French People

## Country of Origin

c. 70 million in totalFrance (Mainland), Belgium (Wallonia), Switzerland (French cantons), Monaco, United Kingdom (Channel Islands).

## Religion or Spirituality

50% Irreligious, Roman Catholicism, Hueguenots.

## Language And Script

French (Français): 274,000,000Arpitan (Arpetan): 227,000- Latin script.

## Related Ethnic Groups

Latins Indo-Europeans Occitans Celts Germans

-Vanity Fair (Didn't he marry his teacher :/)

   Pour exécuter de grandes choses, il faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir.   (In order to achieve great things, we must live as though we were never going to die) -Luc de Clapiers

The **French people** (French: *Français*) are an ethnic group primarily located in Western Europe and nation that shares a common French culture, history, the French language and is identified with the country of France. The French people, the native speakers of langues d'oïl and Arpitan from northern and central France, are primarily the descendants of Gauls (including the Belgae) and Romans (or Gallo-Romans, western European Celtic and Italic peoples), as well as Germanic peoples such as the Franks, the Visigoths, the Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as various later waves of lower-level irregular migration that have continued to the present day.

National Anthem of France, Sung by Mireille Mathieu.

## Etymology (Étymologie)

Originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name *France* comes from the Latin *Francia*, or "realm of the Franks". Modern France is still named today *Francia* in Italian and Spanish, while *Frankreich* in German, *Frankrijk* in Dutch and *Frankrike* in Swedish all mean "Land/realm of the Franks". The name of the Franks is related to the English word *frank* ("free"): the latter stems from the Old French *franc* ("free, noble, sincere"), ultimately from Medieval Latin *francus* ("free, exempt from service; freeman, Frank"), a generalization of the tribal name that emerged as a Late Latin borrowing of the reconstructed Frankish endonym *\*Frank*. It has been suggested that the meaning "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation, or more generally because they had the status of freemen in contrast to servants or slaves. The etymology of *\*Frank* is uncertain. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic word \**frankōn*, which translates as "javelin" or "lance" (the throwing axe of the Franks was known as the *francisca*), although these weapons may have been named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around. In English, 'France' is pronounced /fræns/ *FRANSS* in American English and /frɑːns/ *FRAHNSS* or /fræns/ *FRANSS* in British English. The pronunciation with /ɑː/ is mostly confined to accents with the trap-bath split such as Received Pronunciation, though it can be also heard in some other dialects such as Cardiff English, in which /frɑːns/ is in free variation with /fræns/.

## History (Histoire)

### Celtic and Roman Gaul (Celtes et Gaule romaine)

Map of Gaul before complete Roman conquest (circa 58 BCE) and its five main regions : Celtica, Belgica, Cisalpina, Narbonensis and Aquitania.
Main articles: Celts, Gaul, Gauls, and Roman Empire

In the pre-Roman era, Gaul (an area of Western Europe that encompassed all of what is known today as France, Belgium, part of Germany and Switzerland, and Northern Italy) was inhabited by a variety of peoples who were known collectively as the Gaulish tribes. Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in the 7th century BCE or earlier, and non-Celtic peoples including the Ligures, Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine. The Belgae, who lived in the northern and eastern areas, may have had Germanic admixture; many of these peoples had already spoken Gaulish by the time of the Roman conquest.

Gaul was militarily conquered in 58–51 BCE by the Roman legions under the command of General Julius Caesar, except for the south-east which had already been conquered about one century earlier. Over the next six centuries, the two cultures intermingled, creating a hybridized Gallo-Roman culture. In the late Roman era, in addition to colonists from elsewhere in the Empire and Gaulish natives, Gallia also became home to some immigrant populations of Germanic and Scythian origin, such as the Alans.

### Frankish Kingdom (Royaume franc)

With the decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, a federation of Germanic peoples entered the picture: the Franks, from which the word "French" derives. The Franks were Germanic pagans who began to settle in northern Gaul as *laeti* during the Roman era. They continued to filter across the Rhine River from present-day Netherlands and Germany between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Initially, they served in the Roman army and obtained important commands. Their language is still spoken as a kind of Dutch (French Flemish) in northern France (French Flanders). The Alamans, another Germanic people immigrated to Alsace, hence the Alemannic German now spoken there. The Alamans were competitors of the Franks, and their name is the origin of the French word for "German": *Allemand*.

By the early 6th century the Franks, led by the Merovingian king Clovis I and his sons, had consolidated their hold on much of modern-day France. The other major Germanic people to arrive in France, after the Burgundians and the Visigoths, were the Norsemen or Northmen. Known by the shortened name "Norman" in France, these were Viking raiders from modern Denmark and Norway. They settled with Anglo-Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons from the Danelaw in the region known today as Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries. This later became a fiefdom of the Kingdom of France under King Charles III. The Vikings eventually intermarried with the local people, converting to Christianity in the process. It was the Normans who, two centuries later, would go on to conquer England and Southern Italy.

## Language (Langue)

    Due to Roman rule, Latin was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul, and 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 being attested on 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 was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language, which did not go extinct until the late 6th 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 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 the urban intellectual elite.

The Gaulish language likely survived into the 6th 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 the gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish.

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 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 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 was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha.

## Food (Nourriture)

*Le petit déjeuner* (breakfast) is traditionally a quick meal consisting of *tartines* (slices) of French bread with butter and honey or jam (sometimes brioche), along with *café au lait* (also called *café crème*), or black coffee, or tea and rarely hot chicory. Children often drink hot chocolate in bowls or cups along with their breakfasts. *Croissants*, *pain aux raisins* or *pain au chocolat* (also named *chocolatine* in the south-west of France) are mostly included as a weekend treat. Breakfast of some kind is always served in cafés opening early in the day.

There are also savoury dishes for breakfast. An example is *le petit déjeuner gaulois* or *petit déjeuner fermier* with the famous long narrow bread slices topped with soft white cheese or boiled ham, called *mouillettes*, which is dipped in a soft-boiled egg and some fruit juice and hot drink.

Another variation called *le petit déjeuner chasseur*, meant to be very hearty, is served with *pâté* and other *charcuterie* products. A more classy version is called *le petit déjeuner du voyageur*, where delicatessens serve gizzard, bacon, salmon, omelet, or *croque monsieur*, with or without soft-boiled egg and always with the traditional coffee/tea/chocolate along fruits or fruit juice. When the egg is cooked sunny-side over the *croque-monsieur*, it is called a *croque-madame*.

*Le déjeuner* (lunch) is a two-hour mid-day meal or a one-hour lunch break. In some smaller towns and in the south of France, the two-hour lunch may still be customary. Sunday lunches are often longer and are taken with the family.

*Le dîner* (dinner) often consists of three courses, *hors d'œuvre* or *entrée* (appetizers or introductory course, sometimes soup), *plat principal* (main course), and a cheese course or dessert, sometimes with a salad offered before the cheese or dessert. Yogurt may replace the cheese course, while a simple dessert would be fresh fruit. The meal is often accompanied by bread, wine and mineral water. Most of the time the bread would be a baguette which is very common in France and is made almost every day. Main meat courses are often served with vegetables, along with potatoes, rice or pasta.

## Sexuality (Sexualité)

Although French catholic culture is traditionally anti-LGBT (at least indifferent) and conservative in such respects, France is one of the most LGBT-tolerant countries in the world and French culture has largely accepted LGBT people with no disregard.

## Music (Musique)

French music history dates back to organum in the 10th century, followed by the Notre Dame School, an organum composition style. Troubadour songs of chivalry and courtly love were composed in the Occitan language between the 10th and 13th centuries, and the Trouvère poet-composers flourished in Northern France during this period. The fiddle was their instrument of choice. By the end of the 12th century, a form of song called the motet arose, accompanied by traveling musicians called jongleurs. In the 14th century, France produced two notable styles of music, Ars Nova and Ars Subtilior.

The early 20th century saw neo-classical music flourish in France, especially composers such as Lili Boulanger, Nadia Boulanger, Albert Roussel and Les Six, a group of musicians who gathered around Satie. Later in the century, Olivier Messiaen, Henri Dutilleux and Pierre Boulez proved influential. The latter was a leading figure of Serialism while Messiaen incorporated Asian (particularly Indian) influences and bird song and Dutilleux translated the innovations of Debussy, Bartók and Stravinsky into his own, very personal, musical idiom.

The most important French contribution to musical innovation of the past 35 years is a form of computer-assisted composition called "spectral music". The astonishing technical advances of the spectralist composers in the 1970s are only recently beginning to achieve wide recognition in the United States; major composers in this vein include Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Claude Vivier.

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