French language

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French (français) is the third-largest of the Romance languages in terms of number of native speakers, after Spanish and Portuguese, being spoken by about 120 million people as a mother tongue or fluently. As a Romance language, it is a daughter language of Latin, although there has been significant borrowing from Ancient Greek.

It is an official language in 29 countries.

French is also an official or administrative language in several communities and international organisations (such as the European Union, International Olympic Committee, World Trade Organization, NATO, FINA, FIA, UCI, FIFA, World Anti-Doping Agency, United Nations, African Union, International Court of Justice, IHO, International Secretariat for Water, International Political Science Association, International Bureau of Weights and Measures, European Broadcasting Union, ESA, Universal Postal Union, Interpol and so on) and is among the six official languages of the United Nations and of all its agencies. While the status of French as the leading language for international communication has declined since its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries due to the rise of English, it maintains a prominent position.

Geographic distribution

Legal status in France

Per the Constitution of France, French has been the official language since 1992 [link]. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education outside of specific cases (though these dispositions are often ignored) and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words.

Contrary to a common misunderstanding both in the American and British media, France does not prohibit the use of foreign words in websites nor in any other private publication, as that would violate the constitutional right of freedom of speech. The misunderstanding may have arisen from a similar prohibition in the Canadian province of Quebec which made strict application of the Charter of the French Language between 1977 and 1993, although these regulations addressed language used in advertising and the provision of commercial services offered within the province, not the language of private communication.

There exist in addition to French a variety of languages spoken in France by minorities.

Legal status in Canada

French has been the sole official language of Quebec since 1974, and then enacted again in 1977 with the adoption of the Charter of the French Language (which is popularly referred to as Bill 101). Although some arrangements of the Charter allow the use of English in order to respect individual freedoms and rights (such as the access by Anglophones to health and social services in their own language), French prevails against English in all cases. Actually, according to the language rights of the Charter, every person has the fundamental right to express himself in French without any restrictions. The provision of Bill 101 with the most significant impact has been that which mandates French-language education, unless a child's parents or siblings have received the majority of their own education in English within Canada. That provision has reversed a historical trend whereby a large number of immigrant children were being sent to English schools by their parents. In so doing, Bill 101 has greatly contributed to the "visage français" (French face) of Quebec. Other provisions of Bill 101, on the other hand, have been ruled unconstitutional over the years, including those mandating French-only commercial signs, court proceedings, and debates in the legislature. Some of those provisions remained in effect for a while, using the constitutional "notwithstanding" clause that permits a non-compliant law to remain temporarily. (No "notwithstanding provision" is currently in effect). In 1993 the Charter was changed to allow signage in other languages so long as French is markedly "predominant".

The only other province which has French as an official language is New Brunswick, which like the nation as a whole recognizes both French and English as official languages. Outside of Quebec, the highest number of Francophones in North America reside in Ontario, whereas New Brunswick has the highest percentage of Francophones after Quebec. In Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba, French does not have full official status, although the provincial governments do provide full French-language services in all communities where significant numbers of Francophones live. Canada's three northern territories--Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut--all recognize French as an official language as well.

The French Language Services Act, adopted in 1986, guarantees French language services in the province of Ontario where the francophone population represents greater than 5%, especially in the north and east of the province, as well as in the other larger centres, such as Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Mississauga, London, Kitchener, St. Catharine's-Niagara, and Windsor. The French Language Services Act does not confer the status of "official bilingualism" on these cities. That designation carries with it implications that goes beyond the provision of service in both languages. The City of Ottawa's Language policy (by-law 2001-170) has two criteria which would allow employees to work in the language of choice and be supervised in the language of choice - this policy is being challenged by an organization called Canadians for Language Fairness (www.languagefairness.ca). A law similar to the Ontario French Language Services Act came into effect in Nova Scotia in 2005.

Canada has the status of member state in the Francophonie, while the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick are recognized as participating governments.

All of the other provinces do make some effort to accommodate the needs of their Francophone citizens, although the level and quality of French-language service varies significantly from province to province.

Legal status in other countries

In the Americas, French is an official language of Haiti, although it is mostly spoken by the upperclass and well educated while Haitian Creole is more widely used. French is also the official language in France's current possessions of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. It is also an administrative language of Dominica and the U.S. state of Louisiana.

French is an official language of many African countries, many of them former French or Belgian colonies:

• Benin
• Burkina Faso
• Burundi
• Central African Republic
• Chad
• Comoros
• Congo (Brazzaville)
• Cote d'Ivoire
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Guinea
• Madagascar
• Mali
• Niger
• Rwanda
• Senegal
• Seychelles
• Togo

In Asia, French is an administrative language in Laos and Lebanon, and is used unofficially in parts of Cambodia, India (Pondicherry, Mahé, Karikal and Yanam), Syria and Vietnam.

French is also an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, along with France's current possessions of French Polynesia, Wallis & Futuna and New Caledonia.

Regional Varieties

See Dialects of the French language

• Acadian French
• African French
• Aostan French
• Belgian French
• Cajun French
• Canadian French
• Cambodian French
• Metropolitan French
• German French
• Indian French
• Jersey Legal French
• Lao French
• Levantine French
• Maghreb French
• Meridional French
• New Caledonian French
• Newfoundland French
• North American French
• Oceanic French
• Quebec French
• South East Asian French
• Swiss French
• Vietnamese French
• West Indian French

Derived languages

Main article: French-based creole languages

• Antillean Creole
• Haitian Creole
• Lanc-Patuá
• Mauritian Creole
• Michif
• Louisiana Creole French
• Réunionese Creole
• Seychellois Creole
• Tay Boi

Sound system

Main article: French phonology

Although there are many French regional accents, only one version of the language is normally chosen as a model for foreign learners. This is the educated standard variety of Paris, which has no commonly used special name, but has been termed "français neutre".

• Voiced stops (i.e. /b d g/) are typically produced fully voiced throughout.
• Voiceless stops (i.e. /p t k/) are described as unaspirated; when preceding high vowels, they are often followed by a short period of aspiration and/or frication. They are never glottalised.
• Nasals: The velar nasal /ŋ/ occurs only in final position in borrowed (usually English) words: parking, camping, swing. The palatal nasal can occur in word initial position (e.g. gnon), but it is most frequently found in intervocalic, onset position or word-finally (e.g. montagne).
• Fricatives: French has three pairs of homorganic fricatives distinguished by voicing, i.e. labiodental /f/-/v/, dental /s/-/z/, and palato-alveolar /ʃ/-/ʒ/. Notice that /s/-/z/ are dental, like the plosives /t/-/d/, and the nasal /n/.

• Lateral and central approximants: The lateral approximant /l/ is unvelarized in both onset (“lire”) and coda position (“il”). In the onset, the central approximants [w], [ɥ], and [j] each correspond to a high vowel, /u/, /y/, and /i/ respectively. There are a few minimal pairs where the approximant and corresponding vowel contrast, but there are also many chases where they are in free variation. Contrasts between /j/ and /i/ occur in final position as in /abɛj/ abeille “bee” vs. /abɛi/ abbaye “monastery”, “abbey”.

• liaison or linking: Final single consonants, in particular s, x, z, t, d, n and m, are normally silent. (The final letters 'c', 'r', 'f', and 'l' however are normally pronounced.) When the following word begins with a vowel, though, a silent consonant may once again be pronounced, to provide a "link" between the two words and avoid a hiatus. Some liaisons are mandatory, for example the s in les amants or vous avez; some are optional, depending on dialect and register, for example the first s in deux cents euros or euros irlandais; and some are forbidden, for example the s in beaucoup d'hommes aiment. The t of et is never pronounced and the silent final consonant of a noun is only pronounced in the plural and in set phrases like pied-à-terre. Doubling a final consonant and adding a silent e at the end of a word (e.g. Parisien → Parisienne) makes it clearly pronounced, always.
• elision or vowel dropping: Monosyllabic pronouns and conjuctions ending in an a or a silent e, such as je and que, drop their final vowel when placed before a word that begins with a vowel sound. The missing vowel is replaced by an apostrophe. (e.g. je ai is instead pronounced and spelt → j'ai). This gives for example the same pronunciation for "l'homme qu'il a vu" ("the man whom he saw") and "l'homme qui l'a vu" ("the man who saw him").

Orthography

Main article: French orthography

• nasal "n" and "m". When "n" or "m" follows a vowel or diphthong, the "n" or "m" becomes silent and causes the preceding vowel to become nasalized (i.e. pronounced with the soft palate extended downward so as to allow part of the air to leave through the nostrils). Exceptions are when the "n" or "m" is doubled, or immediately followed by a non-silent vowel. The prefixes en- and em- are always nasalized. The rules get more complex than this but may vary between dialects.
• digraphs French does not introduce extra letters or diacritics to specify its large range of vowel sounds and diphthongs, rather it uses specific combinations of vowels, sometimes with following consonants, to show which sound is intended.
• gemination : Within words, double consonants are not pronounced as geminates in modern French (but you could hear geminates in the cinema or TV news as far as the 70's). For example, "illusion" is pronounced [ilyzjő] and not [illyzjõ]. But gemination does occur between words. For example, "une info" ("a news") is pronounced [ynẽfo], whereas "une nympho" ("a nympho") is pronounced [ynnẽfo].
• accents are used sometimes for pronunciation, sometimes to distinguish similar words, and sometimes for etymology alone.
• * Accents that affect pronunciation:
• **The acute accent (l'accent aigu), "é" (e.g.,école— school), is pronounced /e/ instead of the defaults /ɛ/ or/ə/,
• **The grave accent (l'accent grave), "è" (e.g., élève— pupil) means that the vowel is pronounced /ɛ/ (as usual),
• **The diaeresis (le tréma) (e.g. naïve— foolish, Noël— Christmas) as in English, specifies that this vowel is pronounced separately from the preceding one (or following one in some cases), not combined,
• **The cedille (la cédille) "ç" (e.g., garçon— boy) means that the letter c is pronounced /s/ in front of the hard vowels A, O, and U. ("c" is otherwise /k/ before a hard vowel.) C is always pronounced /s/ in front of the soft vowels E, I, and Y, thus ç is never found in front of soft vowels,
• **The circumflex (l'accent circonflexe) "ê" (e.g., forêt— forest) shows that an e is pronounced /ɛ/ and that an o is pronounced /o/. In some dialects it also signifies a pronunciation of /ɑ/ for the letter a, but this differentiation is disappearing. In the late 19th century, the circumflex was used in place of 's' where that letter was not to be pronounced. Thus, forest became forêt and hospital became hôpital.
• * Accents with no pronunciation effect:
• **The circumflex does not affect the pronunciation of the letters i or u, and in most dialects, a as well. It usually indicates a lost s after, as in hôtel.
• **All other accents are used only to distinguish similar words, as in the case of distinguishing the adverbs là and où ("there", "where") from the article la and the conjunction ou ("the fem. sing.", "or") respectively.

Grammar

Main article: French grammar

• the loss of Latin's declensions
• only two grammatical genders
• the development of grammatical articles from Latin demonstratives
• new tenses formed from auxiliaries

Vocabulary

• brother: frère (brother) / fraternel < from latin FRATER
• finger: doigt / digital < from latin DIGITVS
• faith: foi (faith) / fidèle < from latin FIDES
• cold: froid / frigide < from latin FRIGIDVS
• eye: œil / oculaire < from latin OCVLVS
• the city Saint-Étienne has as inhabitants the Stéphanois

• Cheval - Concours équestre - Hippodrome

It is estimated that 12 percent (4,200) of common French words found in a typical dictionary such as the Petit Larousse or Micro-Robert Plus (35,000 words) are of foreign origin. About 25 percent (1,054) of these foreign words come from English and are fairly recent borrowings. The others are some 707 words from Italian, 550 from ancient Germanic languages, 481 from ancient Gallo-Romance languages, 215 from Arabic, 164 from German, 160 from Celtic languages, 159 from Spanish, 153 from Dutch, 112 from Persian and Sanskrit, 101 from Native American languages, 89 from other Asian languages, 56 from Afro-Asiatic languages, 55 from Slavic languages and Baltic languages, and 144—about three percent—from other languages (Walter & Walter 1998).

Numerals

Belgian French and Swiss French are different in this respect. In Belgium and Switzerland 70 and 90 are septante and nonante. The French word for 80 is quatre-vingts in Belgium. In Switzerland, depending on the local dialect, it can be: quatre-vingts (Geneva, Neuchâtel, Jura) or huitante (Vaud, Valais, Fribourg).

Writing system

French spelling, like English spelling, tends to preserve obsolete pronunciation rules. This is mainly due to extreme phonetic changes since the Old French period, without a corresponding change in spelling. However, some conscious changes were also made to restore Latin orthography:

• Old French doit > French doigt "finger" (Latin digitum)
• Old French pie > French pied "foot" (Latin pedem)

On the other hand, a given spelling will almost always lead to a predictable sound, and the Académie française works hard to enforce and update this correspondence. In particular, a given vowel combination or diacritic predictably leads to one phoneme.

The diacritics have phonetic, semantic, and etymological significance.

• grave accent (à, è, ù): Over a or u, used only to distinguish homophones: à ("to") vs. a ("has"), ou ("or") vs. où ("where"). Over an e, indicates the sound /ɛ/.
• acute accent (é): Over an e, indicates the sound /e/, the ai sound in such words as English hay or neigh. It often indicates the historical deletion of a following consonant (usually an s): écouter < escouter. This type of accent mark is called accent aigu in French.
• circumflex (â, ê, î, ô, û): Over an e or o, indicates the sound /ɛ/ or /o/, respectively. Most often indicates the historical deletion of an adjacent letter (usually an s or a vowel): château < castel, fête < feste, sûr < seur, dîner < disner. By extension, it has also come to be used to distinguish homophones: du ("of the") vs. dû (past participle of devoir "to owe"; note that dû is in fact written thus because of a dropped e: deu). (See Use of the circumflex in French)
• diaeresis or tréma (ë, ï, ü): Indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the preceding one: naïve, Noël. Diaeresis on ÿ only occurs in some proper names (such as l'Haÿ-les-Roses) and in modern editions of old French texts. Since the 1990 orthographic rectifications, the diaeresis in words containing guë (such as aiguë or ciguë) should be moved onto the u: aigüe, cigüe. Words coming from German retain the old Umlaut if applicable but use French pronunciation, such as kärcher (trade mark of a pressure washer).
• cedilla (ç): Indicates that an etymological c is pronounced /s/ when it would otherwise be pronounced /k/. Thus je lance "I throw" (with c = [s] before e), je lançais "I was throwing" (c would be pronounced [k] before a without the cedilla).

The ligature æ is very rare and appears in some words of Latin and Greek origin like ægosome, ægyrine, æschne, cæcum, nævus or uræus [La ligature æ] (in French). The vowel quality is identical to é /e/.

Some attempts have been made to reform French spelling, but few major changes have been made over the last two centuries.

Examples of French

Note: In these example audio files, you will hear the Canadian French accent.

Notes

References

• Walter, Henriette and Gérard, Dictionnaire des mots d'origine étrangère, 1998.