Search results
Some modern languages are derived from Old French dialects other than Classical French, which is based on the Île-de-France dialect. They include Angevin , Berrichon , Bourguignon-Morvandiau , Champenois , Franc-Comtois , Gallo, Lorrain, Norman , Picard, Poitevin , Saintongeais , and Walloon.
- Evolved into Middle French by the 14th century
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. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French .
- Signed French, (français signé)
- Status
- List of Languages
- Statistics
- See Also
- External Links
The official language of the French Republic is French (art. 2 of the French Constitution) and the French government is, by law, compelled to communicate primarily in French. The government, furthermore, mandates that commercial advertising be available in French (though it can also use other languages). The French government, however, does not man...
According to the 2007 Adult Education survey, part of a project by the European Union and carried in France by the Inseeand based on a sample of 15,350 people, French was the mother tongue of 87.2% of the total population, or roughly 55.81 million people, followed by Arabic (3.6%, 2.3 million), Portuguese (1.5%, 960,000), Spanish (1.2%, 770,000) an...
INSEE 1999
At the 1999 census, INSEE sampled 380,000 adult people all across Metropolitan France, and asked them questions about their family situation. One of the questions was about the languages that their parents spoke with them before the age of five. This is the first time serious statistics were computed about the proportion of mother tongues in France. The results were published in Enquête familiale, Insee, 1999.[citation needed] Here is a list of the nine most prominent mother tongues in France...
Ethnologue, Metropolitan France
The following languages are listed as having 50,000 or more total speakers in Metropolitan France according to the 2022 edition of Ethnologue. Entries identified by Ethnologue as macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese, encompassing all their respective varieties) are not included in this section.
- English (39%), Spanish (13%), German (6%)
- French Sign Language
Old French is one of the earliest attested Romance languages and offers a fascinating field for research in historical linguistics: not only are many of its changes attested in texts, but its linguistic ancestor, Latin, is richly documented as well. 1. Emergence of a New Language. When Rome expanded under Caesar and the Roman emperors, Latin ...
French ( français, French: [ fʁɑ̃sɛ], or langue française, French: [ lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz], or by some speakers, French: [ lɑ̃ŋ fʁɑ̃sɛ]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in ...
May 16, 2024 · Francien has largely replaced other regional dialects of French spoken in northern and central France; those dialects made up the so-called langue d’oïl (the term is based on the French use of the word oïl, modern oui, for “yes”).
Trace the origins of French language to its Roman (hence Romance ) roots. Explore the many distinct languages which co-exist with French today, such as Basque, Breton, Languedocien, Provencal, etc.
