French language

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French
français
Spoken in Africa, Europe, Americas, PacificFrance, including French Overseas Departments, Communities and Territories; Canada especially in Quebec, New Brunswick and parts of Ontario; Belgium; Switzerland; Lebanon; Luxembourg; Monaco; Morocco; Algeria; Tunisia; many Western and Central African nations such as Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger and Senegal; Haiti; Mauritius; some Asian countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam; Mexico; and the U.S. states of Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Total speakers 270 million, of which 120 million are native or fluent[1]
Language family Indo-European
 Italic
  Romance
   Italo-Western
    Western
     Gallo-Iberian
      Gallo-Romance
       Gallo-Rhaetian
        Oïl
Language codes
ISO 639-1 fr
ISO 639-3 fra
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

French (français) is the third-largest of the Romance languages in terms of number of native speakers, after Spanish and Portuguese. Is is spoken by about 175 million people as a mother tongue or fluently, mainly in Europe, Canada and Africa. It is an official language in 41 countries, most of which form what is called in French La Francophonie, the community of French-speaking nations.

Descended from the Latin of the Roman Empire, its development was influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul (particularly in pronunciation), and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. This is one of the reasons why certain French sounds and spellings are distinctly different from those of other Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian and why Spanish and Italian sound more similar to one another than French does to either one of them.

A lingua franca in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, its international role then declined to the benefit of English. It has kept some international recognition however, being one of the two official languages of NATO and IOC, and one of the two working languages of the UN Secretariat

International Status

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

Europe

France

See also: Toubon Law and Languages of France

Per the Constitution of France, French has been the official language since 1992 [1]. 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 exists, in addition to French, a variety of languages spoken in France by minorities.

Other countries

French is an official language in Switzerland. It is spoken in the part of Switzerland called Romandie. In Belgium, it is the official language of the Walloon Region (excluding the East Cantons, which are German-speaking) and one of the two official languages of the capital, Brussels, along with Dutch. Officially Dutch and French have parity in Brussels. However, in practice the French language is more dominant among the city's residents. Conversely the Dutch language dominates among the city's largely non-resident (in Brussels) workforce. It should be noted that French is not an official language or even a recognised minority language in Flanders, although there are some districts in Belgium along linguistic borders that have special compromise linguistic regimes. It is one of the official languages in Luxembourg, along with German and Luxembourgish. It is also an official language, along with Italian, in Val d'Aoste, Italy. It is the official language of the principality of Monaco and is spoken by a small minority in the principality of Andorra.


America

French lost most of her American colonies through the Treaty of Paris (1763). However French-speaking communities remained, mostly in Canada, Louisiana and the West Indies.

Canada

Main article: French in Canada

French is along with English one of the two official languages of Canada at a federal level, though Provinces may choose their own provincial official tongue. Nearly a quarter of Canadians speak French as mother tongue. French native speakers are mainly located in the Eastern part of the country, epecially in Quebec, where French is the only provincial official tongue and in New Brunswick where it is co-official with English.

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, Saint Barthelemy, St. Martin, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. It is also an administrative language of Dominica and the U.S. state of Louisiana.


Africa

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

In addition, French is an administrative language of Mauritania and is commonly understood (though not official) in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Asia and Pacific Ocean

In Asia, French is an administrative language in Laos and Lebanon, and is used unofficially in parts of Cambodia, India (Puducherry, Mahé, Karikal and Yanam), Syria and Vietnam. But, French has official language status in Union Territory of Puducherry along with the region's de facto Language Tamil.It is an official language in the French possessions of Mayotte and Réunion both located in the Indian Ocean.

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

Derived languages

Main article: French-based creole languages

History

For more information, see: History of French.


Sound system

Main article: French phonology

Template:IPA notice

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. They can be unreleased utterance-finally.
  • 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/.
  • French has one rhotic whose pronunciation varies considerably among speakers and phonetic contexts. In general it is described as a voiced uvular fricative as in “roue” wheel [ʁu]. Vowels are often lengthened before this segment. It can be reduced to an approximant, particularly in final position (e.g. “fort”) or reduced to zero in some word-final positions. For other speakers, a uvular trill is also fairly common, and an apical trill [r] occurs in some dialects.
  • 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 cases 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”.

French pronunciation follows strict rules based on spelling, but French spelling is often based more on history than phonology. The rules for pronunciation vary between dialects, but the standard rules are:

  • 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 'n' and adding a silent e at the end of a word (e.g. Parisien → Parisienne) makes it clearly pronounced. Doubling a final 'l' and adding a silent 'e' (e.g. "gentil" -> "gentille") adds an [j] sound.
  • elision or vowel dropping: Monosyllabic pronouns and conjunctions 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 cedilla (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 that an s came after it long ago, 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

French grammar shares several notable features with most other Romance languages, including:

French word order is Subject Verb Object, except when the object is a pronoun, in which case the word order is Subject Object Verb. Some rare archaisms allow for different word orders.

Vocabulary

The majority of French words derive from vernacular or "vulgar" Latin or were constructed from Latin or Greek roots. There are often pairs of words, one form being popular (noun) and the other one savant (adjective), both originating from Latin. Example:

  • 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

In some examples there is a common word from "vulgar" Latin and a more savant word from classical Latin or even Greek.

  • Cheval - Concours équestre - Hippodrome

The French words which have developed from Latin are usually less recognisable than Italian words of Latin origin because as French developed into a separate language from Vulgar Latin, the unstressed final syllable of many words was dropped or elided into the following word.

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

The French counting system is partially vigesimal: twenty (vingt) is used as a base number in the names of numbers from 80-99. So for example, quatre-vingts means 4 times 20, i.e. is the French word for 80, and soixante-quinze (literally "sixty-fifteen") means 75. This is comparable to the archaic English use of "score", as in "fourscore and seven" (87), or "threescore and ten" (70). Danish is another language with a base 20 system for counting.

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 octante in Belgium. In Switzerland, depending on the local dialect, it can be: quatre-vingts (Geneva, Neuchâtel, Jura) or huitante (Vaud, Valais, Fribourg).[2]

Writing system

French is written using the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, plus five diacritics (the circumflex accent, acute accent, grave accent, diaeresis, and cedilla) and the two ligatures (œ) and (æ).

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)

As a result, it is difficult to predict the spelling on the basis of the sound alone. Final consonants are generally silent, except when the following word begins with a vowel. For example, all of these words end in a vowel sound: pied, aller, les, finit, beaux. The same words followed by a vowel, however, may sound the consonants, as they do in these examples: beaux-arts, les amis, pied-à-terre.

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 œ is a mandatory contraction of oe in certain words (sœur "sister" /sœʁ/, œuvre "work [of art]" /œvʁ/, cœur "heart" /kœʁ/, cœlacanthe "coelacanth" /selakɑ̃t/), sometimes in words of Greek origin, spelled with an οι /oj/ diphthong which became oe in Latin, pronounced /ø/ (formerly /e/) in French (and other Romance languages): œsophage /øzɔfaʒ/. It may also appear in œu digraph (or œ alone in œil "eye"), in words that were once written with eu digraph (which could be read /y/ or /œ/, depending on the word): bœuf "ox" /bœf/, bœufs "oxen" /bø/ (Old French buef or beuf), mœurs /mœʁ/ "custom", œil "eye" /œj/, etc. In these cases, the Latin etymon must be spelled with an o where the French word has œu: bovem > bœuf, mores > mœurs, oculum > œil. Remember that œnologie should be pronounced as /enɔlɔʒi/ and not as /ənɔlɔʒi/.

The ligature æ is very rare and appears in some words of Latin and Greek origin like ægosome, ægyrine, æschne, cæcum, nævus or uræus [3]. 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.

Samples

Template:Inline audio

English French IPA pronunciation
French français Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
English anglais Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Yes Oui Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
No Non Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Hello! Bonjour ! Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Good evening! Bonsoir ! Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Good night! Bonne nuit ! Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Goodbye! Au revoir ! Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Have a good day! Bonne journée ! Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Please S'il vous plaît Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Thank you Merci Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Sorry Pardon / désolé (if male) / désolée (if female) Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp / Template:Audio-IPA
Who? Qui ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
What? Quoi ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
When? Quand ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Where? Où ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Why? Pourquoi ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Because Parce que Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
How? Comment ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
How much? Combien ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
I do not understand. Je ne comprends pas. Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Yes, I understand. Oui, je comprends. Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Help! Au secours !! (à l'aide !) Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Where are the toilets? Où sont les toilettes ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp
Do you speak English? Parlez-vous anglais ? Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp

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

Notes

References

  • Walter, Henriette and Gérard, Dictionnaire des mots d'origine étrangère, 1998.
  1. ↑ The French language in the world: an expanding community, Accessed June 14
  2. ↑ Septante, octante, huitante, nonante. langue-fr.net.
  3. ↑ La ligature æ (in French)

See also

External links

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