ABSTRACT
French belongs to the Italic branch of Indo-European. The official language of France is spoken as a native language by over 60 million in the Republic itself, by a further 4 million (or 40% of the population) in Southern Belgium, and by about 1.5 million (or 20% of the population) in Switzerland, where it is one of the four national languages. Further afield, about 6 million French speakers live in Quebec, where they form something like 80 per cent of the population – Montreal is the largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris. For most of the 10 million inhabitants of Haiti the everyday language is Haitian Creole, but French is co-official with it. Finally, there are 16 francophone states running across Central Africa, in all of which French provides an official administrative and commercial medium vis-à-vis numerous indigenous colloquials. The total number of French speakers is hard to estimate, but including large numbers who use it regularly as a second language the figure must be in excess of 200 million. French is (after English) the second most commonly taught second language in the world, is official or joint official in 33 countries, and is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
