French ( or ) 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. It was influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul and by the Germanic Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Over time, French largely supplanted most regional Romance varieties across France, Belgium and Switzerland. As a result of French and later Belgian colonialism, 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.
French is the 22nd most natively spoken language in the world,Statistics , in the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers, and is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners . It is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 74 million are native speakers; it is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France, Canada (Quebec), Belgium (Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region), western Switzerland (Romandy region), Luxembourg, and Monaco. Meanwhile, in Francophone Africa it is spoken mainly as a second language or lingua franca, though it has also become a native language in several urban areas. In some North African countries like Algeria and Morocco, it is the primary language for the elite (alongside Arabic) while being an auxiliary language for the general population. French is an official language in 26 countries, as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with speakers in about 50 countries. Most of these countries are members of the (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share the use or teaching of French. In 2025, approximately 50% of the Francophone population lived in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 30% lived in Europe, 15% in North Africa, 7% in the Americas, and a small percent in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union. Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as a second language.
French has a long history as an international language of literature, diplomacy and science and is a primary or second language of many international organizations including the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Trade Organization, the International Olympic Committee, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English, German and Italian; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union).
History
French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French.
Vulgar Latin in Gaul Due to Roman rule, Latin was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Franco-Provençal.
The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable Romanization. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French contributing loanwords and calques (including , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, Celtic influences on French discussed in pages 64–67. Page 65:"In recent years the primary role of the substratum... has been disputed. Best documented is the CT- > it change which is found in all Western Romania... more reservations have been expressed about... ū > [y]..."; :"Summary on page 67: "There can be no doubt that the way French stands out from the other Western Romance languages (Vidos 1956: 363) is largely due to the intensity of its Celtic substratum, compared with lateral areas like Iberia and Venetia..." and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.
Following the Roman conquest of Gaul, 90% of the population remained indigenous in origin. Furthermore, sociological factors drove an uneven language shift. Latin spread from urban centers—such as Narbonensis—into rural hinterlands as native populations became bilingual. Although the Roman state lacked a deliberate policy of suppression, its requirement that formal administration use Latin accelerated the language's adoption in regulated zones.
During the Crisis of the Third Century, locals increasingly adopted Latin to communicate with Germanic tribes and Roman settlers. Consequently, writing in Gaulish and monolingualism all but disappeared between the 4th and 5th centuries. By the time the Romans left, the majority of the population spoke a mix of Celtic, Latin, and occasionally Greek. Additionally, because Northern Gaul was politically cut off from the Mediterranean by the 5th century, its local Latin diverged sharply from standard grammar rules. Overall, Latin was largely adopted by the masses after the Roman departure, largely because of the increasing influence of missionaries and the Romanized elite as sources of authority, rather than the central Imperial authority.
The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the Petit Robert, which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240. Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life (, , etc.), animals (, , etc.), nature (, etc.), domestic activities (ex. ), farming and rural units of measure (, , , ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being the last to hold onto Gaulish.
Old French
The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke while the population in the south spoke . One became Old French. The Old French period spanned between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it was deemed no longer make to think of the varieties spoken in Gaul as Latin. Although a precise date can't be given, there is a general consensus (see Wright 1982, 1991, Lodge 1993) that an awareness of a vernacular, distinct from Latin, emerged at the end of the eighth century.] and mid-14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French used different word orders, just as Latin did, because it had a case system retaining the distinction between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects. The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from the Germanic Frankish language, which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order,Rowlett, P. 2007. The Syntax of French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Page 4 a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabularyPope, Mildred K. (1934). From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman Phonology and Morphology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.) including the impersonal singular pronoun (a calque of Germanic man), and the name of the language itself.
Up until its later stages, Old French, alongside the called Old Occitan, maintained a relic of the old nominal case system of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated diphthongs such as , which would later be leveled as monophthongs.
The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in the Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia, while Old French literature began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the Vie de Saint Alexis), or wars and royal courts, notably including the Chanson de Roland, the Matter of Britain, as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange.
During the period of the Crusades, French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that it became the lingua franca (literally 'Frankish language'). Due to increased contact with Arabs (who referred to the Crusaders as ), numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as (admiral), (alcohol), (cotton) and (syrup), as well as scientific terms such as (algebra), (alchemy) and (zero).
Middle French
Within Old French many dialects emerged but the Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period between the mid-14th to the early 17th centuries. Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. The status of French as a global language of administration and diplomacy is not merely a product of modern history, but the result of a process of state-building that began in the Crusader states.
The transition towards French as a formal language began in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Facing a crisis of authority during the War of the Lombards of the mid-13th century, the nobility replaced Latin with Outremer French—a koiné of Parisian, Norman, and Picard dialects—to codify the Assizes of Jerusalem. For the knights and jurists of Outremer, this refined vernacular became a vital tool for legal security in matters of property and inheritance, distinguishing them from Byzantines, Muslims, and newly arrived European crusaders. The military elite, who often lacked academic training in Latin, standardized laws they could read and debate in their native tongue.
This made Jerusalem the first state to implement French for legal and administrative security, three decades before France itself. This administrative model "rebounded" to Europe through Louis IX, who, after his stay in the Levant (1250–1254), professionalized the French chancery. This trajectory reached its legal peak with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539), where Francis I mandated French as the exclusive language for all legal acts and official communications, effectively ending the official role of Latin and centralizing the state around the Parisian standard.
Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically, the first government authority to adopt Modern French as the official language was the Aosta Valley in 1536, three years before France itself.
Modern French