110-667: The Great Fear ( French : Grande Peur ) was a general panic that took place between 22 July to 6 August 1789, at the start of the French Revolution . Rural unrest had been present in France since the worsening grain shortage of the spring. Fuelled by rumours of an aristocrats' " famine plot " to starve or burn out the population, both peasants and townspeople mobilised in many regions. In response to those rumours, fearful peasants armed themselves in self-defense and, in some areas, attacked manor houses . The content of
220-744: 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
330-431: 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,
440-510: A document that comments as severely on the nobles' reaction as on the peasants' rising and omits the atrocities detailed by Froissart: "it represents the men of the open country assembling spontaneously in various localities, in order to deliberate on the means of resisting the English, and suddenly, as with a mutual agreement, turning fiercely on the nobles". The Jacquerie traumatized the aristocracy. In 1872 Louis Raymond de Vericour remarked to
550-456: A drought threatened the prospect of the coming harvest. Harvests had already been poor since the massive 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland . Storms and floods also destroyed much of the harvest during the summer, leading to both a decrease in seigneurial dues and defaults on leases. Frosts and snow damaged vines, and ruined chestnut and olive groves in the south. Vagrancy became a serious problem in
660-455: A few weeks and took place during the most labour-intensive months. Communal violence was but one tactic of many for opposing an enemy, and 16th- and 17th-century peasants, drawing on a heritage of communal justice, might rise up to prevent enclosement of a communal grazing space like a marsh to demand lower bread prices or to evade their taxes. During the reign of Louis XIV , however, popular revolt became an ever-less viable option for reform, as
770-555: 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
880-760: A general unrest among the French nobility. Peasant revolt was not a phenomenon new to late-18th-century France. The 14th century saw the Jacquerie in the Oise Valley, and the seventeenth century saw the Croquant rebellions . Yves-Marie Bercé , in History of the Peasant Revolts , concludes "peasant revolts of the years 1789 to 1792 had much in common with their seventeenth-century counterparts: unanimity of
990-483: A golden age, which participants wished to see reinstated. The sociopolitical system was implicitly validated by a critique of recent changes in favour of tradition and custom. The Cahiers de doléances had opened the door to the people’s opinion directly affecting circumstances and policy, and the Great Fear evidenced that change. The most glaring difference between the Great Fear of 1789 and previous peasant revolts
1100-403: A landlord actually having been killed during the uprising. Although the Great Fear is usually associated with the peasantry, all of the uprisings tended to involve all sectors of the local community, including some elite participants, such as artisans or well-to-do farmers. Often, the bourgeoisie had just as much to gain from the destruction of the feudal regime as the poorer peasantry. Although
1210-473: A locality. As Tackett argues, the specific manifestation of the fear of brigands (who they were and what they were most likely to attack) may have been contingent upon local contexts, but the fact that the brigands were perceived as a genuine threat to the peasants across the country in a wide variety of local contexts speaks to a more systemic disorder. Comparing the peasant revolts of the Tard Avisés with
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#17327646843351320-491: A miserable death". Examples of violence on this scale by the French peasants are offered throughout the medieval sources, including accounts by Jean de Venette and Jean Froissart , an aristocrat who was particularly unsympathetic to the peasants. Among the chroniclers, the one sympathetic to their plight is Jean de Venette, sometimes (but erroneously) known as the continuator of the chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis . Jean le Bel speculated that governors and tax collectors spread
1430-652: 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
1540-494: 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
1650-587: 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
1760-526: 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
1870-941: 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
1980-547: 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
2090-437: 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
2200-779: 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
2310-472: 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
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#17327646843352420-489: 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
2530-430: 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
2640-462: 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
2750-652: 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
2860-503: 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
2970-404: 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
3080-469: 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
3190-828: 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
3300-576: 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 ,
3410-553: 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
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3520-483: 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
3630-492: 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
3740-424: 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
3850-764: 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
3960-462: 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
4070-539: 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
4180-485: 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
4290-559: 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,
4400-877: 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
4510-626: 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
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4620-1012: 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
4730-506: 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;
4840-781: 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
4950-703: 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
5060-917: 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,
5170-412: The Dauphin, later Charles V . The Estates-General were too divided to provide effective government and their alliance with King Charles II of Navarre , another claimant to the French throne, provoked disunity amongst the nobles. Consequently, the prestige of the French nobility sank to a new low. The century had begun poorly for the nobles at Courtrai (the " Battle of the Golden Spurs "), where they fled
5280-408: 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
5390-400: The Franche-Comté, spread south along the Rhône valley to Provence , east towards the Alps and west towards the centre of France. Almost simultaneously, a panic began in Ruffec , south of Poitiers , and travelled to the Pyrenees , toward Berry and into the Auvergne . The uprising coalesced into a general Great Fear, as neighbouring villages mistook armed peasants for brigands. During
5500-437: The French peasantry disillusioned with France's nobility that was perceived as failing to meet its feudal obligations. This combination of problems set the stage for a brief series of bloody rebellions in northern France in 1358. The uprisings began in a village of St. Leu near the Oise river, where a group of peasants met to discuss their perception that the nobles had abandoned the King at Poitiers. "They shamed and despoiled
5610-416: 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
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#17327646843355720-539: The Great Fear of 1789 reveals some key similarities and differences. From 1593 to 1595 in Limousin and Périgord, groups of peasants rose up against the armed forces that occupied the countryside and raised funds by levying taxes and ransom. In a series of assemblies, the Croquants , as they were pejoratively called, worked on a military plan for action and successfully expelled the garrisons from their lands. The letters between those assemblies justified their armed resistance as opposition to unjust claims on their property. When
5830-399: The Jacquerie 'great captain' was named Guillaume Cale . The word jacquerie became a synonym of peasant uprisings in general in both English and French. After the capture of the French king ( John II , Froissart's bon roi Jean "good king John") by the English during the Battle of Poitiers in September 1356, power in France devolved fruitlessly among the Estates-General and John's son,
5940-403: The Jacquerie that a general flight ensued. Historian Barbara Tuchman says: "Like every insurrection of the century, it was smashed, as soon as the rulers recovered their nerve, by weight of steel, and the advantages of the man on horseback, and the psychological inferiority of the insurgents". The slanted but vivid account of Froissart can be balanced by the Regent's letter of general amnesty,
6050-543: The Regent, whose throne he was attempting to usurp. His army and the peasant force opposed each other near Mello on 10 June 1358, when Guillaume Cale , the leader of the rebellion, was invited to truce talks by Charles. He went to the enemy camp, where he was seized by the French nobles, who considered that the conventions and standards of chivalry did not apply to him; he was tortured and decapitated. The now leaderless army, which Froisart claimed to be 100,000 strong in his narrative heavily influenced by chivalric romance ,
6160-402: The Royal Historical Society: To this very day the word "Jacquerie" does not generally give rise to any other idea than that of a bloodthirsty, iniquitous, groundless revolt of a mass of savages. Whenever, on the Continent, any agitation takes place, however slight and legitimate it may be, among the humbler classes, innumerable voices, in higher, privileged, wealthy classes, proclaim that society
6270-445: The attacks by the peasants on the estates of the feudal nobility and convent estates, their main objective was reported to have been finding and destroying the documents of the feudal privileges, which granted the feudal lords their feudal privileges over the peasantry, and burn them. In some cases, the manor houses were burned along with the documents. Hundreds of manor houses are reported to have been burned this way, but they belonged to
6380-421: The besieged nobles in the fortress, and a general rout of the Parisian force ensued. The nobles then set fire to the suburb nearest the fortress, entrapping the burghers in the flames. The mayor of Meaux and other prominent men of the city were hanged. There was a pause, and then the force led by the nobles and gentry plundered the city and churches and set fire to Meaux, which burned for two weeks. They then overran
6490-422: The chaotic political situation was stabilized with the coronation of Henry IV, the revolts ended, and the peasants were eventually accorded the tax rebate they had demanded earlier. The Tard-Avisés had specific goals and achieved them. The same cannot be said of the participants in the Great Fear of 1789, which broke with another pattern typical of peasant revolts in earlier centuries. The panic lasted for more than
6600-408: The city of Paris after the murder of the leader of the Estates General Étienne Marcel , prevôt des marchands on 31 July 1358. It is notable that churches were not generally the targets of peasant fury, with the possible exception of some clerics in Champagne. The revolt was suppressed by French nobles and gentry led by the Dauphin and Charles of Navarre , cousin, brother-in-law, and mortal enemy of
6710-400: The conflict found themselves "without commanders or wages". Many of them responded by forming free companies , attacking both military and civilian targets such as castles and villages (often to ransom for a profit) and engaging in frequent acts of rape, looting and murder. Their ability to do so was exacerbated by the lack of an efficient government authority in many parts of France, which left
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#17327646843356820-418: The context of this period of internal instability. At a time of personal government, the absence of a charismatic king was detrimental to the still- feudal state. The Dauphin had to contend with roaming free companies of out-of-work mercenaries, the plotting of Charles the Bad , and the possibility of another English invasion. The Dauphin gained effective control of the realm only after the supposed surrender of
6930-405: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Jacquerie The Jacquerie ( French: [ʒakʁi] ) was a popular revolt by peasants that took place in northern France in the early summer of 1358 during the Hundred Years' War . The revolt was centred in the valley of the Oise north of Paris and
7040-408: The countryside can be followed in remarkable detail. The revolt had both economic and political causes, predating the events of the summer of 1789. As Lefebvre commented, "To get the peasant to rise and revolt, there was no need of the French Revolution, as so many historians have suggested: when the panic came he was already up and away". The rural unrest can be traced back to the spring of 1788, when
7150-466: The countryside, and in some areas, such as the Franche-Comté in late 1788, peasants gathered to take collective action against the seigneurs. The historian Mary Kilbourne Matossian argued that one of the causes of the Great Fear was consumption of ergot , a hallucinogenic fungus. In years of good harvests, rye that was contaminated with ergot was discarded, but when the harvest was poor, the peasants could not afford to be so choosy. The panic began in
7260-417: The countryside, burning cottages and barns and slaughtering all the peasants they could find. The reprisals continued through July and August. Senlis defended itself. Knights of County of Hainaut , County of Flanders , and Duchy of Brabant joined in the carnage. Following the declaration of amnesty issued by the Regent on 10 August 1358, such heavy fines were assessed upon the regions that had supported
7370-404: 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
7480-448: 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
7590-489: 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
7700-442: The families in horrific ways. The bourgeoisie of Beauvais , Senlis , Paris, Amiens , and Meaux , sorely pressed by the court party, accepted the Jacquerie, and the urban underclass were sympathetic. Village notables often provided leadership for some of the peasant bands, although in letters of pardon issued after the suppression of the rising, such individuals claimed that they were forced to do so. The Jacquerie must be seen in
7810-462: The field and left their infantry to be hacked to pieces; they were also accused of having given up their king at the Battle of Poitiers . The passage of a law that required the peasants to defend the châteaux that were emblems of their oppression was the immediate cause of the spontaneous uprising. The law was particularly resented as many commoners already blamed the nobility for the defeat at Poitiers. The chronicle of Jean de Venette articulates
7920-516: 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
8030-915: 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 ,
8140-829: 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
8250-519: 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
8360-479: 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
8470-612: 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 ,
8580-479: 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
8690-399: The latter was fear of an ambiguous outsider at the outset of the disturbance. Whether the brigands were English, Piedmontese or merely vagabonds was not easily determined, and when the Great Fear had spread to its largest expanse, it was a system, feudalism, rather than a specific person or group, at which its animosity was directed. Earlier revolts had not been subversive but rather looked to
8800-523: The leadership of Etienne Marcel to support the rising. When the band from Paris appeared before Meaux, they were taken in hospitably by the disaffected townspeople and fed. The fortress, somewhat apart from the town, remained unassailable. Two captain adventurers, returning from the Prussian Crusade , were at Châlons: Gaston III, Count of Foix and his noble Gascon cousin, Jean III de Grailly . The approach of their well-armed lancers encouraged
8910-496: The main phase of the Great Fear died out by August, peasant uprisings continued well into 1790 and left few areas of France (primarily Alsace , Lorraine and Brittany ) untouched. As a result of the Great Fear, the National Assembly, in an effort to appease the peasants and forestall further rural disorders, on 4 August 1789, formally abolished the "feudal regime", including seigneurial rights. That led in effect to
9020-405: The minority, and there was no indiscriminate pillaging. In most cases, the peasants simply left when the letters of feudal privileges had been destroyed. The members of the feudal aristocracy were forced to leave or fled on their own initiative. Some aristocrats were captured; among them, there were reports of mistreatment such as beatings and humiliation, but there are only three confirmed cases of
9130-420: 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
9240-589: 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;
9350-534: 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
9460-562: The perceived problems between the nobility and the peasants, yet some historians, such as Samuel K. Cohn, see the Jacquerie revolts as a reaction to a combination of short- and long-term effects dating from as early as the grain crisis and famine of 1315 . In addition, as a result of the temporary lull in hostilities of the Hundred Years' War due to the French defeat at Poitiers, thousands of soldiers and mercenaries on both sides of
9570-413: The preceding century". The usual cause of communal violence was "an assault launched from outside upon the community as a whole", whether the outsider was those profiting from unfairly high bread prices, marauding bandits, witches or magistrates abusing power. That statement about 16th- and 17th-century uprisings appears at first to apply equally to the Great Fear of 1789. However, one distinctive aspect of
9680-471: 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
9790-450: The realm, and it would be a good thing to destroy them all." The account of the rising by the contemporary chronicler Jean le Bel includes a description of horrifying violence. According to him, "peasants killed a knight, put him on a spit, and roasted him with his wife and children looking on. After ten or twelve of them raped the lady, they wished to force feed them the roasted flesh of their father and husband and made them then die by
9900-471: 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
10010-475: The rumors differed from region to region. In some areas, it was believed that a foreign force was burning the crops in the fields, and in other areas, it was believed that robbers were burning buildings. Fear of the peasant revolt was a contributing factor to the abolition of seigneurialism in France through the August Decrees . The French historian Georges Lefebvre has demonstrated that the revolt in
10120-497: The rural community, rejection of new taxation to which they were unaccustomed, defiance of enemy townsmen and a belief that there would be a general remission in taxes, particularly when the king decided to convene the estates general. In spite of all that is suggested by the political history of the period, the peasant disturbances at the beginning of the French Revolution did not depart from the typical community revolt of
10230-457: The state both became better able to respond to insurgency and addressed many of the issues at the heart of peasant revolts. Reforms in the military structure prevented French soldiers from plundering French soil, and armed conflict with other powers was not fought at home. Thus, the threat of roaming bandits was a particularly poignant one, which evoked an era of lawlessness thaf the French monarchy had successfully countered in previous years. There
10340-466: 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
10450-679: 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
10560-508: 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
10670-485: 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
10780-493: The word of rebellion from village to village to inspire the peasants to rebel against the nobility. When asked as to the cause of their discontent they apparently replied that they were just doing what they had witnessed others doing. Additionally it seems that the rebellion contained some idea that it was possible to rid the world of nobles. Froissart's account portrays the rebels as mindless savages bent on destruction, which they wrought on over 150 noble houses and castles, murdering
10890-536: 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
11000-402: 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
11110-417: 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
11220-819: 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
11330-400: 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
11440-429: Was its scope. Spreading from half-a-dozen or so separate nuclei across the countryside, almost all of France found itself in rural uproar. In the 16th and the 17th centuries, revolts were almost always contained within the borders of a single province. That change in magnitude reflects to what extent social discontent was with the entire governmental system (and its ineffectiveness), rather than with anything particular to
11550-652: 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
11660-536: Was much in common between the peasantry in the Great Fear of 1789 and the peasants of the revolts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they were malleable and changed by the experience of Bourbon rule and its subsequent dissolution. Without the monarchy or a replacement government to administer and protect the people, the harvest and, with it, life itself were in grave danger. French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] )
11770-461: Was ridden down by divisions of mounted knights. In the ensuing Battle of Mello and in a campaign of terror throughout Beauvais , knights, squires, men-at-arms and mercenaries roamed the countryside lynching peasants. Another major battle transpired at Meaux , where the fortified citadel was crowded with knights and their dependents. On 9 June, a band of some 800 armed commoners (not the 10,000 Jacques of Froissart's account) came out of Paris under
11880-594: 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
11990-404: Was suppressed after over two months of violence. This rebellion became known as "the Jacquerie" because the nobles derided peasants as "Jacques" or "Jacques Bonhomme" for their padded surplice , called a " jacque ". The aristocratic chronicler Jean Froissart and his source, the chronicle of Jean le Bel , referred to the leader of the revolt as Jacque Bonhomme ("Jack Goodfellow"), though in fact
12100-570: 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 ,
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