread language in the world after English, with about 60 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. [1] The following is a list of sovereign states and territories where French is an official or de facto language.