French is a common language in Lebanon, with about 50% of the population being Francophone. [1] A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used within government, [2] and is often used as a prestige language for business, diplomacy and education.
The use of the French language is a legacy of the time of the French Crusades [3] and France's mandate in the region, including its League of Nations mandate over Lebanon following World War I; as of 2004, some 20% of the population used French on a daily basis. [4]
French stopped being an official language in 1943. [5] After independence, American oil companies based themselves in Lebanon, leading to the rise of English as an influential language in international commerce in Lebanon. According to New York Times, this led to the overtaking of French by English in the commerical realm. [6] French is used on Lebanese bank notes. [5]
Formerly under French mandate, independent Republic of Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used.
Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that
"Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". [2]
The French language is used on Lebanese pound bank notes, road signs, vehicle registration plates, and on public buildings, alongside Arabic.
The majority of Lebanese people speak Lebanese Arabic, which is grouped in a larger category called Levantine Arabic, while Modern Standard Arabic is mostly used in magazines, newspapers, and formal broadcast media. Code-switching between Arabic and French is very common. [7] [8] [9]
Almost 40% of Lebanese are considered francophone, and another 15% "partial francophone," and 70% of Lebanon's secondary schools use French as a second language of instruction. [10] [11] By comparison, English is used as a secondary language in 30% of Lebanon's secondary schools. [11] The use of Arabic by Lebanon's educated youth is declining, as they usually prefer to speak in French and, to a lesser extent, English. [7] [12] It is also a reaction to the negativity associated with Arabic since the September 11 attacks. [13]
French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon, with about 40–45% of the population being Francophone as a second language and 30% Anglophone. [1] In addition to the 40–45% of Lebanese being considered francophone, there are another 15% who are considered "partial francophone", and 70% of Lebanon's secondary schools use French as a second language of instruction. [11] The use of English is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. [14] Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value.[ clarification needed ] [15] However, the economic opportunities and size of the French-speaking world makes French a must-have in business, sciences and international relations.
In 1997, the Lebanese government committed to a policy of trilingualism in education, including French and English alongside the official Arabic language in the curriculum. [13] L'Orient-Le Jour is a French-language newspaper. [16]
French 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 Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.
The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a lingua franca or customary language, where a significant proportion of the population are francophones, or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture.
African French 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. This includes those who speak French as a first or second language in these 34 African countries and territories, but it does not include French speakers living in other African countries. Africa is thus the continent with the most French speakers in the world, and African French speakers now form a large and integral part of the Francophonie.
Francization or Francisation, also known as Frenchification, is the expansion of French language use—either through willful adoption or coercion—by more and more social groups who had not before used the language as a common means of expression in daily life. As a linguistic concept, known usually as gallicization, it is the practice of modifying foreign words, names, and phrases to make them easier to spell, pronounce, or understand in French.
North Governorate is one of the governorates of Lebanon and one of the two governorates of North Lebanon. Its capital is Tripoli. Ramzi Nohra has been its governor since May 2, 2014. The population of North Governorate is 731,251.
The Lebanese people are the people inhabiting or originating from Lebanon. The term may also include those who had inhabited Mount Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains prior to the creation of the modern Lebanese state. The major religious groups among the Lebanese people within Lebanon are Shia Muslims (27%), Sunni Muslims (27%), Maronite Christians (21%), Greek Orthodox Christians (8%), Melkite Christians (5%), Druze (5%), Protestant Christians (1%). The largest contingent of Lebanese, however, comprise a diaspora in North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Africa, which is predominantly Maronite Christian.
Saint Joseph University of Beirut is a private Roman Catholic research university located in Beirut, Lebanon, which was founded in 1875 by French Jesuit missionaries and subsidized by the Government of France during the time when Lebanon was under Ottoman rule. It is widely recognized as one of the leading and most prestigious academic institutions in Lebanon and Middle East. USJ's roster of graduates includes seven of independent Lebanon's thirteen Presidents, a Speaker of the Parliament of Lebanon, two Presidents of the Council of Ministers of Lebanon, Governors of the Banque du Liban, hundreds of legislators and ministers, numerous judges, and high-ranking civil servants, among them Commanders of the Lebanese Armed Forces and executives of the Internal Security Forces. As the oldest and foremost French university in Lebanon, it not only promotes Lebanese culture but also upholds a policy of equal admission opportunity without consideration of ethno-religious affiliations. Furthermore, it advocates trilingual education, offering instruction in Arabic, French, and English. Additionally, it is known in Lebanon and the Middle East for its prominent university hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu de France, and for its prestigious and historical Faculty of Law, modern Lebanon's oldest law school and the first law school in Lebanon since the ancient Roman law school of Berytus.
Hind Rafic al-Hariri is the youngest child of Lebanese businessman and politician Rafic Hariri. She graduated from the Lebanese American University in Beirut and campaigned for her half-brother Saad in Lebanese elections. In 2008, Forbes magazine listed her as "one of the world's youngest billionaires".
L'Orient-Le Jour is a French-language daily newspaper in Lebanon. Its English-language edition is L'Orient Today.
Julie Barlow is a Canadian journalist, author and conference speaker who writes and publishes both in English and French and is based in Montreal, Quebec.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau is a Canadian author, journalist, and lecturer, and a Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs.
The Story of Spanish is a non-fiction book written by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow that charts the origins of the Spanish language. The 496-page book published by St. Martin’s Press, explains how the Spanish language evolved from a tongue spoken by a remote tribe of farmers in northern Spain to become one of the world’s most spoken languages.
Jalal Khoury was a playwright, theatre director, comedian and artistic editor.
The French language became an international language, the second international language alongside Latin, in the Middle Ages, "from the fourteenth century onwards". It was not by virtue of the power of the Kingdom of France: '"... until the end of the fifteenth century, the French of the chancellery spread as a political and literary language because the French court was the model of chivalric culture". Consequently, it was less as a centralising monarch than as a "gentle courtly prince" that the king unwittingly spread his language" and "the methods of expansion were not political"'. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the language of European diplomacy and international relations.
French is a lingua franca of Algeria according to the CIA World Factbook. Algeria is the second largest Francophone country in the world in terms of speakers. In 2008, 11.2 million Algerians (33%) could read and write in French. Despite intermittent attempts to eradicate French from public life, by the 2000s the proportion of French speakers in Algeria was much higher than on the eve of independence in 1962.
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong is the first book from the writer-journalist team Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau.
The Francophonie or Francophone world is the whole body of people and organisations around the world who use the French language regularly for private or public purposes. The term was coined by Onésime Reclus in 1880 and became important as part of the conceptual rethinking of cultures and geography in the late 20th century. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) is a body uniting countries where French is spoken.
Radio Lebanon is one of the pioneering and one of the oldest Arab radio stations. The main programme is in Arabic with a second channel broadcasting in other languages, mainly in French, but with additional programming in English and Armenian. The second channel also rebroadcasts some programming from Radio France Internationale (RFI) French language news programming. Radio Liban also broadcasts for 12 hours international programming destined for the Lebanese diaspora and for international listeners. International programming is in Arabic, French, English, Spanish and Portuguese. The station reflects mainly the official line of the Lebanese government and being a non-partisan neutral channel also the views of all mainstream political forces in Lebanon. It also applies a neutral stance on pan-Arab and international affairs.
Nada Sehnaoui is a visual artist and political activist. Her artworks, spanning painting, mixed media works, sculpture and installations, have been widely exhibited internationally, and have been featured in the press and print publications worldwide.