Regions where it is an official language
     Regions where it is a second language

French (French: français, pronounced "Fronce-eh") is a Romance language that was first spoken in France. It is also spoken in Belgium (Wallonia), Luxembourg, Quebec (Canada), Switzerland (Romandy) and many different countries in Africa (Francophone Africa). About 220 million people speak French as a native or a second language.[4] It has also been one of the roots of other languages such as the Haitian Creole language. Like the other Romance languages, its nouns have genders that are divided into masculine (masculin) and feminine (féminin) words.

In ancient times, the Celts lived in what is now France.[5] In those days, the land was called Gaul (Latin: Gallia).  The Romans conquered Gallia and made it a province.  Because the Romans spoke Latin, the local people learned Latin and began to speak it. Their own language, Gaulish, tended to be spoken less often, although Breton is a language still spoken today in the part of France called Brittany, that came from the old Celtic language.

French pronunciation, more so than other Romance languages, became radically different from Latin. After the Roman Empire fell and Germanic peoples swarmed the countryside, Vulgar Latin was changing quickly. In medieval France it changed into two dialects or languages: langue d'oc and langue d'oïl. They both mean "language of yes", because oc was the word for "yes" in the south, and oïl meant "yes" in the north.  Today, the word for yes in French is oui, pronounced like "we".

In 1635, France established the French Academy in order to standardize the French language. To this day, the academy establishes the rules for Standard French.

Langue d'oc is now called Occitan, and it is still spoken by many people in Southern France.

French uses the roman alphabet, like English. There are a few differences, because vowels can have three types of diacritics added on to them. These are the acute accent é; grave accent è and circumflex accent î. A cedilla can also be added onto a c to make ç.

If a word ends with a consonant, this will usually not be pronounced unless the next word starts with a vowel. However, if the word is very short or the last consonant is a c, r, l or f, this is still pronounced.

Here are some examples of French words and sentences :

Many French words are like English words, because English took many words from the Norman language, a dialect of French influenced by Old Norse.  This is despite the fact that scholars consider English to be a Germanic language like German. Words in different languages with the same meaning which are spelled similarly are called cognates.  Most English words ending with "tion" and "sion" came from the French language. See below for more examples:

Aragonese  ·
Aromanian  ·
Arpitan  ·
Asturian or Bable  ·
Burgundian  ·
Catalan (Valencian, Balear)  ·
Champenois  ·
Corsican (Gallurese, Sassarese)  ·
Dalmatian  ·
Dgèrnésiais  ·
Emiliano-Romagnolo  ·
Fala  ·
Franc-Comtois  ·
French (with Cajun French, Quebec French) 
 · Friulian  ·
Galician  ·
Gallo  ·
Genoese  ·
Istriot  ·
Istro-Romanian  ·
Italian (Judeo-Italian)  ·
Jèrriais  ·
Ladin  ·
Ladino  ·
Leonese  ·
Ligurian (Monégasque)  ·
Lombard  ·
Lorrain  ·
Megleno-Romanian  ·
Mirandese  ·
Mozarabic  ·
Neapolitan  ·
Norman  ·
Occitan  ·
Picard  ·
Piedmontese  ·
Poitevin-Saintongeais  ·
Portuguese (with Brazilian Portuguese)  ·
Romanian (Moldovan, Vlach)  ·
Romansh  ·
Sardinian  ·
Sicilian  ·
Spanish (with Rioplatense Spanish)  ·
Shuadit  ·
Venetian  ·
Walloon  ·