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.
Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about 2,000 kilometres off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island, as well as Rodrigues, Agaléga, and St. Brandon. The islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, along with nearby Réunion, are part of the Mascarene Islands. The main island of Mauritius, where the population is concentrated, hosts the capital and largest city, Port Louis. The country spans 2,040 square kilometres (790 sq mi) and has an exclusive economic zone covering 2,300,000 square kilometres.
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.
Arabic, particularly the Algerian Arabic dialect, is the most widely spoken language in Algeria, but a number of regional and foreign languages are also spoken. The official languages of Algeria are Arabic and Berber, as specified in its constitution since 1963 for the former and since 2016 for the latter. Berber has been recognized as a "national language" by constitutional amendment since 8 May 2002. In February 2016, a constitutional resolution was passed making Berber an official language alongside Arabic. Arabic is spoken by about 81% of Algerians, while Berber languages are spoken by 27%. French, though it has no official status, is still used in media and education due to Algeria's colonial history. Kabyle, with 3 million speakers, is the most spoken Berber language in the country, is taught and partially co-official in parts of Kabylie.
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.
Portuguese is spoken in a number of African countries and is the official language in six African countries: Angola, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. There are Portuguese-speaking communities in most countries of Southern Africa, a mixture of Portuguese settlers and Angolans and Mozambicans who left their countries during the civil wars. A rough estimate has it that there are about 14 million people who use Portuguese as their sole mother tongue across Africa, but depending on the criteria applied, the number might be considerably higher, since many Africans speak Portuguese as a second language, in countries like Angola and Mozambique, where Portuguese is an official language, but also in countries like South Africa and Senegal, thanks to migrants coming from Portuguese-speaking countries. Some statistics claim that there are over 60 million Portuguese speakers in the continent.
The linguistic situation in Luxembourg is characterized by the practice and the recognition of three official languages: French, German, and the national language Luxembourgish, established in law in 1984. These three languages are also referred to as the three administrative languages, as the constitution does not specify them as being "official". As of 2018, 98% of the population was able to speak French at more or less a high level, 78% spoke German, and 77% Luxembourgish.
Beyond the official Romanian language, multiple other languages are spoken in Romania. Laws regarding the rights of minority languages are in place, and some of them have co-official status at a local level. Although having no native speakers, French language is also a historically important language in Romania, and the country is a member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a multilingual country where an estimated total of 242 languages are spoken. Ethnologue lists 215 living languages. The official language, since the colonial period, is French, one of the languages of Belgium. Four other languages, three of them Bantu based, have the status of national language: Kikongo-Kituba, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba.
Senegal is a multilingual country: Ethnologue lists 36 languages, Wolof being the most widely spoken language.
Benin is a diverse country linguistically. Of those, French is the official language, and most of the indigenous languages are considered national languages.
The Malagasy language, of Austronesian origin, is generally spoken throughout the island. The official languages of Madagascar are Malagasy and French. As a member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, Madagascar is a Francophone country, and in 2022, French is spoken by around a quarter of the population in Madagascar, i.e. 7.7 million people out of 29.1 million (26.5%).
Of the languages of Tunisia, Arabic is the sole official language according to the Tunisian Constitution.
Nowadays, no one could still claim his pure race status. Ethnic, social and linguistic differences become each day more and more present and marked all over the world. Time, history and continuous population intermingling across boundaries led to create cosmopolitan beings, that is to say world citizens who, in spite of their singularity, manage to bring themselves together in order to create a unique and single nation. Among the nations most affected by this cross-fertilization is notably found Mauritius. The social and linguistic diversity of this country makes it unique and contribute to its wealth. It arouses curiosity, urges us to deepen our knowledge on the subject and is, to this extent, worth being studied.
The official languages of the Comoros are Comorian, French and Arabic, as recognized under its 2001 constitution. Although each language holds equal recognition under the constitution, language use varies across Comorian society. Unofficial minority languages such as Malagasy and Swahili are also present on the island with limited usage. According to Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer, a professor of anthropology at Kansas State university, the linguistic diversity of the Comoros is the result of its rich history as part of the Indian maritime trade routes and its periods of Malagasy and French colonial rule.
Mauritian Creole or Morisien is a French-based creole language spoken in Mauritius. English words are included in the standardized version of the language. In addition, the slaves and indentured servants from cultures in Africa and Asia left a diverse legacy of language in the country. The words spoken by these groups are also incorporated into contemporary Morisien.
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.
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.
