11.1 Where French is spoken — 26 countries — Epoché
What you will be able to do Say how widely French is used, and give the number of states in which it is official without overstating what that figure means. Name four places outside France where French is a first language for a large population, and give one concrete difference for each. Understand septante , huitante and nonante when you hear them, and say where they are used. Explain why the variety taught in this course is the right one to start from, and why that is a practical judgement rather than a claim that it is better. Prerequisites : 7.1 — you should already have read a continuous passage of French and be able to follow a simple present-tense narrative; see 7.1 Reading if you have not read it yet. Everything so far has been about the language as a system. This lesson asks where that system is used, and by whom. If you learn French expecting to use it in France, you have prepared yourself for one country of about sixty-eight million people. If you learn it knowing where else it goes, you have prepared yourself for an official language on four continents whose centre of gravity has been moving away from Europe for decades. A word of caution belongs at the front. Language and nationality are subjects on which people hold strong views, and some of the disagreements are live political questions. The position here is narrow: this lesson reports what is countable, calls an estimate an estimate, and does not tell you which variety is correct. The word for the whole French-speaking world is la francophonie ; capitalised, it usually means the organisation that groups the states which use it. How many speakers, and why every number is an estimate Ask how many people speak French and you will be given numbers from about eighty million to well over three hundred million. The range is not sloppiness; three questions are being answered at once. The first is how many use French as a first language: the smallest figure, usually put somewhere in the region of eighty million. The second is how many can hold a conversation in French, whatever their first language; this is where figures above three hundred million come from, and its size depends on where the bar is set, since a survey in which people assess themselves gives a larger number than a test. The third is how many live in a state where French is official, whether or not they speak it — the largest figure and the least informative, because official status and everyday use are not the same thing. So the honest way to hold the fact is that French is a first language for a population comparable to Germany's, a working second language for a population several times larger, and an official language across states whose combined population runs into the hundreds of millions. What the projections agree on is the direction: the African share is rising. One consequence is immediate. A learner who says Je suis francophone. [1] — I'm Francophone. — is describing themselves, not a country, and Belgians, Swiss, Canadians and Senegalese use the word of themselves in the same way. Compliments work the same way: Il parle français couramment. [2] means He speaks French fluently. . Terms These are the words you need in order to read about the geography of the language. Most look transparent after the second volume; the ones to stop on are the last three. Term What it means la francophonie the French-speaking world; capitalised, the institution la langue maternelle first language, mother tongue une norme a norm: here, the standard taught and broadcast un belgicisme a usage characteristic of Belgian French un helvétisme a usage characteristic of Swiss French un québécisme a usage characteristic of the French of Quebec Notice the Swiss one. The Belgian and Quebec terms are built on the modern names, but the Swiss term is built on the learned name of the country, which is why it begins with a syllable you may not recognise: it comes from the Latin name that also gives the letters CH, as in the Swiss internet domain. The twenty-six states French is official or co-official in twenty-six states. Until 2023 the figure you saw most often was twenty-nine, but three West African states have since made French a working language rather than an official one: Mali in its 2023 constitution, Burkina Faso in a constitutional revision at the end of 2023, and Niger in its transitional charter of 2025. The figure needs care in any case: lists differ by a state or two, depending on whether they count territories that are not independent. Region States where French is official or co-official Europe France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco West Africa Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Benin, Togo Central Africa Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Rwanda Indian Ocean and Horn Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, Djibouti Americas Canada, Haiti Pacific Vanuatu A working language only, since 2023–2025 Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger Three things there are worth more than the list. The largest block is African, by a wide margin. In most of those states French is co-official rather than sole, sharing the work with languages that have far more first-language speakers. And Canada appears once, although its French-speaking population is concentrated in one province while the federal state is bilingual throughout. Quebec, the largest French-speaking society outside Europe About nine million people live in the Canadian province of Quebec, and for something like four fifths of them French is the first language. It is the only Canadian province where that is so, and its whole public life runs in French. Two corpus sentences state the fact: Les Québécois parlent français. [3] , The Quebecois speak French. , and Au Québec, on parle français. [4] , They speak French in Quebec. . The second is the more useful one, because it uses the impersonal pronoun of the fourth volume as a French speaker would. Montreal is also a pl