Skip to content
Vinony
English
EnglishBahasa IndonesiaDeutschEspañolFrançaisItalianoNederlandsPolskiPortuguêsSvenskaTiếng ViệtTürkçeРусскийالعربيةفارسیहिन्दीไทย한국어中文日本語
French

File:Map-Francophone_World.svg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ150· pop 348· linked from 57,699 articles

French

Sign in to save

Also known as French language

Romance language

OverviewAI-generated

French is a modern natural language and a subclass of Oïl, Gallo-Romance, and Romance languages. It is indigenous to the Brussels-Capital Region, Walloon Brabant, Hainaut, and Province of Liege. The language is spoken in France, Switzerland, Canada, and Benin. Its native labels are français and langue française. It is also referred to by short names including французский, французька, fransızca, and френски.

The language employs a subject–verb–object, nominative–accusative, syllabic, and fusional typology. It features feminine and masculine grammatical genders and utilizes the subjunctive, indicative, imperative, and conditional moods. Tenses include the present tense, preterite, imperfect, and passé composé. French uses the French alphabet and applies capitalization to proper nouns. Regulatory bodies include the Académie Française, Academie Royale de Langue et de littérature Françaises, and Office québécois de la langue française.

Synthesized by Vinony from 24 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, Vinony graph, Geo. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “French” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (11)

On the map

Available in 278 languages

Show 259 more

via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0