156-516: A mappa mundi (Latin [ˈmappa ˈmʊndiː] ; plural = mappae mundi ; French : mappemonde ; Middle English : mappemond ) is any medieval European map of the world . Such maps range in size and complexity from simple schematic maps 25 millimetres (1 inch) or less across to elaborate wall maps, the largest of which to survive to modern times, the Ebstorf map , was around 3.5 m (11 ft 6 in) in diameter. The term derives from
312-587: A Parchment probably made from a goat or sheep skin, is in a very good state of preservation. The map itself is 27 cm high by 22.5 wide. It represents 23 countries on 3 continents and mentions several cities, islands, rivers and seas. The known world is represented in the form of a horseshoe, opening at the level of the Strait of Gibraltar, and surrounding the Mediterranean, with the Middle East at
468-550: A 1409 map of the Mediterranean, also made in Venice. The world map is circular, drawn on a piece of parchment 69.6 cm × 44 cm (27.4 in × 17.3 in). It consists of the map itself, about 44 cm (17 in) in diameter, and an extension containing a calendar and two tables. Andrea Bianco's atlas of 1436 comprises ten leaves of vellum , measuring 29 cm × 38 cm (11 in × 15 in), in an 18th-century binding. The first leaf contains
624-744: 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
780-420: A Latin translation issued around 1469. Although Strabo referenced the antique Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus and acknowledged their astronomical and mathematical efforts towards geography, he claimed that a descriptive approach was more practical. Geographica provides a valuable source of information on the ancient world, especially when this information is corroborated by other sources. Within
936-637: A coherent planispheric system. This quite basically presents the known world in its real geographic appearance which is visible in the so-called Vatican Map of Isidor (776), the world maps of Beatus of Liebana’s Commentary on the Apocalypse of St John (8th century), the Anglo-Saxon Map (ca. 1000), the Sawley map, the Psalter map, or the large mappae mundi of the 13th century (Hereford/Ebstorf). In
1092-431: 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,
1248-526: A description of the Rule of marteloio for resolving the course, with the "circle and square", two tables and two other diagrams. The next eight leaves contain various navigation charts. The ninth leaf contains a circular world map measuring 25 cm (9.8 in) in circumference. And the final leaf contains the Ptolemaic world map on Ptolemy's first projection, with graduation. Some believe Bianco's maps were
1404-468: A fifth type, called "transitional mappae mundi". Zonal maps are pictures of the Eastern Hemisphere . Their purpose was to illustrate the concept that the world is a sphere with latitudinal climate zones, most often the five Aristotelian climes : Of these, only the two temperate zones at middle latitudes were believed to be inhabitable, and the known world was contained entirely within
1560-555: 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
1716-584: A maker of portolans to bear; the map introduced a previously unheard of accuracy to the mappa mundi genre. The world map, as well as a map of the Holy Land and plan of Acre and Jerusalem were made for inclusion in Marino Sanuto 's Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis . The Catalan World Atlas was produced by the Majorcan cartographic school and is attributed to Cresques Abraham . It has been in
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#17327728355011872-705: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on
2028-553: A point-to-point coastal survey. One, on Europe , is essentially a periplus of the Mediterranean, describing each region in turn, reaching as far north as Scythia . The other book, on Asia , is arranged similarly to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea of which a version of the 1st century CE survives. Hecataeus described the countries and inhabitants of the known world, the account of Egypt being particularly comprehensive;
2184-715: A proper latitude and longitude ; he used a "Meridian of the Isles of the Blessed ( Canary Islands or Cape Verde Islands )" as the zero meridian . Surviving texts of Ptolemy 's Geography , first composed c. 150 , note that he continued the use of Marinus's equirectangular projection for its regional maps while finding it inappropriate for maps of the entire known world . Instead, in Book VII of his work, he outlines three separate projections of increasing difficulty and fidelity. Ptolemy followed Marinus in underestimating
2340-494: 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
2496-621: A sailor-cartographer, under a commission by king Afonso V of Portugal . The map was completed on April 24, 1459, and sent to Portugal , but did not survive to the present day. Fra Mauro died the next year while he was making a copy of the map for the Seignory of Venice, and the copy was completed by Andrea Bianco. The map is preserved in the Museo Correr in Venice . The world map of Henricus Martellus Germanus (Heinrich Hammer), c. 1490,
2652-587: 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
2808-526: 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
2964-881: 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
3120-531: A synthesis of medieval mappae mundi (Jerusalem located close to the centre) and the travel literature of the time, notably The Travels of Marco Polo and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville . Many Indian and Chinese cities can be identified. The Da Ming Hunyi Tu ( Chinese : 大明混一图 ; lit. 'Amalgamated Map of the Great Ming Empire';) world map, likely made in the late 14th or
3276-547: 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
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#17327728355013432-488: A version of its classical name 'Thule', north-west of Britain, and as 'Island', logically linked with Scandinavia. An open-access high-resolution digital image of the map with place and name annotations is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project. Beatus of Liébana (c. 730–798) was an Asturian monk and theologian . He corresponded with Alcuin , and took part in
3588-425: A world map, but no maps seem to have survived to be used by Planude's monks. Instead, he commissioned new world maps calculated from Ptolemy's thousands of coordinates and drafted according to the text's 1st and 2nd projections, along with the equirectangular regional maps. A copy was translated into Latin by Jacobus Angelus at Florence around 1406 and soon supplemented with maps on the 1st projection. Maps using
3744-437: 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
3900-472: 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
4056-595: Is a world map and historical map of China, made in Korea in 1402, although extant copies, all in Japan, were created much later. It plays a key role in reconstructing the content of the now-lost 14th-century Chinese map of the world named Shengjiao Guangbei Tu , which was based on Chinese cartographic techniques with additional input from western sources, via Islamic scholarship in the Mongol Empire . It also demonstrates
4212-489: 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
4368-430: 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
4524-462: 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
4680-548: Is clearly outside the largely symbolic early medieval mapping tradition, but equally it is not based on the famous Ptolemaic co-ordinate system. East is at the top, but Jerusalem is not in the centre, and the Garden of Eden is nowhere to be seen. Unusually, all the waterways of Africa, not just the Red Sea, are depicted in red (mountains are green). The depiction of the far East is ambitious, including India and Taprobane (Sri Lanka) –
4836-501: Is considered to be the oldest surviving terrestrial globe . It is constructed of a laminated linen ball reinforced with wood and overlaid with a map painted on gores by Georg Glockendon . The Americas are not included yet, as Columbus returned to Spain no sooner than March 1493. It shows a rather enlarged Eurasian continent and an empty ocean between Europe and Asia. It includes the mythical Saint Brendan's Island . Japan and Asian islands are disproportionately large. The idea to call
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4992-514: Is credited with having created one of the first maps of the world, which was circular in form and showed the known lands of the world grouped around the Aegean Sea at the center. This was all surrounded by the ocean. Hecataeus of Miletus is credited with a work entitled Periodos Ges ("Travels round the Earth" or "World Survey"), in two books each organized in the manner of a periplus ,
5148-491: Is drawn at the centre of the circle, east is on top, showing the Garden of Eden in a circle at the edge of the world (1). Great Britain is drawn at the northwestern border (bottom left, 22 & 23). Curiously, the labels for Africa and Europe are reversed, with Europe scribed in red and gold as 'Africa', and vice versa. An open-access high-resolution digital image of the map with more than 1,000 place and name annotations
5304-652: 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
5460-503: 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
5616-681: Is identical with “Spagnola” ( Hispaniola ) on the Ruysch map. The presence of codfish is noted on the Ruysch map in the area of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and shows the discoveries the Portuguese had made along the African coast and shows India as a triangular peninsula with Ceylon in the correct proportion and position. Greenland is shown connected to Newfoundland and Asia on Ruysch's map, and not Europe as earlier maps had showed. Around
5772-503: Is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project. Italian geographer Pietro Vesconte was a pioneer of the field of the portolan chart . His nautical charts are among the earliest to map the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions accurately. He also produced progressively more accurate depictions of the coastlines of northern Europe. In his world map of 1321 he brought his experience as
5928-404: 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
6084-653: Is now kept at the Pera Museum in Istanbul. The Arab geographer, Muhammad al-Idrisi , incorporated the knowledge of Africa , the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Arab merchants and explorers with the information inherited from the classical geographers to create the most accurate map of the world at the time. It remained the most accurate world map for the next three centuries. The Tabula Rogeriana
6240-469: 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
6396-828: 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
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6552-519: Is signed by one "Richard of Haldingham or Lafford ". Drawn on a single sheet of vellum , it measures 158 by 133 cm (62 by 52 in). The writing is in black ink, with additional red and gold, and blue or green for water (with the Red Sea coloured red). The captions demonstrate clearly the multiple functions of these large medieval maps, conveying a mass of information on Biblical subjects and general history, in addition to geography. Jerusalem
6708-576: 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 ,
6864-553: 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
7020-483: 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
7176-492: 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
7332-424: 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
7488-540: The cursus publicus , the road network in the Roman Empire . It is a 13th-century copy of an original map dating from the 4th century, covering Europe, parts of Asia (India) and North Africa. The map is named after Konrad Peutinger , a German 15th–16th century humanist and antiquarian. The map was discovered in a library in Worms by Conrad Celtes , who was unable to publish his find before his death, and bequeathed
7644-563: The Apocalypse of St John . These " Beatus maps " are believed to derive from a single (now lost) original which was used to illustrate the missions of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. The "complex" or "great" world maps are the most famous mappae mundi. Although most employ a modified T-O scheme, they are considerably more detailed than their smaller T-O cousins. These maps show coastal details, mountains, rivers, cities, towns and provinces. Some include figures and stories from history,
7800-730: The Adoptionist controversy, criticizing the views of Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo . He is best remembered today as the author of his Commentary on the Apocalypse , published in 776. An illustrated manuscript known as the Saint-Sever Beatus , featuring the Commentary , was produced around 1050 at the Abbey of Saint-Sever, Aquitaine, France. It contains one of the oldest Christian world maps as an illustration of
7956-764: 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
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#17327728355018112-413: 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
8268-446: The Commentary . Although the original manuscript and map has not survived, copies of the map survive in several of the extant manuscripts. Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari compiled a Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk ( Compendium of the languages of the Turks ) in the 11th century. The manuscript is illustrated with a 'Turkocentric' world map, oriented with east (or rather, perhaps, the direction of midsummer sunrise) on top, centered on
8424-436: The Cotton library ( MS. Tiberius B.V., fol. 56v), now in the British Library . It is not intended purely as an illustration to that work, for it contains much material gathered from other sources, including some which would have been the most up-to-date available, although it is based on a distant Roman original (similar to the source of another 11th-century world map , illustrating an edition of Isidore of Seville) – on which
8580-468: The Cotton or Anglo-Saxon map , the Psalter map and the Henry of Mainz map. The somewhat later mappae mundi that accompany the popular Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden should probably be viewed as degenerate forms of the earlier complex maps. Complex mappae mundi include: To modern eyes, mappae mundi can look superficially primitive and inaccurate. However, mappae mundi were never meant to be used as navigational charts and they make no pretence of showing
8736-539: 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
8892-421: The Duke of Ferrara , who successfully smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502. It shows the islands of the Caribbean and what may be the Florida coastline, as well as Africa, Europe and Asia. The map is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast, discovered in 1500 by Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral who conjectured whether it was merely an island or part of
9048-447: The Euphrates , surrounded by a circular landmass including Assyria , Urartu ( Armenia ) and several cities, in turn surrounded by a "bitter river" ( Oceanus ), with eight outlying regions ( nagu ) arranged around it in the shape of triangles, so as to form a star. The accompanying text mentions a distance of seven beru between the outlying regions. The descriptions of five of them have survived: Anaximander (died c. 546 BCE)
9204-485: 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
9360-405: The Finnmark coast. The cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann from southern Germany, supported by the mapping friend René II, Duke of Lorraine , collected map data over several years, including information on the most recent discoveries, to build up a new collective work of geography and cartography. Along with a book they further incorporated, for the first time in history,
9516-441: 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,
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#17327728355019672-439: 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
9828-589: The Low Countries produced the second oldest known printed representation of the New World. The Ruysch map was published and widely distributed in 1507. It uses Ptolemy 's coniform projection, as does the Contarini-Rosselli 1506 map. Both document Christopher Columbus ' discoveries as well as that of John Cabot , including information from Portuguese sources and Marco Polo 's account. There are notes on his map that clearly were from Portuguese sources. Newfoundland and Cuba are shown connected to Asia, as Columbus and Cabot believed. “Sipganus” (Marco Polo's Japan)
9984-569: The Medieval Latin words mappa (cloth or chart) and mundus (world). Around 1,100 mappae mundi are known to have survived from the Middle Ages. Of these, some 900 are found illustrating manuscript books and the remainder exist as stand-alone documents. Extant mappae mundi come in several distinct varieties, including: Medieval world maps which share some characteristics of traditional mappae mundi but contain elements from other sources, including Portolan charts and maps associated with Ptolemy 's Geography are sometimes considered
10140-420: 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
10296-520: The United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin
10452-431: The interior of Africa by western mapmakers was left to the 19th and early 20th century. The Saint-Bélec slab discovered in 1900 by Paul du Châtellier , in Finistère, France, is dated to between 1900 BCE and 1640 BCE. A recent analysis, published in the Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society, has shown that the slab is a three-dimensional representation of the River Odet valley in Finistère, France. This would make
10608-592: The 15th century, shows China at the centre and Europe, half-way round the globe, depicted very small and horizontally compressed at the edge. The coast of Africa is also mapped from an Indian Ocean perspective, showing the Cape of Good Hope area. It is believed that maps of this type were made since about the 1320s, but all earlier specimens have been lost, so the earliest survivor is the elaborate, colourful Da Ming Hunyi Tu , painted on 17 m (180 sq ft) of silk. The Gangnido ("Map of Integrated Lands and Regions of Historical Countries and Capitals (of China)")
10764-455: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;
10920-474: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed
11076-463: The 2nd projection were not made in Western Europe until Nicolaus Germanus 's 1466 edition. Ptolemy's 3rd (and hardest) projection does not seem to have been used at all before new discoveries expanded the known world beyond the point where it provided a useful format. Cicero 's Dream of Scipio described the Earth as a globe of insignificant size in comparison to the remainder of the cosmos. Many medieval manuscripts of Macrobius ' Commentary on
11232-675: The 6th century, which is invaluable to historians. Cosmas seems to have personally visited the Kingdom of Axum in modern Ethiopia and Eritrea , as well as India and Sri Lanka . In 522 CE, he visited the Malabar Coast (South India). A major feature of his Topography is Cosmas' worldview that the world is flat , and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid, a view he took from unconventional interpretations of Christian scripture . Cosmas aimed to prove that pre-Christian geographers had been wrong in asserting that
11388-465: The 9th century. The oldest surviving manuscripts of the work date to Maximus Planudes 's restoration of the text a little before 1300 at Chora Monastery in Constantinople ( Istanbul ); surviving manuscripts from this era seem to preserve separate recensions of the text which diverged as early as the 2nd or 4th century. A passage in some of the recensions credits an Agathodaemon with drafting
11544-646: The Bible and classical mythology. Also shown on some maps are exotic plants, beasts and races known to medieval scholars only through Roman and Greek texts. Prior to its destruction in World War II, the Ebstorf map at 3.5 m (11 ft 6 in) across was the largest surviving mappa mundi. Today that honour is held by the surviving centre portion of the Hereford map which is 147 cm across and 175 cm top to bottom. Other important maps in this group are
11700-766: 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
11856-917: 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,
12012-560: The Dream of Scipio include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes , zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth (labeled as globus terrae , the sphere of the Earth) at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres. The Tabula Peutingeriana ( Peutinger table ) is an itinerarium showing
12168-632: The Earth's spherical shape and the state of the known world. They also provide information to sailors on tides and how to tell time at night. Unlike many other nautical charts, the Catalan Atlas is read with the north at the bottom. As a result of this the maps are oriented from left to right, from the Far East to the Atlantic. The first two leaves, forming the oriental portion of the Catalan Atlas, illustrate numerous religious references as well as
12324-538: 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
12480-484: 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
12636-478: The Great and his successors. Asia became wider, reflecting the new understanding of the actual size of the continent. Eratosthenes was also the first geographer to incorporate parallels and meridians within his cartographic depictions, attesting to his understanding of the spherical nature of the Earth. Posidonius (or Poseidonius) of Apameia (c. 135–51 BCE) was a Greek Stoic philosopher who traveled throughout
12792-607: The Renaissance, western Europeans became reacquainted with the work of many ancient Greek scholars. In the field of geography and map-making, the coordinate system which Claudius Ptolemy outlined in the Geography became extremely influential. Over time maps influenced by these new ideas displaced the older traditions of mappae mundi. The last examples of the tradition, including the massive map of Fra Mauro , may be seen as hybrids, incorporating Portolan-style coastlines into
12948-666: The Roman era, with Ptolemy's world map (2nd century CE), which would remain authoritative throughout the Middle Ages . Since Ptolemy, knowledge of the approximate size of the Earth allowed cartographers to estimate the extent of their geographical knowledge, and to indicate parts of the planet known to exist but not yet explored as terra incognita . With the Age of Discovery , during the 15th to 18th centuries, world maps became increasingly accurate; exploration of Antarctica, Australia, and
13104-541: The Roman world and beyond and was a celebrated polymath throughout the Greco-Roman world, like Aristotle and Eratosthenes . His work "about the ocean and the adjacent areas" was a general geographical discussion, showing how all the forces had an effect on each other and applied also to human life. He measured the Earth's circumference by reference to the position of the star Canopus . His measure of 240,000 stadia translates to 24,000 miles (39,000 km), close to
13260-541: The Saint-Bélec slab the oldest known map of a territory in the world. According to the authors, the map probably was not used for navigation, but rather to show the political power and territorial extent of a local ruler's domain of the early Bronze Age . A Babylonian world map, known as the Imago Mundi , is commonly dated to the 6th century BCE. The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on
13416-618: The account of the traveller to Asia Niccolo da Conti , rather than the usual source of Marco Polo . The author is unknown, but is a more modern development than the Fra Mauro world map , less intricate and complete, with fairly good proportions given to each of the continents. The map depicts the main landmarks of the time, and figures such as the legendary Prester John in Africa, the Great Khan in China, "Xilam" ( Ceylon ) and Sumatra, and
13572-472: The actual circumference of 24,901 miles (40,074 km). He was informed in his approach by Eratosthenes, who a century earlier used the elevation of the Sun at different latitudes. Both men's figures for the Earth's circumference were uncannily accurate, aided in each case by mutually compensating errors in measurement. However, the version of Posidonius' calculation popularised by Strabo was revised by correcting
13728-458: The ancient city of Balasagun in what is now Kyrgyzstan , showing the Caspian Sea to the north, and Iraq , Armenia , Yemen and Egypt to the west, China and Japan to the east, Hindustan , Kashmir , Gog and Magog to the south. Conventional symbols are used throughout – blue lines for rivers, red lines for mountain ranges etc. The world is shown as encircled by the ocean. The map
13884-418: The books of Geographica is a map of Europe. Whole world maps according to Strabo are reconstructions from his written text. Pomponius is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the Earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones , people inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to the folk of the northern temperate regions due to
14040-598: The central Middle Ages a new type of map developed as an aid to navigating the Mediterranean Sea. Known as " Portolan charts ", these maps are characterized by extremely accurate coastlines with criss-crossing rhumb lines . A particularly famous example is the Catalan Atlas attributed to Abraham Cresques in the Bibliothèque nationale de France . During the late Middle Ages and with the coming of
14196-657: The chapter library of the Sainte-Cécile Albi Cathedral . The Albi Mappa Mundi was inscribed in October 2015 in the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO . The manuscript bearing the card contains 77 pages. It is named in the eighteenth century " Miscellanea " (Latin word meaning "collection"). This collection contains 22 different documents, which had educational functions. The manuscript,
14352-551: The circumference of the world; combined with accurate absolute distances, this led him to also overestimate the length of the Mediterranean Sea in terms of degrees . His prime meridian at the Fortunate Isles was therefore around 10 actual degrees further west of Alexandria than intended, a mistake that was corrected by Al-Khwārizmī following the translation of Syriac editions of Ptolemy into Arabic in
14508-547: The coast of Brazil is also easily recognizable. Various Atlantic islands including the Azores and Canary Islands are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia . The map is noteworthy for its apparent south-eastward extension of the American continent to depict a southern landmass that some controversially claim is evidence for early awareness of the existence of Antarctica . Alternatively, it has been suggested that this
14664-515: The continent that several Spanish expeditions had just encountered farther north (cf. Amerigo Vespucci ). The Caverio Map , also known as the Caveri Map or Canerio Map, is a map drawn by Nicolay de Caveri , c. 1505 . It is hand drawn on parchment and coloured, being composed of ten sections or panels, measuring 2.25 by 1.15 metres (7.4 by 3.8 ft). Historians believe that this undated map signed with "Nicolay de Caveri Januensis"
14820-640: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Cotton or Anglo-Saxon map The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity , the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm. World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appear in the Hellenistic period . The developments of Greek geography during this time, notably by Eratosthenes and Posidonius culminated in
14976-519: 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
15132-459: The descriptive matter was accompanied by a map, based upon Anaximander 's map of the Earth, which he corrected and enlarged. The work only survives in some 374 fragments, by far the majority being quoted in the geographical lexicon the Ethnica , compiled by Stephanus of Byzantium . Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE) drew an improved world map, incorporating information from the campaigns of Alexander
15288-495: The design of a three-masted European ship in the Indian Ocean , something which had not occurred, suggesting that a sea-lane was a possibility. The Fra Mauro map was made between 1457 and 1459 by the Venetian monk Fra Mauro . It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame, about 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) in diameter. The original world map was made by Fra Mauro and his assistant Andrea Bianco,
15444-409: The distance between Rhodes and Alexandria to 3,750 stadia, resulting in a circumference of 180,000 stadia, or 18,000 miles (29,000 km). Ptolemy discussed and favored this revised figure of Posidonius over Eratosthenes in his Geographia , and during the Middle Ages scholars divided into two camps regarding the circumference of the Earth, one side identifying with Eratosthenes' calculation and
15600-593: The earth was spherical and that it was in fact modelled on the Tabernacle , the house of worship described to Moses by God during the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. The medieval T and O maps originate with the description of the world in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (died 636). This qualitative and conceptual type of medieval cartography represents only the top-half of a spherical Earth. It
15756-448: 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
15912-594: 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
16068-516: 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
16224-521: The first in the Roman Empire to show China . Around 120 CE, Marinus wrote that the habitable world was bounded on the west by the Fortunate Islands . The text of his geographical treatise however is lost. He also invented the equirectangular projection , which is still used in map creation today. A few of Marinus' opinions are reported by Ptolemy. Marinus was of the opinion that the Okeanos
16380-514: The first to correctly portray the coast of Florida, as a macro-peninsula is attached to a large island labeled Antillia . Bianco also collaborated with Fra Mauro on the Fra Mauro world map of 1459. Mainly a decoration piece, the Borgia map is a world map made sometime in the early 15th century, and engraved on a metal plate. The Genoese map of 1457 is a world map that relied extensively on
16536-915: 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 ,
16692-751: The frame of a traditional mappa mundi. 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 , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are
16848-829: 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
17004-780: The globe "apple" may be related to the Reichsapfel ("Imperial Apple", Globus cruciger ) which was also kept in Nuremberg along with the Imperial Regalia ( Reichskleinodien ). In 1907, it was transferred to the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg . The Juan de la Cosa , a Spanish cartographer, explorer and conquistador , born in Santoña in the northern autonomous region of Cantabria , made several maps of which
17160-471: The habitable portion of the world known to medieval Europeans, limiting their perspective to a relatively small portion of the Earth's Northern Hemisphere. The landmass was illustrated as a circle (an "O") divided into three portions by a "T". These three divisions were the continents of Asia , Africa and Europe . The popularity of the Macrobian maps and the combination of T-O style continents on some of
17316-454: 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
17472-479: 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
17628-612: 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 ,
17784-605: The larger Macrobian spheres illustrate that Earth's sphericity continued to be understood among scholars during the Middle Ages. The V-in-square map depicts the Earth divided between the sons of Noah . Quadripartite maps represent a sort of amalgam of the zonal and T-O maps by illustrating the three known continents separated by an equatorial ocean from a fourth unknown land, often called Antipodes . Fourteen large quadripartite maps are found illustrating different manuscripts of Beatus of Liébana 's popular Commentary on
17940-479: 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
18096-400: The latter depicted according to the exaggerated classical conception of its size. Unsurprisingly, Britain itself is depicted in some detail. Great Britain, unusually by medieval standards, is shown as one island, albeit with an exaggerated Cornish promontory, and Mona , Ireland and the many Scottish islands are all indicated. The cartographer is slightly confused by Iceland, depicting it both by
18252-413: The map betrays a decorative rather than practical purpose, particularly in the portrayal of river systems, which form unnatural loops rarely seen on Chinese maps. Nonetheless, it is considered as "superior to anything produced in Europe prior to the end of the fifteenth century". The De Virga world map was made by Albertinus de Virga between 1411 and 1415. Albertin de Virga, a Venetian, is also known for
18408-445: The map in 1508 to Peutinger. It is conserved at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek , Hofburg , Vienna. Around 550 Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote the copiously illustrated Christian Topography , a work partly based on his personal experiences as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the early 6th century. Though his cosmogony is refuted by modern science, he has given a historic description of India and Sri Lanka during
18564-401: The medieval world maps (the mappae mundi) both from their concept and in their concrete practice are founded on a systematically geometric projection of the known world. The basis of this projection, however, is not geographical surveying but the harmonious order of God’s creation. Using regular geometric forms like circles and triangles which are also regarded as religiously perfect, they created
18720-528: The name America on a map, holding the strong opinion that it was a new continent that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered on his voyage and not only a few smaller islands as Christopher Columbus did in the West Indies . The Piri Reis map is a famous world map created by 16th-century Ottoman Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis . The surviving third of the map shows part of the western coasts of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy, and
18876-420: 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
19032-443: The network of lines appears to indicate the boundaries of imperial provinces. The date of drawing was formerly estimated at c. 992–994 CE, based on suggested links to the journey of Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury from Rome but more recent analysis indicates that, although the information was revised about that time, the map was probably drawn between 1025 and 1050. Like the later map by al-Idrisi (see below) this map
19188-528: The north pole, Ruysch drew islands, based on reports in the book Inventio Fortunata of the English friar Nicholas of Lynne . The island above Norway shows remarkable similarities to Svalbard , which was not discovered until 1597 (by Willem Barents ). Ruysch calls it 'European Hyberborea' and a peninsula stretching out towards it is clearly marked with the church of 'Sancti Odulfi', St Olaf's church in Vardø on
19344-486: The northern temperate zone's Eastern Hemisphere. As most surviving zonal maps are found illustrating Macrobius ' Commentary on Cicero 's Dream of Scipio (an excerpt of Cicero's De Re Publica ), this type of map is sometimes called "Macrobian". In their simplest and most common form, Zonal mappae mundi are merely circles divided into five parallel zones, but several larger zonal maps with much more detail have survived. T-O maps , unlike zonal maps, illustrate only
19500-589: 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;
19656-661: The only survivor is the Mappa Mundi of 1500. It is the first known European cartographic representation of the Americas . It is now in the Museo Naval in Madrid . Reproductions of it are given by Humboldt in his Atlas géographique et physique . The Cantino planisphere or Cantino world map is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese discoveries in the east and west. It is named after Alberto Cantino, an agent for
19812-570: 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 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
19968-475: 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
20124-450: The other with Posidonius' 180,000 stadion measure, which is now known to be about 33% too low. This was the number used by Christopher Columbus to underestimate the distance to India as 70,000 stades. Strabo is mostly famous for his 17-volume work Geographica , which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known to his era. The Geographica first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as
20280-508: The post-Mongol era stagnation of East Asian cartography as geographic information about the West was not updated until the introduction of European knowledge in the 16-17th centuries. Superficially similar to the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu (which has been less well known in the West because it is kept in closed archive storage) the Gangnido shows its Korean origin in the enlargement of that country, and incorporates vastly improved (though wrongly positioned, scaled and oriented) mapping of Japan. Elsewhere,
20436-401: 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
20592-437: The relative areas of land and water. Rather, mappae mundi were schematic and were meant to illustrate different principles. The simplest mappae mundi were diagrams meant to preserve and illustrate classical learning easily. The zonal maps should be viewed as a kind of teaching aid – easily reproduced and designed to reinforce the idea of the Earth's sphericity and climate zones. T-O maps were designed to schematically illustrate
20748-407: 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
20904-439: The royal library of France (now the Bibliothèque nationale de France ) since the time of Charles V . The Catalan Atlas originally consisted of six vellum leaves folded down the middle, painted in various colours including gold and silver. The first two leaves contain texts in the Catalan language covering cosmography , astronomy , and astrology . These texts are accompanied by illustrations. The texts and illustration emphasize
21060-459: The size of the other two continents combined. Because the sun rose in the east, Paradise (the Garden of Eden) was generally depicted as being in Asia, and Asia was situated at the top portion of the map. The Mappa mundi of Albi [ fr ] is a medieval map of the world, included in a manuscript of the second half of the 8th century, preserved in the old collection of the library Pierre-Amalric in Albi , France. This manuscript comes from
21216-464: The three land masses of the world as it was known to the Romans and their medieval European heirs. The larger mappae mundi have the space and detail to illustrate further concepts, such as the cardinal directions, distant lands, Bible stories, history, mythology, flora, fauna and exotic races. In their fullest form, such as the Ebstorf and Hereford maps, they become minor encyclopedias of medieval knowledge. In her study, Brigitte Englisch shows that
21372-405: The top, Europe on the left and North Africa on the right. Ibn Hawqal was an Arab scientist of the 10th century who developed a world map, based on his own travel experience and probably the works of Ptolemy. Another such cartographer was Istakhri . This map appears in a copy of a classical work on geography, the Latin version by Priscian of the Periegesis , that was among the manuscripts in
21528-414: 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
21684-619: 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
21840-409: The unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe , Asia and Africa , he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great (except Ptolemy ) he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian ( Persian Gulf ) and Arabian ( Red Sea ) gulfs on the south. Marinus of Tyre's world maps were
21996-508: 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
22152-425: 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
22308-481: 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
22464-402: 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
22620-426: Was centred on Jerusalem with east at the top of the map. It represented Rome in the shape of a lion, and had an evident interest in the distribution of bishoprics. The original was destroyed in the bombing of Hanover in 1943 during World War II, but some photographs and colour copies remain. The Hereford Mappa Mundi is a detailed mappa mundi based on the T and O map style, dating to c. 1300 . The map
22776-458: Was completed in 1504–05. It was probably either made in Lisbon by the Genoese Canveri, or copied by him in Genoa from the very similar Cantino map . It shows the east coast of North America with surprising detail, and was one of the primary sources used to make the Waldseemüller map in 1507. The Caverio map is currently at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Johannes Ruysch an explorer, cartographer, astronomer and painter from
22932-418: Was drawn by Al-Idrisi in 1154 for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily , after a stay of eighteen years at his court, where he worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map. The map, written in Arabic, shows the Eurasian continent in its entirety, but only shows the northern part of the African continent. The Ebstorf Map was an example of a European mappa mundi , made by Gervase of Ebstorf , who
23088-531: 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
23244-400: 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
23400-469: 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
23556-434: Was possibly the same man as Gervase of Tilbury , some time in the thirteenth century. It was a very large map: painted on 30 goatskins sewn together, it measured about 3.6 m × 3.6 m (12 ft × 12 ft). The head of Christ was depicted at the top of the map, with his hands on either side and his feet at the bottom. The Map was a greatly elaborated version of the medieval tripartite or T and O map ; it
23712-405: Was presumably tacitly considered a convenient projection of the inhabited portion of the world known in Roman and Medieval times (that is, the northern temperate half of the globe). The T is the Mediterranean , dividing the three continents , Asia , Europe and Africa , and the O is the surrounding Ocean . Jerusalem was generally represented in the center of the map. Asia was typically
23868-457: Was remarkably similar to the terrestrial globe later produced by Martin Behaim in 1492, the Erdapfel . Both show heavy influences from Ptolemy , and both possibly derive from maps created around 1485 in Lisbon by Bartolomeo Columbus . Although Martellus is believed to have been born in Nuremberg, Behaim's home town, he lived and worked in Florence from 1480 to 1496. The Erdapfel ( German : earth apple ) produced by Martin Behaim in 1492
24024-433: Was separated into an eastern and a western part by the continents ( Europe , Asia and Africa). He thought that the inhabited world stretched in latitude from Thule ( Shetland ) to Agisymba ( Tropic of Capricorn ) and in longitude from the Isles of the Blessed to Shera (China) . Marinus also coined the term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle . His chief legacy is that he first assigned to each place
24180-411: 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
24336-437: 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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