150-686: Poverty Point State Historic Site/Poverty Point National Monument ( French : Pointe de Pauvreté ; 16 WC 5 ) is a prehistoric earthwork constructed by the Poverty Point culture , located in present-day northeastern Louisiana. Evidence of the Poverty Point culture extends throughout much of the Southeastern Woodlands of the Southern United States . The culture extended 100 miles (160 km) across
300-510: A Coles Creek culture mound constructed on top of a Poverty Point ridge. Mound E is sometimes referred to as the Ballcourt Mound. The Ballcourt designation comes from "two shallow depressions on its flattened top which reminded some archaeologists of playing areas in front of outdoor basketball goals, not because of any suggestion of actual activities at Poverty Point." Mound E is located 1330 ft (405 m) south of Mound A and
450-744: 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
600-639: A World Heritage Site in our region and state would be of great significance both culturally and economically." On June 22, 2014, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed Poverty Point as a World Heritage Site at its meeting in Doha , Qatar . Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne sent a two-person delegation to Qatar to assist delegates from the U.S. Departments of the Interior and State in providing information about Poverty Point to
750-531: A complex hunter-gatherer society that constructed large-scale monuments. The vast majority of other prehistoric monuments, ranging from Stonehenge in England to Khufu 's Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt , were constructed by agricultural societies, in which crop surpluses allowed greater density of population and stratification of society. The people who lived at Poverty Point were Native Americans, descendants of
900-431: 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,
1050-473: A definition similar to "all theropods closer to birds than to Deinonychus ", with Troodon being sometimes added as a second external specifier in case it is closer to birds than to Deinonychus . Avialae is also occasionally defined as an apomorphy-based clade (that is, one based on physical characteristics). Jacques Gauthier , who named Avialae in 1986, re-defined it in 2001 as all dinosaurs that possessed feathered wings used in flapping flight , and
1200-555: 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
1350-442: A group called Paraves . Some basal members of Deinonychosauria, such as Microraptor , have features which may have enabled them to glide or fly. The most basal deinonychosaurs were very small. This evidence raises the possibility that the ancestor of all paravians may have been arboreal , have been able to glide, or both. Unlike Archaeopteryx and the non-avialan feathered dinosaurs, who primarily ate meat, studies suggest that
1500-476: A period of less than three months. Prior to construction, the vegetation covering the area of Mound A was burned. According to radiocarbon analysis, this burning occurred between 1450 and 1250 BCE. The prehistoric builders immediately covered the burnt area with a layer of silt, followed quickly by the main construction effort. There are no signs of construction phases or weathering of the mound fill even at microscopic levels, indicating that construction proceeded in
1650-705: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on
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#17327577583171800-494: 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
1950-587: 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
2100-526: 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
2250-941: A second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union . Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as
2400-541: A single massive effort over a short period. In total volume, Mound A is made up of approximately 8,400,000 cubic feet (238,000 cubic meters) of fill, making it the second-largest earthen mound (by volume) in eastern North America. It is second in overall size to the later Mississippian-culture Monks Mound at Cahokia , built beginning about 950-1000 CE in present-day Illinois near the Mississippi River. Shallow borrow pits are located near Mound A. Presumably
2550-406: A sister group, the order Crocodilia , contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria . During the late 1990s, Aves was most commonly defined phylogenetically as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica . However, an earlier definition proposed by Jacques Gauthier gained wide currency in the 21st century, and
2700-452: A soil core taken from the base of the mound ramp. This charcoal, from the base of the mound, provided a radiocarbon date suggesting construction sometime after 1500 BCE. A sixth mound was discovered at Poverty Point in 2013. Known as Mound F, it is located outside and to the northeast of the concentric ridges. Mound F is about 5 ft (1.5 m) tall and 80 x 100 ft (24 by 30 m) at its base. A radiocarbon date on charred wood from
2850-424: A strong yet lightweight skeleton . Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5.5 cm (2.2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) common ostrich . There are over 11,000 living species and they are split into 44 orders . More than half are passerine or "perching" birds. Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are
3000-456: A time boundary between the Archaic and later Woodland periods. Archaeologists have long debated the functions of the Poverty Point site. One of the main questions has been whether it was used for a settlement or only for periodic events. Archaeologists postulate that houses were constructed on top of the concentric ridges. Postholes along with hearths and earth ovens have been found on
3150-717: A time, sometimes for years, and rarely for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous (one male with many females) or, rarely, polyandrous (one female with many males). Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction . They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Many species of birds are economically important as food for human consumption and raw material in manufacturing, with domesticated and undomesticated birds being important sources of eggs, meat, and feathers. Songbirds , parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano (bird excrement)
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#17327577583173300-547: 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
3450-573: A variety of different types such as fiber- tempered , grog-tempered, and untempered with both the Wheeler and Old Floyd Tchefuncte design styles as decoration. More commonly, however, they imported stone vessels from other peoples, made of steatite from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Most of the Poverty Point tools appear to have been made on-site, as there is evidence of debris from their manufacturing process found across
3600-448: A wide variety of forms and referred to as "Poverty Point Objects" or PPOs. Except for unique specialized forms, archaeologists generally conclude the fired earth objects were used in cooking, based on the artifacts recovery context and supported by experimental archaeology . When placed in earth ovens, the objects were shown to hold heat and aid in cooking food. The inhabitants of Poverty Point produced small amounts of pottery , creating
3750-425: Is 72 ft (22 m) tall at its highest point and about 705 x 660 ft (215 x 200 m) at its base. Mound A is located to the west of the ridges, and is roughly T-shaped when viewed from above. Some have interpreted Mound A as being in the shape of a bird or as an " Earth island" representing the cosmological center of the site. Researchers have learned that Mound A was constructed quickly, probably over
3900-437: 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
4050-779: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French
4200-577: Is a depression that divides the mound, which is thought to have been created by a 19th-century wagon road which proceeded northward to the old town of Floyd, Louisiana. Multiple radiocarbon dates for Mound C bracket the entire occupation of the site, but one radiocarbon test result from beneath the base of the mound suggests Mound C is one of the earliest constructions at the site. Mound C is composed of several thin layers of distinct soils with small amounts of accumulated debris, or midden, between them, indicating they were added over time. The uppermost level gave
4350-411: Is a rectangular flat-topped structure with rounded corners and a ramp extending from the northeast corner. Mound E is 13.4 ft (4 m) in height and 360 x 295 ft (110 x 90 m) at its base. The profile of an excavation unit on the edge of Mound E revealed five construction stages that were corroborated by series of soil cores recovered across the mound surface. No features were recorded in
4500-472: 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
4650-489: 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
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4800-430: 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
4950-462: 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
5100-540: Is called ornithology . Birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs and constitute the only known living dinosaurs . Likewise, birds are considered reptiles in the modern cladistic sense of the term, and their closest living relatives are the crocodilians . Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans (whose members include Archaeopteryx ) which first appeared during the Late Jurassic . According to recent estimates, modern birds ( Neornithes ) evolved in
5250-652: 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
5400-503: 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
5550-429: Is harvested for use as a fertiliser. Birds figure throughout human culture. About 120 to 130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry. The first classification of birds
5700-404: 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
5850-503: Is not considered a direct ancestor of birds, though it is possibly closely related to the true ancestor. Over 40% of key traits found in modern birds evolved during the 60 million year transition from the earliest bird-line archosaurs to the first maniraptoromorphs , i.e. the first dinosaurs closer to living birds than to Tyrannosaurus rex . The loss of osteoderms otherwise common in archosaurs and acquisition of primitive feathers might have occurred early during this phase. After
6000-469: 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
6150-502: Is on the same north-south line as the later Poverty Point Mounds E, A, and B. Approximately 1.2 miles (2.2 km) to the north of the Poverty Point earthworks is the Motley Mound (16WC7), which is 52 ft (16 m) in height with a base that measures 560 x 410 ft (170 x 125 m). Motley Mound has some similarity in form to Mound A, however, the cultural affiliation of this earthwork remains speculative. Poverty Point
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6300-828: 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
6450-516: Is synonymous to Avifilopluma. † Scansoriopterygidae † Eosinopteryx † Jinfengopteryx † Aurornis † Dromaeosauridae † Troodontidae Avialae Based on fossil and biological evidence, most scientists accept that birds are a specialised subgroup of theropod dinosaurs and, more specifically, members of Maniraptora , a group of theropods which includes dromaeosaurids and oviraptorosaurs , among others. As scientists have discovered more theropods closely related to birds,
6600-576: 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 ,
6750-553: 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
6900-483: 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
7050-492: 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
7200-424: 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
7350-501: Is unknown, although archaeologist Jon L. Gibson provides multiple scenarios for how long it would have taken to build the earthwork depending on the number and intensity of individual efforts. For example, he estimated that the earthwork could have been produced in a century by three generations if one hundred individuals spent six or seven days a month on the construction project. Gibson also suggests that workers lived on-site during construction, possibly setting up temporary homes on top of
7500-535: Is used by many scientists including adherents to the PhyloCode . Gauthier defined Aves to include only the crown group of the set of modern birds. This was done by excluding most groups known only from fossils , and assigning them, instead, to the broader group Avialae, on the principle that a clade based on extant species should be limited to those extant species and their closest extinct relatives. Gauthier and de Queiroz identified four different definitions for
7650-764: 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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#17327577583177800-462: The Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as
7950-513: The Coles Creek culture nearly 2000 years after the Poverty Point culture occupation of the site. First, Coles Creek culture ceramics were recovered near Mound D. Second, Coles Creek culture ceramics were recovered 40 cm below the ground surface near Mound D. Third, optically stimulated luminescence analyses on soils beneath and within the mound, which determine the date the soils were last exposed to sunlight, are consistent with
8100-539: 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
8250-485: 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
8400-559: 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,
8550-877: 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
8700-722: The Late Cretaceous and diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago, which killed off the pterosaurs and all non- ornithuran dinosaurs. Many social species preserve knowledge across generations ( culture ). Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and songs , and participating in such behaviour as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking , and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of bird species are socially (but not necessarily sexually) monogamous , usually for one breeding season at
8850-773: The Mississippi Delta and south to the Gulf Coast . The Poverty Point site has been designated as a state historic site, U.S. National Monument , a U.S. National Historic Landmark, and UNESCO World Heritage Site . The site is 15.5 miles (24.9 km) from the current flow of the Mississippi River , and is situated on the edge of Macon Ridge. The village of Epps developed in the historic period in West Carroll Parish , Louisiana. The Poverty Point site contains earthen ridges and mounds , built by indigenous people between 1700 and 1100 BCE during
9000-626: 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
9150-650: The State of Louisiana purchased a 400-acre (1.6 km) section of the site. In 1976, the state opened the site to the public as the Poverty Point State Commemorative Area. The state built a museum devoted to interpreting the earthworks and the artifacts uncovered there. In 1988, Congress designated the site as a U.S. National Monument . Today, Poverty Point National Monument is open for visitors daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. except for Thanksgiving , Christmas Day , and New Year's Day . As
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#17327577583179300-669: The Tiaojishan Formation of China, which has been dated to the late Jurassic period ( Oxfordian stage), about 160 million years ago. The avialan species from this time period include Anchiornis huxleyi , Xiaotingia zhengi , and Aurornis xui . The well-known probable early avialan, Archaeopteryx , dates from slightly later Jurassic rocks (about 155 million years old) from Germany . Many of these early avialans shared unusual anatomical features that may be ancestral to modern birds but were later lost during bird evolution. These features include enlarged claws on
9450-1012: The United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin
9600-444: The 1970s, excavations revealed evidence of huge wooden posts in the western plaza. Later geophysical survey identified several complex circular magnetic features, ranging from about 82 ft (25 m) to 206 ft (63 m) in diameter, in the southern half of the plaza. Based on the geophysical data, archaeologists with the University of Louisiana at Monroe and Mississippi State University undertook targeted excavations of some of
9750-455: 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;
9900-474: 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
10050-510: 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
10200-614: 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,
10350-408: 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
10500-416: 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
10650-444: The Late Archaic period in North America . Archaeologists have proposed a variety of possible functions for the site, including as a settlement, a trading center, and/or a ceremonial religious complex. The 402-acre (163 ha) property now operated as the Poverty Point State Historic Site contains "the largest and most complex Late Archaic earthwork occupation and ceremonial site yet found in North America ". Euroamericans described
10800-467: The Northwest Ridge 1. The trench excavation revealed multiple sequential levels of domestic activity over time. Archaeologists have interpreted this zone as possible evidence for more long-term habitation of the site. Changes in temperature, precipitation, and increased flooding, may have caused an ecological imbalance that led to the abandonment of Poverty Point. Archeologists use this change as
10950-403: The Poverty Point people carried dirt from those borrow pits and from elsewhere on the site to build the mound. Mound B is located north and west of the six concentric ridges and 2050 ft (625 m) north of Mound A. The mound is roughly conical in form and is approximately 21 ft (6.5 m) in height with a 180 ft (55 m) basal diameter. Dating to sometime after 1700 BCE, Mound B
11100-509: The West sector. However, clay figurines are evenly distributed throughout the ridge system. Based on the analysis of artifacts recovered from successive strata of ridge construction, there are clear changes in artifact styles through time. For example, cylindrical grooved Poverty Point Objects are the earliest form of the artifact type produced and biconical forms occur later in time. There is no naturally occurring stone at Poverty Point. Based on
11250-931: The World Heritage Committee as they considered its nomination to the World Heritage List. Poverty Point is now a member of this prestigious group, alongside such cultural landmarks as Stonehenge in England , the Pyramid Fields at Giza in Egypt , and the Great Wall of China . The designation made Poverty Point the first World Heritage Site in Louisiana and the 22nd in the United States. French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] )
11400-417: The aisles. Researchers have also studied historic and contemporary Native American religious beliefs for parallels. Gibson believes that the ridges were built with their arcs against the west to keep malevolent spirits of evil and death out of the complex. The people of the Poverty Point culture who constructed the earthworks were hunter-fisher-gatherers rather than agriculturalists. They are an example of
11550-428: The appearance of Maniraptoromorpha, the next 40 million years marked a continuous reduction of body size and the accumulation of neotenic (juvenile-like) characteristics. Hypercarnivory became increasingly less common while braincases enlarged and forelimbs became longer. The integument evolved into complex, pennaceous feathers . The oldest known paravian (and probably the earliest avialan) fossils come from
11700-557: The base of this superstructure was a rectangle twice as long as wide & about 1000 long by 500 broad & 150 feet in altitude with top or terrace, of 20 feet wide & 500 feet long ... The first published account of the site was in 1873 by Samuel Lockett, who served as an officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War . During the early 20th century, archaeologists took an interest in
11850-509: The birds that descended from them. Despite being currently one of the most widely used, the crown-group definition of Aves has been criticised by some researchers. Lee and Spencer (1997) argued that, contrary to what Gauthier defended, this definition would not increase the stability of the clade and the exact content of Aves will always be uncertain because any defined clade (either crown or not) will have few synapomorphies distinguishing it from its closest relatives. Their alternative definition
12000-410: The bone (reported as the proximal end of an infant's femur) has also been disputed and is not curated in any known collection from the site. Mound C is located inside the plaza area near the eastern edge of Macon Ridge. Mound C is 6.5 ft (2 m) in height, about 260 ft (80 m) long, and today is 80 ft (25 m) wide. The width is truncated by erosion along the eastern edge. There
12150-411: The circular magnetic features; they found large post pits, indicating the magnetic circles were rings of wood posts. Radiocarbon dates from the post pit fill and from overlying features indicate the post circles were part of the landscape built by Native Americans, even as the earthworks were under construction. The earthen mounds are the most visible earthworks at the site. The largest of these, Mound A,
12300-423: The construction of the earthworks, prehistoric workers leveled the land around the site and filled in gullies and other low places to create the flat central plaza and surfaces on which to build the mounds and ridges. The main building material was loess , a type of silt loam soil which is easy to dig but erodes when exposed to water. For this reason, clay may have been used to cap the loess constructions to protect
12450-483: The construction of the ridges and plaza. The Louisiana Division of Archaeology established the Station Archaeology Program at Poverty Point in 1996 to oversee, coordinate, and conduct site research. The program remains active and has conducted numerous excavations at the site along with curating and analyzing collections from previous excavations at Poverty Point. In 1960, John Griffin , who at
12600-473: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves ( Latin: [ˈaveːs] ), characterised by feathers , toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart , and
12750-519: 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
12900-578: The distant geological sources of different kinds of stone used to make lithic artifacts recovered at Poverty Point, archaeologists conclude that the inhabitants were active in trade with other Native Americans. For example, a disproportionate number of projectile points were made from raw materials naturally occurring in the Ouachita and Ozark mountains, and in the Ohio and Tennessee river valleys. Other materials derived from trade included soapstone from
13050-665: The earliest members of Aves, is removed from this group, becoming a non-avian dinosaur instead. These proposals have been adopted by many researchers in the field of palaeontology and bird evolution , though the exact definitions applied have been inconsistent. Avialae, initially proposed to replace the traditional fossil content of Aves, is often used synonymously with the vernacular term "bird" by these researchers. † Coelurus † Ornitholestes † Ornithomimosauria † Alvarezsauridae † Oviraptorosauria Paraves Most researchers define Avialae as branch-based clade, though definitions vary. Many authors have used
13200-448: 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
13350-594: 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
13500-409: The excavations and only a small number of artifacts were recovered. Several of the recovered artifacts were of nonlocal chert, such as novaculite, characteristic of the Poverty Point site raw material assemblage. Until recently, dating of Mound E relied on a similarity with the construction of Mound B and their relatively similar soil development. In 2017, a small piece of charcoal was recovered in
13650-483: The extinct moa and elephant birds . Wings, which are modified forelimbs , gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds , including ratites , penguins , and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds , have further evolved for swimming. The study of birds
13800-424: The fact that the inhabitants who located the town were a tribe of clay eating indians. The clay balls (Poverty Point Objects) were the size of a green walnut & had been baked in fire. Thus disappointed in the discovery of a lead mine, I mounted my horse. I rode out to look & see what the country looked like in the vicinity of this old town site. I soon discovered a mound of colossal size (Mound A). The figure of
13950-451: The first avialans were omnivores . The Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx is well known as one of the first transitional fossils to be found, and it provided support for the theory of evolution in the late 19th century. Archaeopteryx was the first fossil to display both clearly traditional reptilian characteristics—teeth, clawed fingers, and a long, lizard-like tail—as well as wings with flight feathers similar to those of modern birds. It
14100-516: 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
14250-915: 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 ,
14400-829: 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
14550-634: The immigrants who came to North America across the Bering Strait land bridge approximately 20,000 to 23,000 years ago. The people identified with the Poverty Point culture developed a distinct set of cultural traits different from other contemporary inhabitants in the Lower Mississippi Valley . Time, cultural change, and the lack of written records prevent researchers from identifying the people of Poverty Point as ancestors to any specific historic or modern tribe. The food sources of
14700-461: The interpretation that Poverty Point was a site where groups came to meet and trade on an occasional basis. Gibson believes there is evidence of too much rubbish left by original inhabitants for only occasional habitation, and that it would be implausible to build such a massive earthwork for use only as a trading center. Some archaeologists interpret Poverty Point as having religious symbolism and importance. Archaeologist William Haag, who excavated at
14850-428: The intervening swales is 65 – 100 ft (20 – 30 m). The approximate diameter of the outside ridge is three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km), while the innermost ridge's diameter is about three-eighths of a mile (0.6 km). The scale of the ridges is so massive that it wasn't until researchers examined aerial photographs that they were able to recognize the geometric design. Radiocarbon dates suggest that most of
15000-454: 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
15150-479: 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
15300-612: 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 ,
15450-479: 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
15600-409: The lead ore came to this place. & with this discovery, all hope of finding a lead mine disapate [ sic ]. Instead of a lead mine, I found myself on the site of an old Indian town. The surface of the earth at this place, for several acres around, were strewed in grate profusion, with fragments of Indian crockery. & a large number clay made by the indians for edible purposes indicating
15750-461: The mid-1950s, a human bone was reported within an ash lens at the base of the mound. At the time, this finding was reported as evidence of a cremation . However, recent research failed to find any evidence of the ash lens. Researchers suggest instead the reported lens represents a fine gray silt common to E horizon soils on the Macon Ridge and often found beneath mounds. The identification of
15900-483: The mound base indicates it was built sometime after ca 1280 BCE, making it the last Archaic mound added to Poverty Point. Approximately 1.8 miles (2.9 km) south of the Poverty Point site center is the Lower Jackson Mound (16WC10) a conical structure 10 ft (3 m) in height and 115 ft (35 m) in diameter at its base. For many years, archaeologists believed the Lower Jackson Mound
16050-481: The mound its final dome shape. Mound D is a rectangular earthwork having a flat summit that today contains a historic cemetery associated with the Poverty Point Plantation. This mound is about 4 ft (1.2 m) tall and 100 x 130 ft (30 x 40 m) at its base and is situated on one of the concentric ridges. Several lines of evidence suggest that Mound D was built, at least in part, by
16200-420: 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
16350-546: The next by a swale or gulley. The ridges are divided by four aisles forming earthwork sectors. Three additional linear ridges or causeways connect earthen features in the southern half of the ridges. Today the ridges vary from 0.3 to 6 ft (10 –185 cm) in height relative to the adjacent swales. Archaeologists believe they were once higher in places, but have been worn down through roughly 150 years of agricultural plowing. The slightly rounded crest of each ridge varies from 50 – 80 ft (15–25 m) in width. The width of
16500-589: 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;
16650-534: 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
16800-402: The outermost half) can be seen in the evolution of maniraptoromorphs, and this process culminated in the appearance of the pygostyle , an ossification of fused tail vertebrae. In the late Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago, the ancestors of all modern birds evolved a more open pelvis, allowing them to lay larger eggs compared to body size. Around 95 million years ago, they evolved
16950-532: The people at Poverty Point came from the local animals and plant life in the region. The Poverty Point people's food was acquired through fishing, gathering, and hunting. Poverty Point subsistence was broad-based due to the different seasonal foods that were available. Their diet consisted of large mammals like deer, small mammals like possum, various fish and turtles, mollusks, nuts, fruits, berries, and aquatic roots. The vast majority of artifacts recovered at Poverty Point are small, baked shapes made of loess, found in
17100-471: 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
17250-708: The prehistoric earthworks is caused by Harlin Bayou in the northern part of the site. The funding was approved. In January 2013, the United States Department of the Interior nominated Poverty Point for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List . State Senator Francis C. Thompson of Delhi in Richland Parish said the matter is not "just a local or even state issue [but] of international importance. The prestige of having
17400-536: The previously clear distinction between non-birds and birds has become blurred. By the 2000s, discoveries in the Liaoning Province of northeast China, which demonstrated many small theropod feathered dinosaurs , contributed to this ambiguity. The consensus view in contemporary palaeontology is that the flying theropods, or avialans , are the closest relatives of the deinonychosaurs , which include dromaeosaurids and troodontids . Together, these form
17550-471: 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
17700-433: The ridges were constructed between 1600 and 1300 BCE. Enclosed by the innermost concentric ridge and the eastern edge of Macon Ridge is a large, 37.5-acre (17.4 ha), plaza. Although the plaza appears to be a naturally flat area, it has been modified extensively. In addition to filled gullies, archaeologists found that soil was added to raise the level of the ground surface in some areas by as much as 3.3 ft (1 m). In
17850-495: The ridges, indicating the presence of buildings and associated activities. Other archaeologists believe that regular residence would have produced more postholes. Gibson and others note the postholes could have been destroyed by the historic plowing that took place on much of the site and also note the limited excavations that would reveal posthole patterns of houses. Archaeologists such as Sherwood Gagliano and Edwin Jackson support
18000-559: The ridges. An analysis of artifacts recovered from the ridges demonstrates that individual ridges and sectors of the earthwork complex were used for specialized activities. For example, based on the analysis of projectile points and production debris, the north sector of the earthwork was the favored location for manufacturing tools and the South sectors were the location where the manufactured projectile points were used as tools. Beads, pendants and other lapidary items were recovered primarily in
18150-452: The same biological name "Aves", which is a problem. The authors proposed to reserve the term Aves only for the crown group consisting of the last common ancestor of all living birds and all of its descendants, which corresponds to meaning number 4 below. They assigned other names to the other groups. Lizards & snakes Turtles Crocodiles Birds Under the fourth definition Archaeopteryx , traditionally considered one of
18300-551: The second toe which may have been held clear of the ground in life, and long feathers or "hind wings" covering the hind limbs and feet, which may have been used in aerial maneuvering. Avialans diversified into a wide variety of forms during the Cretaceous period. Many groups retained primitive characteristics , such as clawed wings and teeth, though the latter were lost independently in a number of avialan groups, including modern birds (Aves). Increasingly stiff tails (especially
18450-416: The site and completed a topographic survey of the Poverty Point site. Michael Hargrave and Berle Clay conducted a large area geophysical survey from 2006 to 2012, using magnetic gradiometry and resistivity to investigate the plaza and ridge system. Since 2006, Rinita Dalan has measured magnetic susceptibility of cores and downed cored holes to understand features identified by the gradiometer surveys as well as
18600-413: The site in the 1970s, interpreted the aisles that divide the ridge sectors as having astronomical significance aligned to the solstices . Astronomer Robert Purrington believes the ridges at Poverty Point were geometrically, rather than astronomically, aligned. The discrepancy between Haag and Purrington's conclusions stems from having chosen different centers for the site, leading to different angles for
18750-448: The site in the 19th century. Since the 1950s Poverty Point has been the focus of professional archaeological excavations. The earthworks are named after a 19th-century plantation on the property. The monumental earthworks of Poverty Point consist of a series of earthen ridges, earthen mounds, and a central plaza. The earthworks core of the site measures about 345 acres (140 ha), although archaeological investigations have shown that
18900-455: The site into the 21st century. These research efforts include Sharon Goad's (1980–1982) excavation trench on Northwest Ridge 1, Jon Gibson's (1983–1995) excavations at numerous ridge locations across the site, Glen Greene's (1983–1992) research on soil development and cultural landscaping of the site, and other archaeologists conducting limited site research. In the early 2000s T.R. Kidder and Anthony Ortmann conducted research on various mounds at
19050-669: The site is managed by the Louisiana Office of State Parks, a National Parks pass is not accepted for admission. Louisiana works with the Vicksburg U.S. Army Corps of Engineers division in developing plans for erosion control. In 2013, Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne, the ex officio head of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, requested $ 750,000 in emergency state funding to limit erosion at Poverty Point. The erosion which threatens
19200-507: The site. Poverty Point was investigated and described by Clarence B. Moore in 1913, by Gerard Fowke of the Smithsonian Institution in 1926, by Clarence H. Webb in 1935, and by Michael Beckman in 1946. Three excavation seasons in 1952, 1953 and 1955 were undertaken by James A. Ford and Clarence Webb, leading to the publication of Poverty Point, a Late Archaic Site in Louisiana in 1956. Excavations have continued at
19350-401: The southern Appalachian Mountains of Alabama and Georgia , and galena from Missouri and Iowa. Archaeologists assumed that the presence of copper artifacts indicated trade with copper-producing tribes in the upper Great Lakes region. However, modern scientific analyses demonstrate that at least some of the copper artifacts recovered from Poverty Point were made from materials available in
19500-418: The southern Appalachian Mountains, where soapstone or steatite vessels at Poverty Point are also sourced. In the 1830s, Jacob Walter, an American explorer searching for lead ore in the area, came across Poverty Point and wrote about it in his diary: On my arrival at the place of my destination, on bayou Mason at which place I had been informed lead ore had been found. But on examination I soon discovered how
19650-404: The surfaces from erosion. The earthworks were constructed by dumping basket loads of dirt in piles and then filling in the gaps between them. The baskets, depending on the size of the bearer, could hold between 30–50 lb (13.6–22.7 kg) of dirt, suggesting that men, women, and children participated in the construction. The number of individuals involved in the construction of Poverty Point
19800-709: The time was the Southeast Regional Archaeologist for the National Park Service , suggested to the Federal government that Poverty Point be declared and established as a national monument. At first the United States Congress declined to support the protection, fearing the unpopularity of acquiring the land from local landowners. The site was designated as a National Historic Landmark on June 13, 1962. In 1972,
19950-466: 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
20100-467: The total occupation area extended for more than three miles (5 km) along the Bayou Macon. The earthworks include six concentric, C-shaped ridges that extend to the edge of the Macon Ridge and several mounds outside and inside of the earthen ridges. These concentric ridges are unique to Poverty Point. The main part of the monument is the six concentric C-shaped ridges. Each ridge is separated from
20250-679: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French
20400-508: 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
20550-485: 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
20700-407: The very earthworks that they were building. Most archaeological excavations of the ridges at Poverty Point consist of small 3.3 ft × 3.3 ft (1 m × 1 m) units that cannot reveal the extent of an entire household. An exception is the 1980–1982 Louisiana State University excavations that explored a 16 ft × 98 ft (4.9 m × 29.9 m) trench placed on
20850-536: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of
21000-402: 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
21150-417: Was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French
21300-453: Was built during the same time as the Poverty Point site. However, modern radiocarbon dates from the base of the Mound demonstrate that the Lower Jackson Mound was built ca. 3900 to 3600 BC which predates the Poverty Point earthworks by about 1500 years. Artifacts typical of the early date, such as baked loess blocks and Evans projectile points, were recovered near the mound. Lower Jackson Mound
21450-466: Was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae . Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use. Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy . Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the clade Theropoda as an infraclass or a subclass, more recently a subclass. Aves and
21600-819: 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
21750-400: 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
21900-652: 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
22050-473: Was not constructed all at once. The final form appears to have been the product of successive generations over a considerable period of time. The exact sequence and timeframe of earthwork construction is not precisely known. Radiocarbon dating of the site has produced a wide variety of results, but recent syntheses suggest earthwork construction began as early as 1800 BCE and continued until as late as 1200 BCE. Archaeological excavations determined that prior to
22200-594: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of
22350-404: Was the first earthwork built at Poverty Point. Built in several stages, charcoal, fire pits, and possible postmolds were found at various levels within the mound. The impressions of woven baskets were preserved in the fill of an upper level of the mound construction. The final stage of the mound construction was a conical silt loam lens that covered the entire mound surface. During excavations in
22500-570: 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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