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French () is spoken as a native language by the third largest number of speakers of a Romance language (after Spanish and Portuguese). It is spoken by about 150 million people as a mother tongue or at least 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 41 countries, most of which form the Francophonie.
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, including being one of the few languages to be spoken officially in five continents.
French language
History
Sound system
Orthography
Grammar
Vocabulary
Numerals
Writing system
Samples
Notes
See also
| | Name | French | | Nativename | français | | Familycolor | Indo-European | | Pronunciation | fʁɑ̃sɛ | | States | France, Switzerland,Canada,Belgium, Luxembour... | | Region | Africa, Europe, Americas, Pacific | | Speakers | 270 million, of which 120 million are native ... | | Rank | 9 | | Fam1 | Indo-European languages | | Fam2 | Italic languages | | Fam3 | Romance languages | | Fam4 | Italo-Western languages | | Fam5 | Western | | Fam6 | Gallo-Iberian | | Fam7 | Gallo-Romance languages | | Fam8 | Gallo-Rhaetian | | Fam9 | Langues doïl | | Nation | 30 countries | | Agency | Académie française (France) Office québécois ... | | Iso1 | fr | | Iso2b | fre | | Iso2t | fra | | Iso3 | fra | | Map | Image:Map-Francophone World.png |
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History
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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. ) are typically produced fully voiced throughout.
Voiceless stops (i.e. ) 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 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 , dental , and palato-alveolar . Notice that are dental, like the plosives , and the nasal .
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 . 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 occurs in some dialects.
Lateral and central approximants: The lateral approximant is unvelarized in both onset (“lire”) and coda position (“il”). In the onset, the central approximants , , and each correspond to a high vowel, , , and 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 and occur in final position as in abeille “bee” vs. 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:
final consonants: 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 liaison or "link" between the two words. 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: Some monosyllabic function words ending in a or e, such as je and que, drop their final vowel when placed before a word that begins with a vowel sound (thus avoiding a hiatus). 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").
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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 generally not pronounced as geminates in modern French (but you can hear geminates in the cinema or TV news as far as the 70's, and in very refined elocution they still may occur). 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), means that the vowel is pronounced instead of the default ,
The grave accent (l'accent grave), "è" (e.g., élève— pupil) means that the vowel is pronounced instead of the default ,
The diaeresis (le tréma) (e.g. naïve— foolish, Noël— Christmas) as in English, specifies that this vowel is pronounced separately from the preceding one, not combined,
The cedilla (la cédille) "ç" (e.g., garçon— boy) means that the letter c is pronounced in front of the hard vowels A, O, and U. ("c" is otherwise before a hard vowel.) C is always pronounced 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 and that an o is pronounced . In standard French it also signifies a pronunciation of 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 (the circumflex on i and u is no longer compulsory boite, chaine, Ile-de-France). 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.
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Grammar
Main article: French grammar
French grammar shares several notable features with most other Romance languages, including:
new tenses formed from auxiliaries
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.
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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
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).
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Numerals
The French counting system is partially vigesimal:
twenty () is used as a base number in the names of numbers from 60-99. So for example, means 4 times 20, i.e. is the French word for 80, and (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 and . In Switzerland, depending on the local dialect, 80 can be: (Geneva, Neuchâtel, Jura) or (Vaud, Valais, Fribourg).•
In Belgium 80 is generally quatre-vingts, sometimes octante.
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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 .
acute accent (é): Over an e, indicates the sound , 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 a, e or o, indicates the sound , or , respectively (the distinction a vs. â tends to disappear in many dialects). 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. The diaresis on ü appears only in one non proper name: capharnaüm. Nevertheless, since the 1990 orthographic rectifications (which are not applied at all by most French people), the diaeresis in words containing guë (such as aiguë or ciguë) may 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 when it would otherwise be pronounced /k/. Thus je lance "I throw" (with c = before e), je lançais "I was throwing" (c would be pronounced before a without the cedilla).
There are two ligatures, which have various origins.
The ligature œ is a mandatory contraction of oe in certain words. Some of these are native French words, with the pronunciation or , e.g. sœur "sister" , œuvre "work of art" . Note that it usually appears in the combination œu; œil is an exception. Many of these words were originally written with the digraph eu; the o in the ligature represents a sometimes artificial attempt to imitate the Latin spelling: Latin bovem > Old French buef/beuf > Modern French bœuf. Œ is also used in words of Greek origin, as the Latin rendering of the Greek diphthong οι, e.g. cœlacanthe "coelacanth". These words used to be pronounced with the vowel , but in recent years a spelling pronunciation with has taken hold, e.g. œsophage or. The pronunciation with is often seen to be more correct. The ligature œ is not used in some occurrences of the letter combination oe, for example, when o is part of a prefix (coexister).
The ligature æ is rare and appears in some words of Latin and Greek origin like ægosome, ægyrine, æschne, cæcum, nævus or uræus . The vowel quality is identical to é .
Some attempts have been made to reform French spelling, but few major changes have been made over the last two centuries.
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Samples
Note: In these example audio files, you will hear a Canadian French accent.
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Notes
The french have 17 different words for surrender.
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See also
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