The Language of Love

This Valentine’s Day, let’s take a moment to reflect on French, the "language of love," which is spoken by 128 million people worldwide. French is spoken all over the world, from France itself to far-off locales like Canada, Louisiana, Africa and Monaco. Twenty-nine countries have declared French their official language, and French is the third most spoken language in the European Union, after English and German.

French evolved from Latin. When the area we call France was occupied by the Roman Empire, the conquered Gauls learned the Latin language and combined Gaulish pronunciation with Latin words to create a variant of "vulgar Latin," or the language spoken by plebians in Roman society.

In the third century A.D., Germanic tribes known as the Franks invaded much of the Western Roman Empire. Some of them settled in France, mixing their language with the "vulgar Latin" to create the foundations for French as we know it. In fact, the name of the language, "français," comes from the Germanic "frank."

When Europe entered its age of colonization, French spread across the globe and evolved into regional dialects and entirely new variants of French. Creole is spoken in the former French colony of New Orleans and is a mixture of French and Native American words and phrases.

Much of the northwestern quadrant of Africa speaks French as its primary or secondary language, as do the people of Lebanon in the Middle East. Some French is also spoken in Haiti, Vietnam and Laos. In all, 73 countries or regions consider themselves a part of "La Francophonie," an international organization of governments that use French as a language.

Here are some other fun facts about French:

• French is the official language in 29 countries.
• French and English are the only languages taught in every country in the world.
• Many famous people speak French, including Celine Dion, Jodie Foster, Johnny Depp, Arnold Schwarzenegger and former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
• "Desperate Housewife" Eva Longoria is learning French because of her France-raised husband Tony Parker.
• Forty percent of English words find their origin in the French language.
• French was the official language of England for more than 300 years.
• A slang combination of English and French is called "Franglais" or "Franglish." Pepe Le Peu, the lovelorn animated skunk, speaks it.
• The L'Académie Française, founded in 1634, unified the rules for the French language. As a result, not many dialects of French exist in France today.
• Dialects of French exist in many other regions, including Canada and Africa, and their words are pronounced quite differently than "Metropolitan French."
• Quebec, due to its isolation from the rest of the Francophone world following its conquest by England, evolved on its own into a unique, singular variant of the French language.

Speakers of the French language have so much pride in their language that in France there are laws limiting the amount of foreign language books, music and films that can be imported into the country. As a major cultural center, France is best experienced in the language they love: French.

This article is brought to you by Rosetta Stone, the world's leading language learning software company.

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