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115-402: Gil Blas ( French : L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane [listwaʁ də ʒil blɑ də sɑ̃tijan] ) is a picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage published between 1715 and 1735 . It was highly popular, and was translated several times into English, most notably by Tobias Smollett in 1748 as The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane . Gil Blas is born in misery to a stablehand and

230-878: A consulship in Venice. He married Elinor Mead on Christmas Eve 1862 at the American embassy in Paris . She was a sister of sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and architect William Rutherford Mead of the firm McKim, Mead, and White . Among their children was architect John Mead Howells . Howells and his family returned to the United States in 1865 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts . He wrote for various magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine . In January 1866, James Fields offered him

345-675: A Foundling by Henry Fielding . In The Social History of Bourbon (1963), Gerald Carson notes that the education of young men in antebellum Kentucky meant they "read law with the local judge, studied medicine at the Louisville Medical Institute, wrote stilted verses in the neoclassical fashion, read Gil Blas and books on surveying, farming, and distilling". In his 1954 novel A Fable , William Faulkner has General of Division Gragnon obsessively reading Gil Blas during his house arrest after his front-line division mutinies. A member of his staff had died protecting

460-744: A French official to teachers in the department of Finistère , in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language". The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the Basque language with French..." Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process

575-595: A book for children partly inspired by his own childhood. The same year, he bought a summer home overlooking the Piscataqua River in Kittery Point, Maine . He returned there annually until Elinor's death when he left the house to his son and family and moved to a house in York Harbor. His grandson, John Noyes Mead Howells, donated the property to Harvard University as a memorial in 1979. In 1904 he

690-521: A car with prominent visitors by forcing them to stop short of where an incoming shell landed. When he was arrested, Gragnon remembered this officer telling him about Gil Blas and located the book among his effects. In his preface to The Ambassadors , Henry James mentions the narration methods of Gil Blas and David Copperfield as alternatives to the narrative technique he himself used in The Ambassadors . Washington Irving 's A Tour on

805-591: A chambermaid of Santillana in Cantabria , and is educated by his uncle. He leaves Oviedo at the age of seventeen to attend the University of Salamanca . His bright future is suddenly interrupted when he is forced to help robbers along the route and is faced with jail. He becomes a valet and, over the course of several years, is able to observe many different classes of society, both lay and clerical. Because of his occupation, he meets many disreputable people and

920-431: A comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations,

1035-555: A foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050. French is the fastest growing language on the continent (in terms of either official or foreign languages). French is increasingly being spoken as a native language in Francophone Africa, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and

1150-645: A job known at the time as a printer's devil . In 1852, his father arranged to have one of his poems published in the Ohio State Journal without telling him. In 1856, Howells was elected as a clerk in the State House of Representatives . In 1858, he began to work at the Ohio State Journal , where he wrote poetry and short stories, and also translated pieces from French, Spanish, and German. He avidly studied German and other languages and

1265-705: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on

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1380-557: A pig in New York City. One of Thomas Edison 's closest early friends, Milton F. Adams, was referred to as a modern Gil Blas for his life of travel and dissolution as a "tramp operator", roaming from place to place and as far away as Peru as an itinerant telegraph operator . In The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne , in his description of Holgrave (chapter XII), says "A romance on

1495-430: A position as assistant editor at The Atlantic Monthly ; he accepted after successfully negotiating for a higher salary, though he was frustrated by Fields' close supervision. Howells was made editor in 1871, after five years as assistant editor, and he remained in this position until 1881. In 1869, he met Mark Twain with whom he formed a longtime friendship. But his relationship with journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison

1610-494: 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 -eau which would later be leveled to monophthongs. The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in

1725-550: A retainer, who was as much like many of the characters in Gil Blas as his master. He called himself a private secretary, though there was no writing for him to do, and he lived in the steerage with the carpenter and sailmaker." In the novel Confessions of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas by Charles Lever , the eponymous hero of the title states he has not only read Gil Blas , but also knows it almost by heart. Gil Blas

1840-587: A second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German ; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union ). French is also the 16th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers , and

1955-526: A second language. However it has also become a native language in a number of urban areas, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and the Democratic Republic of the Congo . In some North African countries, though not having official status, it is also a first language among some upper classes of the population alongside indigenous languages, but only

2070-941: A second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% 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

2185-417: A short story by Lima Barreto , written in 1911 and published by Gazeta da Tarde , an allusion is made between the characters of Castelo and Gil Blas. In chapter 5 of his Education of a Wandering Man , Louis L'Amour describes his "good fortune" in finding an abandoned copy of Gil Blas in a laundry room. He later reads it by firelight in the camp where he worked skinning dead cattle "not once but twice, on

2300-578: A slovenly, or an infelicitous page." Mark Twain considered Howells not merely unusually talented as a writer but in fact superlatively so. The following were written during his residence in England and in Italy, as was The Rise of Silas Lapham in 1885. He returned to the United States in 1886. He wrote various types of works, including fiction, poetry, and farces, of which The Sleeping Car , The Mouse-Trap, The Elevator ; Christmas Every Day ; and Out of

2415-640: A taste for that kind of moral observation which leads to the knowledge of mankind". Rousseau commented that "I read this performance with pleasure, but my judgment was not yet ripe enough to relish that sort of reading". Gil Blas is mentioned in Jean-Paul Sartre 's novel Nausea . The central character is showing the Autodidact some photos. One of them is of Santillana. The Autodidact responds by asking "the Santillana of Gil Blas?" Gil Blas

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2530-547: A variant of Canadian French , is spoken in parts of New England . Missouri French was historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois (formerly known as Upper Louisiana ), but is nearly extinct today. French also survived in isolated pockets along the Gulf Coast of what was previously French Lower Louisiana , such as Mon Louis Island , Alabama and DeLisle, Mississippi (the latter only being discovered by linguists in

2645-437: Is 95%, and in the French collectivity of Wallis and Futuna , it is 84%. In French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, where oral and written knowledge of the French language has become almost universal (95% and 84% respectively), French increasingly tends to displace the native Polynesian languages as the language most spoken at home. In French Polynesia, the percentage of the population who reported that French

2760-779: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French

2875-472: Is a widespread second language among the Lebanese people , and is taught in many schools along with Arabic and English. French is used on Lebanese pound banknotes, on road signs, on Lebanese license plates , and on official buildings (alongside Arabic). Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon , with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English

2990-434: Is able to adjust to many situations, thanks to his adaptability and quick wit. He finally finds himself at the royal court as a favorite of the king and secretary to the prime minister. Working his way up through hard work and intelligence, Gil is able to retire to a castle to enjoy a fortune and a hard-earned honest life. Gil Blas is related to Lesage's play Turcaret (1709). In both works, Lesage uses witty valets in

3105-489: Is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and Médecins du Monde (used alongside English). Given

3220-430: Is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including

3335-462: Is an official language in 27 countries , as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. Most of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share

3450-652: Is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories ( Northwest Territories , Nunavut , and Yukon ). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, making up just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario , the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are available in

3565-503: Is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English

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3680-404: Is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects . The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from

3795-420: Is not like a real grasshopper. But I will own that I think the time is yet far off, and that the people who have been brought up on the ideal grasshopper, the heroic grasshopper, the impassioned grasshopper, the self-devoted, adventureful, good old romantic card-board grasshopper, must die out before the simple, honest, and natural grasshopper can have a fair field." Howells believed the future of American writing

3910-469: Is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). MIT economist Albert Saiz calculated a 2.3% premium for those who have French as a foreign language in

4025-828: Is one of the official languages of such major international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , the Caribbean Court of Justice , the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States , the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , the International Court of Justice , the International Criminal Tribunal for

4140-450: Is referred to by Jonathan Swift in his satirical Directions to Servants , dated 1731, with recommendations for the servants of rich masters to take the most advantage and have the least trouble in their daily tasks. In the chapter aimed at the "House Steward and Land Steward", Swift specifically instructs the reader to look up what Gil Blas has to say on the matter, as a more qualified source thus acknowledged. The 1751 play Gil Blas by

4255-576: Is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence , education, and diplomacy. In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat 's only two working languages ), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO ,

4370-553: Is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. French is an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu , where 31% of the population was estimated to speak it in 2023. In the French special collectivity of New Caledonia , 97% of the population can speak, read and write French while in French Polynesia this figure

4485-483: Is the native language of about 23% of the Swiss population, and is spoken by 50% of the population. Along with Luxembourgish and German, French is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg , where it is generally the preferred language of business as well as of the different public administrations. It is also the official language of Monaco . At a regional level, French is acknowledged as an official language in

4600-492: Is the second-most spoken language (after English) in the states of Maine and New Hampshire . In Louisiana , it is tied with Spanish for second-most spoken if Louisiana French and all creoles such as Haitian are included. French is the third most spoken language (after English and Spanish) in the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire . Louisiana is home to many distinct French dialects, collectively known as Louisiana French . New England French , essentially

4715-424: Is the sole official language in the province of Quebec , where some 80% of the population speak it as a native language and 95% are capable of conducting a conversation in it. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal , which is the world's fourth-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism

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4830-635: The Alert , as it sailed along the California coast in 1836 from Monterey to Santa Barbara. The author writes: "Among our passengers was a young man who was the best representation of a decayed gentleman I had ever seen. He reminded me much of some of the characters in Gil Blas." Describing Don Juan Bandiniand, he writes: "He was of the aristocracy of the country, his family being of pure Spanish blood, and once of great importance in Mexico ... Don Juan had with him

4945-764: The Aosta Valley region of Italy where it is the first language of approximately 50% of the population, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands . It is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa . The language is taught as the primary second language in the German state of Saarland , with French being taught from pre-school and over 43% of citizens being able to speak French. The majority of

5060-462: The Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as

5175-539: The Democratic Republic of Congo . There is not a single African French , but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages . Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years. Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of

5290-525: The Episcopal Church and the Society of Christian Socialists . These influences led him to write on issues of social justice from a moral and egalitarian point of view, being critic of the social effects of industrial capitalism . He was, however, not a Marxist . Noting the "documentary" and truthful value of Howells's work, Henry James wrote "Stroke by stroke and book by book your work

5405-485: The European Union , French was the dominant language within all institutions until the 1990s. After several enlargements of the EU (1995, 2004), French significantly lost ground in favour of English, which is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French currently remains one of the three working languages, or "procedural languages", of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second-most widely used language within EU institutions after English, but remains

5520-559: The Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. 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,

5635-877: The International Olympic Committee , the Council of Europe , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the Eurovision Song Contest , one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency , World Trade Organization and the least used of the three official languages in the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. It

5750-626: 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 , epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court , as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange . It

5865-707: The U.S. annexation of the Philippines . His poems were collected in 1873 and 1886, and a volume was published in 1895 under the title Stops of Various Quills . He was the initiator of the school of American realists, and he had little sympathy with any other type of fiction. However, he frequently encouraged new writers in whom he discovered new ideas or new fictional techniques, such as Stephen Crane , Frank Norris , Hamlin Garland , Harold Frederic , Abraham Cahan , Sarah Orne Jewett , and Paul Laurence Dunbar . In 1902, Howells published The Flight of Pony Baker ,

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5980-520: 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 . 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 . Due to Roman rule, Latin

6095-455: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;

6210-474: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed

6325-475: The British writer Edward Moore was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with David Garrick in the title role. Vasily Narezhny imitated Lesage in his 1814 novel A Russian Gil Blas ( Russian : Российский Жильблаз ). Friedrich Korn  [ de ] 's novel Der jüdische Gil Blas ( The Jewish Gil Blas ) was published in 1834. Gil Blas is alluded to in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch 's Venus in Furs . The character Wanda von Dunajew ascribes

6440-510: The Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it has a large population of federal government workers, who are required to offer services in both French and English, and is just across the river from the Quebecois city of Gatineau . According to the United States Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth most spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all dialects of Chinese are similarly combined. French

6555-614: The Caribbean that are collectively referred to as the French West Indies , namely Guadeloupe , Saint Barthélemy , Saint Martin , and Martinique . French is the official language of both French Guiana on the South American continent, and of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland in North America. French was the official language of the colony of French Indochina , comprising modern-day Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . It continues to be an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia, although its influence has waned in recent decades. In colonial Vietnam,

6670-408: The Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of

6785-406: The French , in which poet Owen MacCarthy mentions having it with him "on [his] ramblings, years ago". Flanagan uses the book to connect the poor Irish citizens and their French allies in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 , illustrating that the Irish may not all be as simple as Arthur Vincent Broome, the loyalist narrator, presumes. This allusion to Gil Blas also connects the somewhat roguish MacCarthy to

6900-416: The Germanic Frankish language , which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order , a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary ) including the impersonal singular pronoun on (a calque of Germanic man ), and the name of the language itself. Up until its later stages, Old French , alongside Old Occitan , maintained

7015-412: The Prairies includes a section describing a wanderer on the American prairie frontier, whom he refers to as a "Gil Blas of the frontier". Thomas Jefferson included Gil Blas in his list of recommendations to Robert Skipwith of books for a general personal library. According to Schopenhauer , it is one of the few novels showing "what is really going on in the world". In O homem que sabia javanês ,

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7130-496: The United States. He also wrote critically in support of American writers Hamlin Garland , Stephen Crane , Emily Dickinson , Mary E. Wilkins Freeman , Paul Laurence Dunbar , Sarah Orne Jewett , Charles W. Chesnutt , Abraham Cahan , Madison Cawein , and Frank Norris . In his "Editor's Study" column at The Atlantic Monthly and, later, at Harper's , he formulated and disseminated his theories of realism in literature. Howells viewed realism as "nothing more and nothing less than

7245-412: The cause of her own free thinking to an early introduction to classical works; these include Gil Blas , which she read at the age of ten. Gil Blas is referred to in Honoré de Balzac 's Facino Cane . The protagonist promises to spare the narrator "tales of adventures worthy of Gil Blas". In Oliver Wendell Holmes 's The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1857), the Autocrat begins Section IX with

7360-410: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French William Dean Howells William Dean Howells was born on March 1, 1837, in Martinsville, Ohio (now known as Martins Ferry, Ohio ), to William Cooper Howells and Mary Dean Howells, the second of eight children. He had Welsh, German, Irish, and English ancestry. His father

7475-405: The day before yesterday? We were discussing books. She was telling me about the books she had been reading that winter, and it was then that she told me about the scene from Gil Blas ." In A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins the rogue declares, "I am as even-tempered a rogue as you have met with anywhere since the days of Gil Blas." Edgar Allan Poe considered it among "the finest narratives in

7590-404: The demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future". However, some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to eradicate the use of French, and as of 2024 it was removed as an official language in Mali and Burkina Faso . Significant as a judicial language, French

7705-448: The economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige). In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged." Knowledge of French

7820-489: The elites primarily spoke French, while many servants who worked in French households spoke a French pidgin known as " Tây Bồi " (now extinct). After French rule ended, South Vietnam continued to use French in administration, education, and trade. However, since the Fall of Saigon and the opening of a unified Vietnam's economy, French has gradually been effectively displaced as the first foreign language of choice by English in Vietnam. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as

7935-484: The famous quote from Lesage's Preface: " Aqui esta encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcia ": "Here is enclosed the soul of the lawyer Pedro Garcia". This signals that his own readers, like the two bachelors of Salamanca who discover Garcia's gravestone, will need to "fix on the moral concealed" beneath the surface of his recollections if they are to receive any benefit from them. In a letter to William Dean Howells (July 5, 1875), Mark Twain tells of just completing

8050-406: The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, while the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of law in the Kingdom of France . During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ( lingua franca ). It retained this role until approximately the middle of

8165-401: The first person; Gil Blas was the model". In his plan for the novel The Life of a Great Sinner , Dostoevsky notes that the concision of this work will at times mirror that of Gil Blas . Gil Blas is also mentioned in chapter III of Dostoyevsky's A Gentle Creature , in which the narrator asks, "Why, didn't she tell me that amusing story about Gil Blas and the Archbishop of Granada herself

8280-915: The former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body . It is the sole internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union , and makes with English the European Court of Human Rights 's two working languages. In 1997, George Weber published, in Language Today ,

8395-829: The gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish. 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 ( chêne , bille , etc.), animals ( mouton , cheval , etc.), nature ( boue , etc.), domestic activities (ex. berceau ), farming and rural units of measure ( arpent , lieue , borne , boisseau ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being

8510-519: The language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. French is the second most commonly spoken language in Canada and one of two federal official languages alongside English. As of the 2021 Canadian census , it was the native language of 7.7 million people (21% of the population) and the second language of 2.9 million (8% of the population). French

8625-479: The language, although it has now given way to Tamil and English. A former French mandate , Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used. Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The French language in Lebanon

8740-612: The language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario . Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The Ontarian city of Ottawa ,

8855-479: The last to hold onto Gaulish. 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 langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc . Langue d'oïl grew into what

8970-501: The manuscript for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (written in the third person) and deciding against taking Tom into adulthood: to do so, he says, "would be fatal ... in any shape but autobiographically – like Gil Blas". Scholar Walter Blair in Mark Twain and Huck Finn (1960) thus concludes that Twain's new novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , which, picaresque-like, "would run its protagonist 'through life', had to be written in

9085-420: The necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". When public education was made compulsory , only French was taught and the use of any other ( patois ) language was punished. The goals of the public school system were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany . Instructions given by

9200-589: The official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick); Belgium ( Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region ); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont); Monaco;

9315-534: The other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language. All three countries are full members of La Francophonie (OIF). French was the official language of French India , consisting of the geographically separate enclaves referred to as Puducherry . It continued to be an official language of the territory even after its cession to India in 1956 until 1965. A small number of older locals still retain knowledge of

9430-516: The picaresque protagonist Gil Blas. Chapter 7 of David Copperfield , by Charles Dickens, relates the story of Gil Blas to Steerforth and Traddles. Poor Traddles' teeth chatter and are overheard by the brutish head master Creakle who goes on to "handsomely flog" Traddles "for disorderly conduct". Charles Dickens , in American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy ," invokes "the mysterious master of Gil Blas" in reference to

9545-402: The plains of West Texas." In the 1892 novel Ask Mama published by Bradbury, Agnew & Co. the mule of Gil Blas is referred to when, referring to his horses, "as a buyer he [Major Yammerton] made them out to be all faults, as a seller when they suddenly seemed to become the paragons of perfection". An episode from Gil Blas was the basis of two separate French operas in the 1790s, both with

9660-411: The plan of Gil Blas, adapted to American society and manners, would cease to be a romance." His implication is that the normal experiences of a young American, such as Holgrave, are so extraordinary in comparison with those of Gil Blas, that they make the latter's adventures seem ordinary. Hawthorne then writes, "The experience of many individuals among us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal

9775-471: The preferred language of certain institutions or administrations such as the Court of Justice of the European Union , where it is the sole internal working language, or the Directorate-General for Agriculture . Since 2016, Brexit has rekindled discussions on whether or not French should again hold greater role within the institutions of the European Union. A leading world language , French

9890-408: The realist novel A Modern Instance (1882), which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham became his best known work, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur of the paint business. His social views were also strongly represented in the novels Annie Kilburn (1888), A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889), and An Imperative Duty (1891). Howells

10005-471: The rest largely speak French as a first language. As a French Creole language , Haitian Creole draws the large majority of its vocabulary from French, with influences from West African languages, as well as several European languages. It is closely related to Louisiana Creole and the creole from the Lesser Antilles . French is the sole official language of all the overseas territories of France in

10120-527: The same title: La caverne (1793) by Le Sueur and La caverne by Méhul (1795). Gil Blas was the title of a five-act farcical opera by John Hamilton Reynolds adapting Lesage's novel, perhaps assisted by Thomas Hood , and first performed on 1 August 1822. It was famously five hours long on its first night at the Royal Strand Theatre on the Strand , and was then cut to three acts and

10235-416: The service of thieving masters, women of questionable morals, cuckolded yet happy husbands, gourmands, ridiculous poets, false savants, and dangerously ignorant doctors to make his point. Each class and each occupation becomes an archetype. Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions reading Gil Blas in his Confessions (Book IV, 1731–1732), saying it came highly recommended by Mademoiselle du Chatelet who "had

10350-419: The title changed to The Youthful Days of Gil Blas . According to Reynolds's biographer, Leonidas M. Jones, no text of the play survives. Théophile Semet  [ fr ] composed a comic opera on Gil Blas in five acts (1860). Alphons Czibulka composed Gil Blas von Santillana , with libretto by F. Zell and Moritz West . It was first performed in 1889. In 1956 the film The Adventures of Gil Blas

10465-466: The total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050, largely due to rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa . OIF estimates 700 million French speakers by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. In a study published in March 2014 by Forbes , the investment bank Natixis said that French could become the world's most spoken language by 2050. In

10580-436: The truthful treatment of material." In defense of the real, as opposed to the ideal , he wrote, "I hope the time is coming when not only the artist, but the common, average man, who always 'has the standard of the arts in his power,' will have also the courage to apply it, and will reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it, in science, in literature, in art, because it is not 'simple, natural, and honest,' because it

10695-679: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French

10810-508: The urban intellectual elite. 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 oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by

10925-485: The use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is an official language at the federal level along with Dutch and German. At the regional level, French is the sole official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons , which are German-speaking ) and one of

11040-534: The vicissitudes of the Spaniard's earlier life; while their ultimate success ... may be incomparably higher than any that a novelist would imagine for a hero." According to Vincent Cronin 's biography, the first thing that the 15-year-old Napoleon did on arriving in Paris was to buy a copy of Gil Blas . In Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. , the author describes the passengers aboard his ship

11155-536: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of

11270-693: The world". Also he mentions the archbishop in Gil Blas in the short story " The Angel of the Odd ": the angel makes a low bow and departs, wishing, in the language of the archbishop, beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus de bon sens . Italo Calvino's main character in The Baron in the Trees reads the book and lends it to a brigand. Gil Blas is mentioned in Thomas Flanagan 's 1979 novel The Year of

11385-402: The world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie , an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories can speak French as either a first or a second language . This number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as

11500-691: The year in their Cambridge home on Concord Avenue ; though, without Elinor, they found it "dreadful in its ghostliness and ghastliness". Howells died in his sleep shortly after midnight on May 11, 1920, of influenza and was buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Eight years later his daughter published his correspondence as a biography of his literary life. In addition to his own creative works, Howells wrote criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen , Émile Zola , Giovanni Verga , Benito Pérez Galdós , and, especially, Leo Tolstoy , which helped establish their reputations in

11615-531: Was a newspaper editor and printer who moved frequently around Ohio. In 1840, the family settled in Hamilton, Ohio , where his father oversaw a Whig newspaper and followed Swedenborgianism . Their nine years there were the longest period that they stayed in one place. The family had to live frugally, although the young Howells was encouraged by his parents in his literary interests. He began at an early age to help his father with typesetting and printing work,

11730-417: Was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French

11845-819: Was during the period of the Crusades in which French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that became a lingua franca ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the Arabs during the Crusades who referred to them as Franj , numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as algébre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero). Within Old French many dialects emerged but

11960-463: 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 Arpitan . The evolution of Latin in Gaul

12075-562: Was greatly interested in Heinrich Heine . In 1860, he visited Boston, Massachusetts and met with writers James T. Fields , James Russell Lowell , Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. , Nathaniel Hawthorne , Henry David Thoreau , and Ralph Waldo Emerson . He became a personal friend to many of them, including Henry Adams , William James , Henry James , and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. In 1860 Howells wrote Abraham Lincoln 's campaign biography Life of Abraham Lincoln and subsequently gained

12190-708: Was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha . Spoken by 19.71% of the European Union's population, French is the third most widely spoken language in the EU, after English and German and the second-most-widely taught language after English. Under the Constitution of France , French has been the official language of the Republic since 1992, although the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates

12305-513: Was more important for the development of his literary style and his advocacy of Realism . Harrison wrote a series of articles for The Atlantic Monthly during the 1870s on the lives of ordinary Americans. Howells gave a series of twelve lectures on "Italian Poets of Our Century" for the Lowell Institute during its 1870–71 season. Howells published his first novel Their Wedding Journey in 1872, but his literary reputation soared with

12420-649: Was not in poetry but in novels, a form which he saw shifting from "romance" to a serious form. Howells was a Christian socialist whose ideals were greatly influenced by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy . He joined a Christian socialist group in Boston between 1889 and 1891 and attended several churches, including the First Spiritual Temple and the Church of the Carpenter , the latter being affiliated with

12535-609: Was one of the first seven people chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters , of which he became president. In February 1910, Elinor Howells began using morphine to treat her worsening neuritis . She died on May 6, a few days after her birthday, and only two weeks after the death of Howells's friend Mark Twain. Henry James offered his condolences, writing "I think of this laceration of your life with an infinite sense of all it will mean for you". Howells and his daughter Mildred decided to spend part of

12650-532: Was particularly outraged by the trials resulting from the Haymarket affair , which led him to portray a similar riot in A Hazard of New Fortunes and to write publicly to protest the trials of the men allegedly involved in the affair. In his public writing and in his novels, he drew attention to pressing social issues of the time. He joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898, in opposition to

12765-465: Was released. A French-Spanish co-production it was directed by René Jolivet and Ricardo Muñoz Suay and starred Georges Marchal as Gil Blas. Lionel Stevenson identified Robert Browning as the translator of one English translation of Gil Blas which featured a partial word-by-word interlinear translation . French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] )

12880-594: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of

12995-570: Was the language they use the most at home rose from 67% at the 2007 census to 74% at the 2017 census. In Wallis and Futuna, the percentage of the population who reported that French was the language they use the most at home rose from 10% at the 2008 census to 13% at the 2018 census. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie ,

13110-656: Was the name of a nationalist Brazilian literary journal in 1920, reflecting the Gallic leanings of Brazil's literary scene in the early 20th century and the resonance of the picaresque character in Brazilian culture. In the fantasy novel Silverlock by John Myers Myers , the character Lucius Gil Jones is a composite of Lucius in The Golden Ass by Apuleius , Gil Blas, and Tom Jones in The History of Tom Jones,

13225-557: Was to become, for this exquisite notation of our whole democratic light and shade and give and take, in the highest degree documentary." The late 19th-century English novelist George Gissing read two of Howells's works, The Shadow of a Dream and A Fearful Responsibility , calling the latter "inane triviality". Bliss Perry considered a knowledge of his work vital for an understanding of the American provincial novel and believed that "he has never in his long career written an insincere,

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