Helvetisms ( Neo-Latin Helvetia " Switzerland " and -ism ) are features distinctive of Swiss Standard German , that distinguish it from Standard German . The most frequent Helvetisms are in vocabulary and pronunciation , but there are also some distinctive features in syntax and orthography .
106-572: The French and Italian spoken in Switzerland have similar terms, which are also known as Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse , include several hundred helvetisms. The definitive work for German orthography, the Duden , explicitly declares a number of helvetisms as correct Standard German – albeit with the [schweiz.] annotation, denoting that the usage of
212-572: 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 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
318-744: 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
424-431: 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,
530-584: A distinguishable modification of the voice's sound. In general, the pitch of the stressed syllable sinks. In orthography, the most visible difference from Standard German usage outside Switzerland is the absence of ß (officially abolished in the Canton of Zürich in 1935; the sign fell gradually out of use and was dropped by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung ( NZZ ) in 1974). French and Italian loanwords are written in their original forms in spite of
636-555: 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
742-473: A form that would be recognisable as an ⟨e⟩ , but in manuscript writing, umlauted vowels could be indicated by two dots since the late medieval period. In the forms of handwriting that emerged in the early modern period (of which Sütterlin is the latest and best-known example) the letter ⟨e⟩ was composed of two short vertical lines very close together, and the superscript ⟨e⟩ looked like two tiny strokes. Even from
848-601: A large part of Swiss literature, notably Jeremias Gotthelf 's novels located in the Emmental ; a contemporary example would be Tim Krohn in his Quatemberkinder . Another group, the most notable of whom is Peter Bichsel , deliberately use Helvetisms to arouse a sort of emotional attachment to the readers' home country: Bichsel is notorious for using dialectal words like Beiz (instead of Kneipe [English: "pub"]), or Kasten (instead of Schrank [English: "cupboard/cabinet/closet"]) in his "San Salvador" short story. Lastly, there
954-652: 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
1060-494: 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
1166-683: 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 the United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ,
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#17327839405161272-547: A starting capital umlaut , but instead with Ae , Oe and Ue , such as the Zürich suburb Oerlikon , or the hamlet Aetzikofen , or the Bernese municipality Uebeschi . However, field names, such as Äbenegg, Ötikon (near Stäfa), or Überthal, and any other word, such as Ärzte (English: physicians), usually start with capital umlauts. Finally, there are specialities like e.g. Some of the above-mentioned characteristics are due to
1378-602: A transformation analogous to the German umlaut, called omljud ), treat them always as independent letters. In collation , this means they have their own positions in the alphabet, for example at the end ("A–Ö" or "A–Ü", not "A–Z") as in Swedish, Estonian and Finnish, which means that the dictionary order is different from German. The transformations ä → ae and ö → oe can, therefore, be considered less appropriate for these languages, although Swedish and Finnish passports use
1484-547: 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
1590-457: 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 is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As
1696-437: 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
1802-472: 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
1908-489: 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
2014-436: Is also used for the corresponding letters ä, ö, and ü (and the diphthong äu) and the sounds that these letters represent. In German, the combination of a letter with the diacritical mark is called Umlaut , while the marks themselves are called Umlautzeichen (literally "umlaut sign"). In German, the umlaut diacritic indicates that the short back vowels and the diphthong [aʊ] are pronounced ("shifted forward in
2120-451: Is also used for the underlying historical sound shift process.) In its contemporary printed form, the mark consists of two dots placed over the letter to represent the changed vowel sound. (In some Romance and other languages, the diaeresis diacritic has the same appearance but a different function.) Umlaut (literally "changed sound") is the German name of the sound shift phenomenon also known as i-mutation . In German, this term
2226-592: Is appropriate to use ae . The same goes for ö and oe . While ae has a great resemblance to the letter æ and, therefore, does not impede legibility, the digraph oe is likely to reduce the legibility of a Norwegian text. This especially applies to the digraph øy , which would be rendered in the more cryptic form oey . Also in Danish , Ö has been used in place of Ø in some older texts and to distinguish between open and closed ö-sounds and when confusion with other symbols could occur, e.g. on maps. The Danish/Norwegian Ø
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#17327839405162332-611: Is because Swiss typewriter keyboards use the same keys for French accents (in Swiss French) as are used for German umlauts (in Swiss German) and which version is active (on a computer) is chosen by system setting. Consequently to apply an accent or umlaut to a capital letter requires use of a dead key mechanism. Some languages have borrowed some of the forms of the German letters Ä , Ö , or Ü , including Azerbaijani , Estonian , Finnish , Hungarian , Karelian , some of
2438-652: 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
2544-563: 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
2650-421: Is influenced by the respective Swiss German dialect of each speaker. The degree of that influence may vary according to their education. Swiss German exhibits a strong trend toward stressing all words on the initial syllable: A special feature of Swiss Standard German, is a somewhat "singing" cadence. That means that each word's stressed syllable isn't only marked through the higher voice volume, but also through
2756-404: 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
2862-602: Is like the German Ö a development of OE, to be compared with the French Œ . Early Volapük used Fraktur a , o and u as different from Antiqua ones. Later, the Fraktur forms were replaced with umlauted vowels. The usage of umlaut-like diacritic vowels, particularly ü , occurs in the romanization of languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, such as Chinese . For example, Mandarin Chinese 女 [ny˨˩˦] ("female")
2968-469: 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
3074-828: 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
3180-679: Is romanized as nǚ in Hanyu Pinyin . Tibetan pinyin uses ä, ö, ü with approximately their German values. The Cyrillic letters ӓ , ӧ , ӱ are used in Mari , Khanty , and other languages for approximately [æ] , [ø] , and [y] . These directly parallel the German umlaut ä, ö, ü . Other vowels using a double dot to modify their values in various minority languages of Russia are ӛ , ӫ , and ӹ . The two dot diacritic can be used in " sensational spellings " or foreign branding , for example in advertising, or for other special effects, where it
3286-628: Is standard in Switzerland but may be marked elsewhere as "politically correct". Relative pronouns : The relative pronoun welche(r) , considered clumsy and antiquated in Standard German, is used without hesitation: in Damit wurde in der Schweiz ein Kompetenzzentrum für Klimafragen geschaffen, welches verstärkt die Bedürfnisse der Bevölkerung in den Mittelpunkt ihrer Forschung stellt. (from Jahresbericht 2001 , Annual report of
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3392-639: 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 ,
3498-553: 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
3604-483: 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
3710-492: 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
3816-424: 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
3922-452: Is usual to replace them with the underlying vowel followed by an ⟨e⟩ . So, for example, "Schröder" becomes "Schroeder". As the pronunciation differs greatly between the normal letter and the umlaut, simply omitting the dots would be incorrect. The result would often be a different word, as in schon "already", schön "beautiful"; or a different grammatic form, e.g. Mutter "mother", Mütter "mothers". Despite this,
4028-531: Is usually called an umlaut (rather than a diaeresis). Mötley Crüe , Blue Öyster Cult , Motörhead and Häagen-Dazs are examples of such usage. The Brontë sisters are so-called because their Irish father, Patrick Brunty, used the device to Anglicise the family name. The International Phonetic Alphabet uses a double dot below a letter, a notation it calls " subscript umlaut " to indicate breathy (murmured) voice , (for example Hindi [kʊm̤ar] "potter". ) The ALA-LC romanization system provides for its use and
4134-582: Is yet another group of authors whose readers are known to be located all over the German-speaking territory (Germany, Austria, Switzerland as well as some smaller minorities in other European countries) and therefore traditionally refrain from using any Helvetisms in their literary works. In addition, words which are used outside Switzerland, but which originate from Swiss German may be called "Helvetisms". Analogously to "Helvetisms", there are also Austricisms and Germanisms (also Teutonicisms ). In
4240-484: The ⟨o⟩ was frequently placed above the ⟨u⟩ ( blůme ). This letter survives now only in Czech . Compare also ⟨ ñ ⟩ for the digraph nn , with the tilde as a superscript ⟨n⟩ . In blackletter handwriting, as used in German manuscripts of the later Middle Ages, and also in many printed texts of the early modern period, the superscript ⟨e⟩ still had
4346-711: 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
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4452-609: 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; 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
4558-609: 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
4664-517: 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 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
4770-460: The ETH Zürich ). Rabatt is used in the dative case ; in Standard German in the accusative case . Example: 20% Rabatt auf allen Artikeln . The syntax has many constructions with a shortened main clause and a following subordinate clause, which is only marked by the initial position of a verb, e.g. In his book Zündels Abgang , author Markus Werner uses Tram ("tram") – which takes
4876-533: 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
4982-559: 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,
5088-399: 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 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
5194-877: 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
5300-626: 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
5406-516: The Sami languages , Slovak , Swedish , and Turkish . This indicates sounds similar to the corresponding umlauted letters in German. In spoken Scandinavian languages the grammatical umlaut change is used (singular to plural, derivations, etc.) but the character used differs between languages. In Finnish, a/ä and o/ö change systematically in suffixes according to the rules of vowel harmony . In Hungarian, where long vowels are indicated with an acute accent,
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#17327839405165512-775: 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
5618-477: The diaeresis mark used in other European languages and is represented by the same Unicode character. The Germanic umlaut is a specific historical phenomenon of vowel-fronting in German and other Germanic languages , including English. English examples are 'man ~ men' and 'foot ~ feet' (from Proto-Germanic * fōts , pl. * fōtiz ), but English orthography does not indicate this vowel change using
5724-443: The 16th century, the handwritten convention of indicating umlaut by two dots placed above the affected vowel is also found in printed texts. Unusual umlaut designs are sometimes also created for graphic design purposes, such as to fit umlaut dots into tightly spaced lines of text. This may include umlaut dots placed vertically or inside the body of the letter. When typing German with a keyboard that doesn't have umlaut letters, it
5830-506: 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;
5936-773: 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
6042-875: The Arabic to the Latin alphabet in 1928, it adopted a number of diacritics borrowed from various languages, including ⟨ü⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ from German (probably reinforced by their use in languages like Swedish, Hungarian, etc.). These Turkish graphemes represent sounds similar to their respective values in German (see Turkish alphabet ). As the borrowed diacritic has lost its relationship to Germanic i-mutation, they are in some languages considered independent graphemes , and cannot be replaced with ⟨ae⟩ , ⟨oe⟩ , or ⟨ue⟩ as in German. In Estonian and Finnish, for example, these latter diphthongs have independent meanings. Even some Germanic languages, such as Swedish (which does have
6148-510: 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
6254-614: 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,
6360-408: 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
6466-416: 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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#17327839405166572-410: 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 a second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as
6678-441: 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 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
6784-402: 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 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
6890-399: The area's cuisine, local culture and politics, there are numerous peculiarities that are not well known outside Switzerland and which do not have an equivalent standard German expression. Because of their characteristic pronunciation, speakers of Swiss Standard German will be instantly recognized by other German speakers in most cases. In general, the pronunciation of Swiss Standard German
6996-643: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Umlaut (diacritic) Umlaut ( / ˈ ʊ m l aʊ t / ) is a name for the two dots diacritical mark ( ◌̈ ) as used to indicate in writing (as part of the letters ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨ö⟩ , and ⟨ü⟩ ) the result of the historical sound shift due to which former back vowels are now pronounced as front vowels (for example [a] , [ɔ] , and [ʊ] as [ɛ] , [œ] , and [ʏ] ). (The term Germanic umlaut
7102-404: 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
7208-448: 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
7314-489: 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
7420-403: The exception of Hungarian, the replacement rule for situations where the umlaut character is not available, is to simply use the underlying unaccented character instead. Hungarian follows the German rules and replaces ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ with ⟨oe⟩ and ⟨ue⟩ respectively – at least for telegrams and telex messages. The same rule is followed for
7526-408: The female article die in Germany's Standard German – with the typically Swiss neuter article das . The word Putsch is one example which is widely used in political contexts, even in notable Standard German newspapers. The word Müsli , however, is a special case: in Swiss Standard German (and only there), Müsli is the diminutive of Mus ("mouse") and stands for "little mouse". To describe
7632-516: 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
7738-623: The food, the Swiss use the spelling Mü e sli (reflecting the pronunciation [ˈmyəsli] of the dialects). French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] ) 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 ,
7844-915: 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 ,
7950-706: The gender of nouns ( das E-Mail , das Tram and das SMS instead of die ) or in the preposition that verbs require ( jemanden anfragen instead of bei jemandem anfragen ). In general, more often than in Germany or Austria, the Swiss use expressly feminine nouns ( Bundesrät in Ruth Metzler , Frieda U. wurde zur Primarschullehrer in gewählt ) rather than the generic masculine ( Bundesrat , Primarschullehrer etc.) to refer to occupations and positions held by women. The Binnen-I (as in ProfessorInnen )
8056-829: 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
8162-515: The general introduction of the typewriter in economics and administration. Because a Swiss typewriter must be able to write not only German texts but also French and Italian texts, the limited number of keys was not enough for all these languages' special characters to be included. So, the eszett and the uppercase umlauts ( Ä , Ö and Ü ), as well as other upper-case accented vowels (e.g. À and É , used in French and Italian), were omitted. Swiss German differs from Standard German in, for example,
8268-519: 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
8374-479: 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
8480-612: 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 ,
8586-479: 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
8692-406: The letter ⟨ä⟩ to denote [e] (or a bit archaic but still correct [ɛɐ] ). The sign is called dve bodky [ˈdʋe ˈbɔtki] ("two dots"), and the full name of the letter ä is široké e [ˈʂirɔkeː ˈe] ("wide e"). The similar word dvojbodka [ˈdʋɔjbɔtka] ("double dot") however refers to the colon . In these languages, with
8798-494: The most significant difference to Standard German outside Switzerland is the absence of ß (eszett). (After having been officially abandoned in the Canton of Zürich in 1935, this character gradually fell into disuse, until it was eventually dropped by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1974.) In everyday language, Helvetisms may be used both consciously and unconsciously by a Swiss German native speaker. Classic examples of Helvetism usage throughout entire literary works are found in
8904-430: The mouth") as follows: And the long back vowels are pronounced in the front of the mouth as follows: In modern German orthography, the affected graphemes ⟨a⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , and ⟨au⟩ are written as ⟨ ä ⟩ , ⟨ ö ⟩ , ⟨ ü ⟩ , and ⟨äu⟩ , i.e. they are written with the umlaut diacritic, which looks identical to
9010-411: The near-lookalikes ⟨ő⟩ and ⟨ű⟩ . In Luxembourgish ( Lëtzebuergesch ), ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ë⟩ represent stressed [æ] and [ə] ( schwa ) respectively. The letters ⟨ü⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ do not occur in native Luxembourgish words, but at least the former is common in words borrowed from standard German. When Turkish switched from
9116-420: 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
9222-534: 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
9328-471: 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
9434-471: 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
9540-618: The spelling reform. Majonäse stays Mayonnaise , and Spagetti stays Spaghetti . The NZZ uses the spelling placieren ( to place , from French placer ) rather than platzieren , which is more common elsewhere. Geographical names, such as streets, are mostly written together: Baslerstrasse , Genfersee , Zugerberg etc. Compound terms relating to nationality are often written as one word, such as Schweizergrenze ("Swiss border") and Schweizervolk (Swiss people) instead of Schweizer Grenze and Schweizer Volk . The names of municipalities, towns, stations, and streets are often not written with
9646-466: 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
9752-465: The transformation to render ö and ä (and å as aa ) in the machine-readable zone . In contexts of technological limitation, e.g. in English based systems, Swedes can either be forced to omit the diacritics or use the two letter system. When typing in Norwegian , the letters Æ and Ø might be replaced with Ä and Ö respectively if the former are not available. If ä is not available either, it
9858-619: 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
9964-730: The umlaut diacritic. German phonological umlaut was present in the Old High German period and continued to develop in Middle High German . From the Middle High German period, it was sometimes denoted in written German by adding an e to the affected vowel, either after the vowel or, in small form, above it. This can still be seen in some names, e.g. Goethe , Goebbels , Staedtler . In medieval German manuscripts, other digraphs were also commonly written using superscripts. In bluome ("flower"), for example,
10070-606: The umlaut notation has been expanded with a version of the umlaut which looks like double acute accents , indicating a blend of umlaut and acute. Contrast: short ö; long ő. The Estonian alphabet has borrowed ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨ö⟩ , and ⟨ü⟩ from German; Swedish and Finnish have ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ ; and Slovak has ⟨ä⟩ . In Estonian, Swedish, Finnish, and Sami ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ denote [æ] and [ø] , respectively. Hungarian and Turkish have ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ . Slovak uses
10176-894: The umlauted letters are not considered to be separate letters of the alphabet in German, in contrast to the situation in other Germanic languages. When alphabetically sorting German words, the umlaut is usually not distinguished from the underlying vowel, although if two words differ only by an umlaut, the umlauted one comes second, for example: There is a second system in limited use, mostly for sorting names (such as in telephone directories), which treats letters with umlauts as their base equivalents followed by e. Austrian telephone directories insert ö after oz. In Switzerland , capital umlauts are sometimes printed as digraphs , in other words, ⟨Ae⟩ , ⟨Oe⟩ , ⟨Ue⟩ , instead of ⟨Ä⟩ , ⟨Ö⟩ , ⟨Ü⟩ (see German alphabet § Umlaut diacritic usage for an elaboration). This
10282-508: 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
10388-485: 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
10494-426: The word is limited to Switzerland. However, not all words may be considered part of the "Swiss standard language"/"Swiss standard German" category, because frequency of usage must be evaluated as well; if this does not apply, or if a word's use is known to span only one or more specific dialectal regions, the word must be categorized "dialectal" (German: mundartlich , often abbreviated mdal. ) In orthographical terms,
10600-481: 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
10706-402: 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
10812-819: 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
10918-400: 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
11024-652: 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
11130-542: 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
11236-570: 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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