French Language - A Short Presentation from a Translation Agency
French is one of the Romance languages, along with Italian, Spanish, Romanian or Portuguese. It is the official language of France and about 30 other countries (for example Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, Niger and Lebanon), and approximately 500 million people around the world use it as first or second language.
Numerous dialects of the French language are used in France and all over the world, but French pupils are taught Standard French (a variant the French themselves call le francais international or le francais neutre). This variant of the French language is used in international affairs, press, dictionaries and higher education. Many people who speak standard French may have difficulties in understanding the language spoken by the natives living in some parts of Canada (Acadian French) or of Switzerland (Swiss French), and even in various regions of France, where local variations of French flourish.
The French language has its origins in the langue d'oÊl, a group of romance languages formed in Northern France and characterized by the usage of the term "oÊl" for saying "yes". This family includes, besides ancient French, various languages considered by some dialects of French even now: Normand, Poitevin, Walloon and others. While earlier influences exist (some 200 Celtic words and other linguistic particularities attributable to Celtic and around 400 words of Germanic origin), the langue d'oÊl is considered the origin of standard French. Other romance languages that appeared in the same period (5th to 8th century AD) are still spoken in the Southern France. After the 12th century AD, the langue d'oÊl lost its importance and was replaced by what linguists call "Old French" - a language which gained official status in 1539, and that was imposed by the central administration to all French territories, particularly during the French Revolution and the rule of Napoleon. From then on, various official standardizations brought more and more order to the language, thus leading to the formation of the French we know today.
French is one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world, ranking somewhere between 3rd and 7th in the top of the most widely spoken languages, according to the most optimistic estimations.
France is the founder of La Francophonie, a wide community that aims to group the 53 states considered to have deep linguistic and cultural links with France. While the formal Francophonie was an international organization (formally known as Organisation internationale de la Francophonie or OIF), this community also includes all those who, regardless of their place of origin, speak French and feel close to the French culture.
Barvinschi Adina is an online marketer for Lingo24 Translation Company, a provider of high quality language translation services.
Source: www.isnare.com
