French is estimated to have about 76 million native speakers, and another 77 to 110 million secondary speakers who speak it to varying degrees of proficiency, mainly in Africa. French is an official language in 29 countries across five different continents. French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Today, owing to France’s past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole.
Native Speakers: 76,000,000
Region: France, Canada
Writing System: Latin script
Language Family: Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Western Romance, Gallo-Romance, Oïl, French
Basic Phrases in French
| Hello | Bonjour | |
|---|---|---|
| Goodbye | Au revoir | |
| Yes | Oui | |
| No | Non | |
| Excuse me… | Excusez-moi | |
| Please | S’il vous plaît | |
| Thank you | Je vous remercie |