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French is a Romance language—meaning it evolved from Latin and is related to Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. It matters because it's spoken by hundreds of millions of people worldwide and serves as an official language for many countries and international organizations.
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- Oïl
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- P10369
- England
- P8168
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- P11012
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Article
French (français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, French and its closest relatives—the langues d'oïl, historically spoken in northern France and southern Belgium—descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Over time, French largely supplanted these regional relatives.
It was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul and by the Germanic Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, it was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole, were developed. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.
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French languageFusional languagesImmigrant languages of the United StatesISO language articles citing sources other than EthnologueLanguage articles citing Ethnologue 26Language articles citing Ethnologue 27Language articles citing Ethnologue 28Language articles with Linguasphere codeLanguages attested from the 9th centuryLanguages of AlgeriaLanguages of Belgium