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This term is no longer confused with the early French-language-only cellular telephone network MaxiTel. Although some people still use it to try to call up old Spanish dictators... --Mucho G. Usto
The new link to Allophone (Canadian usage) can be removed without consulting the linker by anyone who prefers the original link.
Hence many people would only consider France as the only truly francophone country as other contries have French spoken by a minority of the population. as a native speaker of French and no other language. But I doubt that most of the people who interpret 'francophone' in that way would claim that Canada, Belgium, or Cameroon are not francophone nations. For that, all you would need would be a significant francophone minority. (At the least, they're all members of La Francophonie.) -- Saforrest 23:04, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
The following passage was added by Mikkalai after he was upset with my attempts to redirect this and similar articles to French language:
Similar passages have been inserted at Anglophone and Hispanophone as well, all with wording along the lines of "...reaches beyond the dictionary definition of..." I can only interpret this as an attempt to defend the articles by inserting subjective definitions rather than to accurately describe the term. I can find no hint that this interpretation exists outside of Wikipedia. No other encyclopedias seem to keep any kind of separate articles on both languages and the speakers of a language sas a group, and I have no reason to believe that this is done merely because of lack of article space.
Peter Isotalo 09:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Your generic misunderstanding is that an encyclopedia article indeed goes "beyond the dictionary definition", and it is not a "subjective definition". In fact, it is not a definition, it is a description. Definition is only part of it. In addition, the encyclopedia article writes about people who are francophones: where they live, how they became francophonic, how heighbors treat them, how many of them, how they treat each other, whether they have their organization or community, how they educate their children, and so on and so forth. And there is no reason to put all this into the French language article. Yes, I inserted "similar passages" into several articles. And some of them, e.g., Russophone already have content going beyond " Russian language". `' mikka (t) 19:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Is "Francophone" properly capitalized or not? Badagnani 10:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
It's an official language and is frequently used alongside English in government affairs. Canada shoould be colored fair blue, "administrative language", not light blue, "cultural language". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.80.19.149 ( talk) 01:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC).
Thus, the current image is incongruous since it is contradicting Wikipedia itself. I believe that it should be reverted back to the image of September 18, 2008, which is the correct version. 67.71.190.146 ( talk) 20:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm surprised to see Ontario, Manitoba and Yukon listed under Canada and Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire listed under the US. These areas have very limited numbers of french speakers, and do not use french as an official language on a province/state level nor much of a history indicating french prominence. Can someone cite the reason for inclusion? Legacypac ( talk) 08:25, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire all had significant Franco-American communities dating from the expulsion of the Acadians from Canada, even if most don't speak the language now. [1] Culloty82 ( talk) 14:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
References
How do you make a map of a speaker?! – This strange use of Francophone to translate La Francophonie has also recently infected Sprachraum. — Tamfang ( talk) 17:33, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
It should be more, try to expand article according to Wikipedia policies with proper citations, if you allow my self I would be happy to help you so and I can certainly help you in expanding it. :) -- Faizanalivarya ( talk) 01:12, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
I've noticed that Bulgaria is listed as a European Francophone nation. This hardly seems right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.205.167.17 ( talk) 10:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
It has joined La Francophonie to expand its diplomatic reach (in contrast to Romania, which genuinely has had francophone influences), but agree, the "minority" cited in the article is rather negligible. [1] Culloty82 ( talk) 14:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
References
@ Wintereu: Thank you for bringing an attention to a yet another aspect of "-phone". In vast majority of cases it refers to native language of the bearer. At least this was the original intention of all these "-phone" articles. In the case of Romania, French is not a language of a recognized minority; it is rather a cultural, "Francophile" association (as said in the reference given). I agree this is an important aspect. Now it occurs to me a similar situation existed in late Russian empire, where French was basically "first", "bon ton" language of the nobility, and Russian was "mauvais ton".
I don't know a proper linguistic term for such situation. The term "
francophile" is IMO rather an individual aspect, kind of "hobby", while the terms "-phone" applicable for population groups, as in "francophone population". Would you like to do some research and write a section of
Francophone in this respect for Romania? I can do the same for
Russian Empire. (P.S. It turns out that "
Francophile" article says it all rather nicely. -No.Altenmann
>t
15:54, 12 July 2014 (UTC))
It might also be useful to tag each country in the list with description what aspect of francophony applies : titular nation, ethnic minority, colonial past, etc. -No.Altenmann >t 15:47, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
Shouldn't the title of this page be "List of countries where French is an official language"? JackofOz 10:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
french guiana should be shaded in blue
I understand that Québec is not an independent country, and it is right that Canada should appear on this list. But then the population figure in the table should also be that of Canada, not that of Québec as is the case right now. I know this may be confusing but there is a very clear disclaimer on top of the table. I am changing that value. Philippe Magnabosco ( talk) 12:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Québec is now included under the Dependent Entities section. Shaun Vancouver ( talk) 14:57, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Canada is an officially bilingual countries in which French is one of the official languages. I am not sure why Canada is missing from the list altogether. I am adding Canada in as one of the countries along with the statistics. Shaun Vancouver ( talk) 02:36, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
My interpretation of the dependent entities list is where any sub-national administrative region of a country proper (besides overseas territories) has French as one of its official languages (such as Pondicherry and Aosta Valley). Québec should be on the dependent entities list given that its status is similar to Pondicherry and Aosta Valley; French is the sole official language of Québec. To be consistent, if Québec is not on the list, then neither should Pondicherry or Aoasta Valley which are sub-national units that are not overseas territories. Shaun Vancouver ( talk) 02:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
That clarifies matters better, though the title of the section should be more clear. The title should be "Dependent Entities with French as an Official Language" and the column that says "country" in the Dependent Entities section should be changed to Entity" 69.196.186.105 ( talk) 03:45, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that the first paragraph says that there are 31 countries where French is official, but there are only 29 countries in the first list. Are there 2 countries missing? Also, is the 2nd section supposed to be dependant entities where French is official? The reason that I ask this is that French is not official in Louisiana, as it doesn't have an official language. Kman543210 ( talk) 12:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
29 is the correct figure. French is de jure official in 29 countries but de facto official / commonly used in 7 more countries. In total: 36. Aaker ( talk) 14:44, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Hang on a minute, I have never heard anyone from Guernsey speak French and I should now I have lived there for my whole life and the same for Jersey I've been there loads and only heard French very occasionally spoken. 86.141.76.248 ( talk) 18:48, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Jersey should be removed. French is not an "official language" of Jersey (re: the title of this page). Sure, French has a long history of use but it is not an "official language". 99.4.120.135 ( talk) 22:40, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
No consensus to move. Vegaswikian ( talk) 03:05, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
List of countries where French is an official language → List of French-speaking countries – Article also lists countries where French is spoken but is not an official language. Facts707 ( talk) 07:17, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
If you take a look at the source document for the number of speakers in countries where French is not official, it's sketchy. Enormous numbers in Bulgaria, Romania...omitted for no apparent reason, ditto the United States. I don't have a better source to propose here, but I used the Wikipedia page as a starter for a research project I'm involved with, and that OIF document is pretty much a non-starter for me, even given the difficulties inherent in language/demographics research. Ethnologue, dated though their numbers are, strikes me as better grounded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.13.155 ( talk) 17:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC) Okay: update by original poster...US excluded b/c not dues-paying members of La Franophonie. Data still extremely questionable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.13.155 ( talk) 18:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
French language has 75 million speakers as of 2007.
However, this "list" has over 120 million speakers in the official section, and over 32 million in the other section. That results about 153 million speakers total, over twice the number in the language article. Oh yes, this is from 2005, maybe 78 million stopped using French as a first language?
82.141.67.203 (
talk)
20:40, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Hi, I changed the chart to add that France is located in North America, South America, and Africa, taking into account the departements d'outre mer. Hihellowhatsup ( talk) 08:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi folks. There are a number of listings where the total number of French speakers listed (right-hand column) is less than the number listed in the "French-speakers" column or the one listed in the "partial-French-speakers" column. (Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Guinea, Chad, Haiti, Comoros, etc.) Alternately, there are places where the total number seems wildly inflated compared to the other two (Benin, Switzerland, Seychelles). I don't think I'm getting too picky (I'm not demanding perfect mathematical accord, and I'm more-or-less assuming "N/A" could be anything), but it seems like the numbers should come a bit closer to matching up. Haiti and the Ivory Coast struck me as particularly out of whack. Can anyone help? AshleyMorton ( talk) 14:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
I think what Fdbgfdgbfdgbfdfdbgfdbdfb is trying to say is that it does not make sense to have the section Countries where French is commonly used but not official on this page. I agree. The title of this page is only for where it is an official language. This section is extraneous and not germane to the page. EvergreenFir ( talk) 23:02, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
In Asia also there is one country where French is official and it is India. In the Indian union territory of Pondicherry also known as Puducherry, French is one of the official languages. So it also needs to be included in the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 43.245.136.203 ( talk) 14:10, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
Many thanks to the author (s) for this article. We translated parts of it into the Tatar Language.-- A.Khamidullin ( talk) 20:07, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Hey everyone, I'm trying to teach myself SPARQL to query wikidata. While playing around with it I tried to create a list of countries where French is the official language (either the only one or one of many official languages). My request returned all 29 countries mentioned in this article AND
Should these 3 countries be included in the list? Vincent Tep ( talk) 19:34, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of territorial entities where Afrikaans and Dutch are official languages which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RMCD bot 16:24, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
How comes the island has a different status for French than the .mainland Canada (if we are to trust the map)? Антон васильков ( talk) 22:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
French has been removed as an official langauge in Burkina Faso. As such I ask for whoever edits this page to take that in account and to not include the country in any list where it doesnt belong to. Such can be proven, i hope, by these news articles: https://apanews.net/french-no-longer-burkina-fasos-official-language/
https://www.africanews.com/amp/2023/12/07/burkina-abandons-french-as-an-official-language/
https://africanvibes.com/burkina-faso-drops-french-as-official-language/ Tigunikas ( talk) 16:47, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This term is no longer confused with the early French-language-only cellular telephone network MaxiTel. Although some people still use it to try to call up old Spanish dictators... --Mucho G. Usto
The new link to Allophone (Canadian usage) can be removed without consulting the linker by anyone who prefers the original link.
Hence many people would only consider France as the only truly francophone country as other contries have French spoken by a minority of the population. as a native speaker of French and no other language. But I doubt that most of the people who interpret 'francophone' in that way would claim that Canada, Belgium, or Cameroon are not francophone nations. For that, all you would need would be a significant francophone minority. (At the least, they're all members of La Francophonie.) -- Saforrest 23:04, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
The following passage was added by Mikkalai after he was upset with my attempts to redirect this and similar articles to French language:
Similar passages have been inserted at Anglophone and Hispanophone as well, all with wording along the lines of "...reaches beyond the dictionary definition of..." I can only interpret this as an attempt to defend the articles by inserting subjective definitions rather than to accurately describe the term. I can find no hint that this interpretation exists outside of Wikipedia. No other encyclopedias seem to keep any kind of separate articles on both languages and the speakers of a language sas a group, and I have no reason to believe that this is done merely because of lack of article space.
Peter Isotalo 09:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Your generic misunderstanding is that an encyclopedia article indeed goes "beyond the dictionary definition", and it is not a "subjective definition". In fact, it is not a definition, it is a description. Definition is only part of it. In addition, the encyclopedia article writes about people who are francophones: where they live, how they became francophonic, how heighbors treat them, how many of them, how they treat each other, whether they have their organization or community, how they educate their children, and so on and so forth. And there is no reason to put all this into the French language article. Yes, I inserted "similar passages" into several articles. And some of them, e.g., Russophone already have content going beyond " Russian language". `' mikka (t) 19:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Is "Francophone" properly capitalized or not? Badagnani 10:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
It's an official language and is frequently used alongside English in government affairs. Canada shoould be colored fair blue, "administrative language", not light blue, "cultural language". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.80.19.149 ( talk) 01:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC).
Thus, the current image is incongruous since it is contradicting Wikipedia itself. I believe that it should be reverted back to the image of September 18, 2008, which is the correct version. 67.71.190.146 ( talk) 20:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm surprised to see Ontario, Manitoba and Yukon listed under Canada and Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire listed under the US. These areas have very limited numbers of french speakers, and do not use french as an official language on a province/state level nor much of a history indicating french prominence. Can someone cite the reason for inclusion? Legacypac ( talk) 08:25, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire all had significant Franco-American communities dating from the expulsion of the Acadians from Canada, even if most don't speak the language now. [1] Culloty82 ( talk) 14:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
References
How do you make a map of a speaker?! – This strange use of Francophone to translate La Francophonie has also recently infected Sprachraum. — Tamfang ( talk) 17:33, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
It should be more, try to expand article according to Wikipedia policies with proper citations, if you allow my self I would be happy to help you so and I can certainly help you in expanding it. :) -- Faizanalivarya ( talk) 01:12, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
I've noticed that Bulgaria is listed as a European Francophone nation. This hardly seems right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.205.167.17 ( talk) 10:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
It has joined La Francophonie to expand its diplomatic reach (in contrast to Romania, which genuinely has had francophone influences), but agree, the "minority" cited in the article is rather negligible. [1] Culloty82 ( talk) 14:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
References
@ Wintereu: Thank you for bringing an attention to a yet another aspect of "-phone". In vast majority of cases it refers to native language of the bearer. At least this was the original intention of all these "-phone" articles. In the case of Romania, French is not a language of a recognized minority; it is rather a cultural, "Francophile" association (as said in the reference given). I agree this is an important aspect. Now it occurs to me a similar situation existed in late Russian empire, where French was basically "first", "bon ton" language of the nobility, and Russian was "mauvais ton".
I don't know a proper linguistic term for such situation. The term "
francophile" is IMO rather an individual aspect, kind of "hobby", while the terms "-phone" applicable for population groups, as in "francophone population". Would you like to do some research and write a section of
Francophone in this respect for Romania? I can do the same for
Russian Empire. (P.S. It turns out that "
Francophile" article says it all rather nicely. -No.Altenmann
>t
15:54, 12 July 2014 (UTC))
It might also be useful to tag each country in the list with description what aspect of francophony applies : titular nation, ethnic minority, colonial past, etc. -No.Altenmann >t 15:47, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
Shouldn't the title of this page be "List of countries where French is an official language"? JackofOz 10:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
french guiana should be shaded in blue
I understand that Québec is not an independent country, and it is right that Canada should appear on this list. But then the population figure in the table should also be that of Canada, not that of Québec as is the case right now. I know this may be confusing but there is a very clear disclaimer on top of the table. I am changing that value. Philippe Magnabosco ( talk) 12:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Québec is now included under the Dependent Entities section. Shaun Vancouver ( talk) 14:57, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Canada is an officially bilingual countries in which French is one of the official languages. I am not sure why Canada is missing from the list altogether. I am adding Canada in as one of the countries along with the statistics. Shaun Vancouver ( talk) 02:36, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
My interpretation of the dependent entities list is where any sub-national administrative region of a country proper (besides overseas territories) has French as one of its official languages (such as Pondicherry and Aosta Valley). Québec should be on the dependent entities list given that its status is similar to Pondicherry and Aosta Valley; French is the sole official language of Québec. To be consistent, if Québec is not on the list, then neither should Pondicherry or Aoasta Valley which are sub-national units that are not overseas territories. Shaun Vancouver ( talk) 02:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
That clarifies matters better, though the title of the section should be more clear. The title should be "Dependent Entities with French as an Official Language" and the column that says "country" in the Dependent Entities section should be changed to Entity" 69.196.186.105 ( talk) 03:45, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that the first paragraph says that there are 31 countries where French is official, but there are only 29 countries in the first list. Are there 2 countries missing? Also, is the 2nd section supposed to be dependant entities where French is official? The reason that I ask this is that French is not official in Louisiana, as it doesn't have an official language. Kman543210 ( talk) 12:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
29 is the correct figure. French is de jure official in 29 countries but de facto official / commonly used in 7 more countries. In total: 36. Aaker ( talk) 14:44, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Hang on a minute, I have never heard anyone from Guernsey speak French and I should now I have lived there for my whole life and the same for Jersey I've been there loads and only heard French very occasionally spoken. 86.141.76.248 ( talk) 18:48, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Jersey should be removed. French is not an "official language" of Jersey (re: the title of this page). Sure, French has a long history of use but it is not an "official language". 99.4.120.135 ( talk) 22:40, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
No consensus to move. Vegaswikian ( talk) 03:05, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
List of countries where French is an official language → List of French-speaking countries – Article also lists countries where French is spoken but is not an official language. Facts707 ( talk) 07:17, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
If you take a look at the source document for the number of speakers in countries where French is not official, it's sketchy. Enormous numbers in Bulgaria, Romania...omitted for no apparent reason, ditto the United States. I don't have a better source to propose here, but I used the Wikipedia page as a starter for a research project I'm involved with, and that OIF document is pretty much a non-starter for me, even given the difficulties inherent in language/demographics research. Ethnologue, dated though their numbers are, strikes me as better grounded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.13.155 ( talk) 17:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC) Okay: update by original poster...US excluded b/c not dues-paying members of La Franophonie. Data still extremely questionable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.13.155 ( talk) 18:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
French language has 75 million speakers as of 2007.
However, this "list" has over 120 million speakers in the official section, and over 32 million in the other section. That results about 153 million speakers total, over twice the number in the language article. Oh yes, this is from 2005, maybe 78 million stopped using French as a first language?
82.141.67.203 (
talk)
20:40, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Hi, I changed the chart to add that France is located in North America, South America, and Africa, taking into account the departements d'outre mer. Hihellowhatsup ( talk) 08:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi folks. There are a number of listings where the total number of French speakers listed (right-hand column) is less than the number listed in the "French-speakers" column or the one listed in the "partial-French-speakers" column. (Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Guinea, Chad, Haiti, Comoros, etc.) Alternately, there are places where the total number seems wildly inflated compared to the other two (Benin, Switzerland, Seychelles). I don't think I'm getting too picky (I'm not demanding perfect mathematical accord, and I'm more-or-less assuming "N/A" could be anything), but it seems like the numbers should come a bit closer to matching up. Haiti and the Ivory Coast struck me as particularly out of whack. Can anyone help? AshleyMorton ( talk) 14:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
I think what Fdbgfdgbfdgbfdfdbgfdbdfb is trying to say is that it does not make sense to have the section Countries where French is commonly used but not official on this page. I agree. The title of this page is only for where it is an official language. This section is extraneous and not germane to the page. EvergreenFir ( talk) 23:02, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
In Asia also there is one country where French is official and it is India. In the Indian union territory of Pondicherry also known as Puducherry, French is one of the official languages. So it also needs to be included in the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 43.245.136.203 ( talk) 14:10, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
Many thanks to the author (s) for this article. We translated parts of it into the Tatar Language.-- A.Khamidullin ( talk) 20:07, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Hey everyone, I'm trying to teach myself SPARQL to query wikidata. While playing around with it I tried to create a list of countries where French is the official language (either the only one or one of many official languages). My request returned all 29 countries mentioned in this article AND
Should these 3 countries be included in the list? Vincent Tep ( talk) 19:34, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of territorial entities where Afrikaans and Dutch are official languages which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RMCD bot 16:24, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
How comes the island has a different status for French than the .mainland Canada (if we are to trust the map)? Антон васильков ( talk) 22:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
French has been removed as an official langauge in Burkina Faso. As such I ask for whoever edits this page to take that in account and to not include the country in any list where it doesnt belong to. Such can be proven, i hope, by these news articles: https://apanews.net/french-no-longer-burkina-fasos-official-language/
https://www.africanews.com/amp/2023/12/07/burkina-abandons-french-as-an-official-language/
https://africanvibes.com/burkina-faso-drops-french-as-official-language/ Tigunikas ( talk) 16:47, 17 January 2024 (UTC)