French is one of the most popular languages in the world – and it’s still growing. This article looks at how many people speak French, and where they are in the world. These are just some of the great French language-learning resources available on this site.
What Is French?
Like Spanish, Italian and a few others, French is what we call a Romance language. These languages descended from common Latin (Vulgar Latin), which was the language of the Roman populace back in the day. The Roman Colonists spread the language all over Europe and North Africa, but once the Western Roman Empire, their lands became so linguistically and culturally isolated that the longer diverged into numerous local dialects. This is how the Romance languages developed, with French evolving from Northern France, where Gallo-Romance was spoken. In 1539, it finally replaced Latin to become the official language of France.
Who Speaks French?
French is spoken all over the world, but it’s the official language in twenty-nine countries. This makes it second only to English in terms of reach. Among these countries are Belgium, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, France, Luxembourg, Monaco, Rwanda, Senegal, and Toga.
As you can see, many of them are African countries. The continent of Africa is not to be missed if you want to know how many people speak French.
How Many French Speakers Are There?
There are roughly around 300,000,000 French speakers in the world. However, not all of them speak the exact same type of French.
What does this mean?
Well, within those 300,000,000 people are native French speakers, as well as partial French speakers. There are also speakers of different dialects and creoles.
However, thanks to colonisation, French is now the 6th most popular language in the world. It’s behind Arabic, Spanish, Hindi, English and Chinese. It’s the official language in countries in 5 , and it’s the 2nd most studied language on the planet.
Rough estimates reckon there are 220,000,000 native French speakers, which leaves 72,000,000 partial French speakers. These numbers are growing all the time, largely thanks to the population spurts in Africa, where around half of all native speakers currently live. By 2050, there will be 700,000,000 French speakers around the world. That’s really something!
How Many French Speakers Are There In Europe?
So, we know there are a lot of French speakers in Africa. But how about Europe? How many people speak French in Europe?
Check about our illustration that puts the spotlight on French-Speaking European countries:
Obviously, France is home to more French speakers than anywhere else – although the Democratic Republic of Congo actually has more French speakers, strangely enough!
But why is that?
Well, French is a bit different to most other languages in that it actually shares its official language status with other tongues. The DR Congo, for example, was a Belgian colony. It’s home to 28,000,000 French speakers.
But let’s go back to Europe.
Around 48% of Belgian’s speak native French, while 1 in 5 Swiss nationals are the same. French is also very popular in Luxembourg, and if you add all these people together, they make up around 80,000,000 French speakers. This makes French the 3rd most popular native language in Europe, just behind German and Russian.
How Many French Speakers Are There In North America?
Here’s an illustration that shows you how widely spoken French is in Quebec.
Canada is a country that’s committed to bilingualism. Don’t believe me? Check out its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, where French and English are the official languages.
At the same time, their status as an official language varies according to the province in question. For example, in Quebec English isn’t an official language, seven of the ten native French speakers living in Canada live in this province.
Outside Quebec, a further two million speakers cite French as their second language. From this, we can conclude that roughly 30% of Canada’s 36 million citizens speak conversational French. As a side note, Montreal is actually the 4th biggest Francophone city on the entire planet.
Over in the U.S., French is only the 4th most popular language. Also, it’s worth pointing out that this includes the many varieties of French, such as Haitian Creole, which was a result Haitian immigration that surged between 1980 and 2000. As of this date, there are around 500,000 Haitian Creole speakers living in America. Haiti itself (which is found in North America) is home to 10,000,000 French speakers, while the U.S. state of Louisiana is home to 200,000 native speakers. That’s quite a lot, and it accounts for 4% of the whole population.
How Many French Speakers Are There In Africa?
If you want to know how many people speak French, you can’t forget Africa.
As we touched on earlier, there are more French speakers in Africa than in any other continent. It’s typically spoken as a second language, but there are a handful of regions where it has overtaken local languages. This is the case in a few provinces in Ivory Coast. In most cases, African French differs slightly from the European French. These strands came about after it came into touch with indigenous French languages. The result was a new vernacular form.
French is usually employed as a lingua franca (as is the case in DR Congo) in countries where numerous languages are spoken, and it’s typically used as the language of higher education and administration.
But why has French grown so quickly as a language in Africa?
It’s down to the huge surge in population in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the continued growth of education.
The Rest of the World
French is spoken on five continents, but so far we’ve only covered three of them. Although most French speakers live in Africa, North America and Europe, there are clusters of French speakers in the likes of Oceania, South America and the Middle East. You can’t forget these continents if you want to know how many people speak French.
French Guiana, for example (which borders Brazil), is a department of France. Here, around 250,000 people speak French. Over in Oceania, meanwhile, French is the official language in Vanuatu, a Pacific Island. It’s also spoken in the French Polynesia, as well as French collectivities like Futuna and New Caledonia.
And how about the Middle East and Asia? You can find footprints of France’s mighty colonial past in nations such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, as well as Syria and even Lebanon. No doubt its formal use has declined over the years, but students continue to learn it in schools, while the elderly and also the elite continue to speak it everyday.
Why Should You Learn French?
There are many reasons to learn French. It will prove to be a great asset if you ever decide to visit or even live permanently (or even just temporarily) in France or one of the many French-speaking nations that are dotted around the world.
But the fact that so many people now speak French should also be a reason to learn this great language. It’s the sixth most widely spoken language in the whole world, and – as we’ve seen – it’s going to grow and grow. In the next few years, millions more people will adopt this language.
Lastly, who wouldn’t want to be able to speak one of the world’s most romantic languages?
