World Language Map

Where is French spoken?

French (français) is an Indo-European language, spoken in France, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Algeria and 56 more. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where French is spoken

French is spoken in 60 countries: France, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Algeria and 56 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
France97%66,323,362
Democratic Republic of the Congo51%58,855,530
Cameroon68%21,056,948
Algeria33%15,517,425
Germany18%15,141,438
Morocco36%13,459,536
Italy20%12,192,980
United Kingdom17%11,638,047
Canada29%11,250,492
Ivory Coast34%10,193,812
Burundi59%8,018,159
Madagascar27%7,952,229
Tunisia53%6,385,864
Burkina Faso25%5,760,550
Benin34%4,997,014
Haiti42%4,936,638
Senegal26%4,900,350
Belgium38%4,551,488
Guinea27%3,776,274
Mali17%3,738,402
Republic of the Congo61%3,719,579
Togo41%3,656,376
Switzerland39%3,455,622
Niger13%3,424,564
Netherlands19%3,376,756
Chad13%2,482,168
Romania12%2,177,784
Lebanon38%2,038,502
United States0.6%1,914,993
Central African Republic29%1,638,778
Gabon63%1,546,719
Portugal15%1,531,080
Syria5.9%1,408,059
Austria13%1,165,837
Mauritius73%956,665
Rwanda5.8%790,151
Greece7.3%763,660
Ireland13%680,350
Luxembourg92%617,554
Mauritania13%562,645
Equatorial Guinea29%520,791
Djibouti50%497,487
Guinea-Bissau15%319,850
New Caledonia99%301,125
French Polynesia98%297,469
Comoros26%234,037
Hungary1.2%118,269
Vanuatu31%98,582
Cyprus6.6%87,155
Malta13%61,065
Seychelles53%52,039
São Tomé and Príncipe20%44,712
Monaco97%30,859
Saint Martin84%27,717
Wallis and Futuna83%13,250
Saint Barthélemy85%6,023
Andorra6.8%5,805
Saint Pierre and Miquelon100%5,132
French Southern and Antarctic Lands100%140
GuyanaNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, French is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks French.

How many people speak French?

Wikidata gives about 77.2 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). It also lists about 208.2 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2016). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where French sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies French as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Italic
  4. Latino-Faliscan
  5. Latinic
  6. Imperial Latin
  7. Romance
  8. Italo-Western Romance
  9. Western Romance
  10. Shifted Western Romance
  11. Northwestern Shifted Romance
  12. Gallo-Rhaetian
  13. Oil
  14. Central Oil
  15. Macro-French
  16. Global French
  17. French

Related languages

Other languages in the Global French group:

More about French

Codes: ISO 639-3 fra, Glottolog stan1290. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

French is a Romance language, descended from Latin. Latin’s footprint: the Roman Empire at its height → Latin spread along Roman roads →

Questions about French

Where is French spoken?

French is spoken in France, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Algeria and 56 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 97% of the population of France, which is about 66,323,362 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak French?

Wikidata gives about 77.2 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 208.2 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2016).

Which language family is French in?

Glottolog places French in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Italic, Latino-Faliscan, Latinic, Imperial Latin, Romance, Italo-Western Romance, Western Romance, Shifted Western Romance, Northwestern Shifted Romance, Gallo-Rhaetian, Oil, Central Oil, Macro-French and Global French.

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