Encyclopedia
French is the third-largest of the
Romance languages in terms of number of native speakers, after
Spanish and
Portuguese, being spoken by about 150
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 30 countries.
French is also an official or administrative language in several communities and international organisations 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 .
France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public
education outside of specific cases 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.
Legal status in Canada
About 5.2% of the world's
francophones are Canadian, and French is one of
Canada's two official languages . Various provisions of the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms deal with Canadians' right to access services in both languages. By
law, the federal government must operate and provide services in both English and French, proceedings of the
Parliament of Canada must be translated into both these languages, and all Canadian products must have bilingual labels. Overall, about 13% of Canadians have knowledge of French only, while 18% have knowledge of both English and French.
In contrast, the province of
Quebec has over 80% of its people speaking French. It has been the sole official language of
Quebec since 1974; this was reiterated in law with the 1977 adoption of the Charter of the French Language , which guarantees that every person has a right to have the civil administration, the health and social services, corporations, and enterprises in Quebec communicate with him in French. Although some arrangements of the Charter allow the use of English in order to respect the freedoms and rights of Quebec's anglophone minority , French is widely promoted.
The provision of Bill 101 that has arguably had the most significant impact mandates French-language
education unless a child's parents or siblings have received the majority of their own education in English within Canada. This measure has reversed a historical trend whereby a large number of immigrant children were sent to English schools. In so doing, Bill 101 has greatly contributed to the "visage français" of Montreal in spite of its growing immigrant population. Other provisions of Bill 101 have been ruled unconstitutional over the years, including those mandating French-only commercial signs, court proceedings, and debates in the legislature. Though none of these provisions are still in effect today, some continued to be on the books for a time even after courts had ruled them unconstitutional as a result of the government's decision to invoke the so-called notwithstanding clause of the Canadian constitution to override constitutional requirements. In 1993, the Charter was rewritten to allow signage in other languages so long as French was markedly "predominant."
The only other province that recognizes French as an official language is
New Brunswick, which is officially bilingual like the nation as a whole. Outside of
Quebec, the highest number of francophones in
North America reside in
Ontario, whereas
New Brunswick, home to the
Acadians, 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 all recognize French as an official language as well.
All provinces 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. The Ontario French Language Services Act, adopted in 1986, guarantees French language services in that province where the francophone population exceeds 5% of the total population; this has the most effect in the north and east of the province, as well as in other larger centres such as
Ottawa,
Toronto,
Hamilton,
Mississauga,
London,
Kitchener,
St. Catharines,
Greater Sudbury and
Windsor. However, the French Language Services Act does not confer the status of "official bilingualism" on these cities, as that designation carries with it implications which go beyond the provision of services in both languages. The City of Ottawa's language policy 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. 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. Ontario is currently seeking to become a full member on its own.
Legal status in 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 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 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.
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.
French is an official language of many African countries, many of them former French or Belgian colonies:
Gabon
, officially the Gabonese Republic, is a country in west central Africa [i]. ...
Guinea, officially the
Republic of Guinea , is a nation in West Africa [i], formerly known as French Guinea [i]...
In addition, French is an administrative language of
Mauritania and is commonly understood in
Algeria,
Morocco, and
Tunisia.
In Asia, French is an administrative language in
Laos and
Lebanon, and is used unofficially in parts of
Cambodia,
India ,
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
- Antillean Creole
- Chiac
- Haitian Creole
- Lanc-Patuá
- Mauritian Creole
- Michif
- Louisiana Creole French
- Réunionese Creole
- Seychellois Creole
- Tay Boi
History
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 are typically produced fully voiced throughout.
- Voiceless stops 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 words: parking, camping, swing. The palatal nasal can occur in word initial position , but it is most frequently found in intervocalic, onset position or word-finally .
- 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 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 and coda position . 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:
- liaison or linking: Final single consonants, in particular s, x, z, t, d, n and m, are normally silent. 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 makes it clearly pronounced. Doubling a final 'l' and adding a silent 'e' 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. . This gives for example the same pronunciation for "l'homme qu'il a vu" and "l'homme qui l'a vu" .
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 . 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 . For example, "illusion" is pronounced [ilyzjo] and not [illyzjõ]. But gemination does occur between words. For example, "une info" is pronounced [yn?fo], whereas "une nympho" is pronounced [ynn?fo].
- accents are used sometimes for pronunciation, sometimes to distinguish similar words, and sometimes for etymology alone.
- Accents that affect pronunciation:
- The acute accent , "é" , is pronounced instead of the defaults or ,
- The grave accent , "è" means that the vowel is pronounced ,
- The diaeresis as in English, specifies that this vowel is pronounced separately from the preceding one , not combined,
- The cedilla "ç" means that the letter c is pronounced in front of the hard vowels A, O, and U. 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 "ê" shows that an e is pronounced and that an o is pronounced . In some dialects 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. 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 from the article la and the conjunction ou respectively.
Grammar
- Main article: French grammar
French grammar shares several notable features with most other Romance languages, including:
- the loss of Latin's declensions
- only two grammatical genders
- the development of grammatical articles from Latin demonstratives
- 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.
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 and the other one savant , both originating from Latin. Example:
- brother: frère / fraternel < from latin FRATER
- finger: doigt / digital < from latin DIGITVS
- faith: foi / 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 of common French words found in a typical
dictionary such as the
Petit Larousse or
Micro-Robert Plus are of foreign origin. About 25 percent 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 .
Numerals
The French counting system is partially vigesimal:
twenty is used as a base number in the names of numbers from 80-99. So for example,
means 4 times 20, i.e. is the French word for
80, and
means 75. This is comparable to the archaic English use of "score", as in "fourscore and seven" , or "threescore and ten" . 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
. The French word for 80 is
in Belgium. In Switzerland, depending on the local dialect, it can be:
or
.
Writing system
French is written using the 26 letters of the
Latin alphabet, plus five diacritics and the two ligatures and .
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"
- Old French pie > French pied "foot"
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 : Over a or u, used only to distinguish homophones: à vs. a , ou vs. où . Over an e, indicates the sound .
- acute accent : 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 : écouter < escouter. This type of accent mark is called accent aigu in French.
- circumflex : Over an e or o, indicates the sound or , respectively. Most often indicates the historical deletion of an adjacent letter : château < castel, fête < feste, sûr < seur, dîner < disner. By extension, it has also come to be used to distinguish homophones: du vs. dû .
- diaeresis or tréma : Indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the preceding one: naïve, Noël. Diaeresis on ÿ only occurs in some proper names and in modern editions of old French texts. Since the 1990 orthographic rectifications, the diaeresis in words containing guë 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 .
- cedilla : Indicates that an etymological c is pronounced when it would otherwise be pronounced /k/. Thus je lance "I throw" , je lançais "I was throwing" .
The ligature œ is a mandatory contraction of
oe in certain words , sometimes in words of Greek origin, spelled with an ?? diphthong which became
oe in Latin, pronounced in French :
œsophage . It may also appear in
œu digraph , in words that were once written with
eu digraph :
bœuf "ox" ,
bœufs "oxen" ,
mœurs "custom",
œil "eye" , 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 and not as .
The ligature æ is very 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.
Samples
| English | French | IPA pronunciation |
|---|
>French | français | /f??~s?/ | >English | anglais | /?~gl?/ | >Yes | Oui | /wi/ | >No | Non | /n?~/ | >Hello! | Bonjour ! | /b?~?u??/ | >Good evening! | Bonsoir ! | /b?~swa:?/ | >Good night! | Bonne nuit ! | /b?nn?i/ | >Goodbye! | Au revoir ! | /??vwa??/ | >Have a good day! | Bonne journée ! | /b?n?u?ne/ | >Please | S'il vous plaît | /silvupl?/ | >Thank you | Merci | /m??si/ | >Sorry | Pardon / désolé / désolée | /pa?d?~/ / /dez?le/ | >Who? | Qui ? | /ki/ | >What? | Quoi ? | /kwa/ | >When? | Quand ? | /k?~/ | >Where? | Où ? | /u/ | >Why? | Pourquoi ? | /pu?kwa/ | >Because | Parce que | /pa?sk?/ | >How? | Comment ? | /k?m?~/ | >How much? | Combien ? | /k?~bj?~/ | >I do not understand. | Je ne comprends pas. | /?? n? k?~p??~ p?/ | >Yes, I understand. | Oui, je comprends. | /wi ?? k?~p??~/ | >Help! | Au secours | | /osku?r/ | >Where are the toilets? | Où sont les toilettes ? | /u s?~ le twal?t/ | >Do you speak English? | Parlez-vous anglais ? | /pa?levu ?~gl?/ | |
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.
See also
...
- La Francophonie
- Reforms of French orthography
- Morphology of the French verb
- Louchebem
- Verlan
- French Creole languages
- Swadesh list of French words
- History of the French language
External links
