Languages of France

The topic of the teaching of regional languages in public primary and secondary schools is controversial. Proponents of the measure state that it would be necessary for the preservation of those languages and to show respect to the local culture. Opponents contend that local languages are often non-standardised (thus making curricula difficult), of dubious practical usefulness (since most are spoken by a small number of people, without any sizable corpus of publications) and that the curriculum and funding of public schools are already too strained. The topic also leads to wider controversial questions of autonomy of the régions. Regarding other languages, English, Spanish, Italian and German are the most commonly studied foreign languages in French schools.

In April 2001, the Minister of Education, Jack Lang,[7] stated formally that for more than two centuries, the political powers of the French government had repressed regional languages, and announced that bilingual education would, for the first time, be recognised, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools.

Some of the languages of France are also cross-border languages (for example, Basque, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, Franc-Comtois, Franco-Provençal, Norman, Picard, Occitan and others), some of which enjoy a recognised or official status in the respective neighbouring state or territory. French itself is also a cross-border language, being spoken in neighbouring Andorra, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, and Switzerland.

• French

The regional languages of Metropolitan France include:

• Breton (Brezhoneg)
  • Léonard (Leoneg)
  • Cornouaillais (Kerneveg)
  • Trégorrois (Tregerieg)
  • Vannetais (Gwenedeg)

• Alsatian (Elsässerditsch)
• French Flemish: West Flemish dialect of Dutch
• Lorraine Franconian (Lothringisch)
• Yenish (Jenisch)

• Corsican (Corsu)

• Oïl language:
  • Berrichon
  • Bourguignon-Morvandiau
  • Champenois or Campanois
  • Franc-Comtois
  • French
  • Gallo
  • Lorrain
  • Norman
  • Picard
  • Poitevin-Saintongeais
  • Walloon
  • Angevin
• Occitan language (also Lenga d'òc, Langue d'oc):
  • Vivaroalpenc
    • Mentonasc (Mentonnais or Mentonasque)
  • Auvergnat
  • Gascon including Béarnese (Béarnais) and Landese (Landais)
  • Languedocien
  • Limousin
  • Provençal
    • Nissart (Niçois or Niçart)
• Catalan
• Franco-Provençal (also Arpitan):
  • Bressan
  • Dauphinois
  • Forézien
  • Jurassien
  • Lyonnais
  • Savoyard

• Gallo Italic
  • Ligurian language
    • Royasc

• Basque (Euskara)
• Romani

There are also several languages spoken in France's overseas areas (see Administrative divisions of France for details):

• Amerindian languages in French Guiana
• French-based creole languages in the French West Indies (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, and Saint Barthélemy), French Guiana, and Réunion (see: Antillean Creole, Haitian Creole, French Guiana Creole and Réunion Creole);
  • also Dutch, and English in Saint Martin;
  • also Saint-Barths Patois (local derivation from regional dialects of French in France), and English in Saint Barthélemy
• Many Austronesian languages:
  • several languages in New Caledonia (see: New Caledonian languages, Loyalty Island languages)
  • two languages in Wallis & Futuna (see: Wallisian language, Futunan language)
  • many languages in French Polynesia (Tahitian and other Eastern Polynesian languages)
  • Shibushi in Mayotte
• Shimaore (a Bantu language) in Mayotte

French Sign Language is also recognised as a language of France (with at least one regional variant in Provence).

[9] A large number of immigrant languages are spoken in France, with a handful having a significant number of home speakers. (Figures as of 2000)[2]

• Arabic, especially the Maghrebi Arabic dialects, is the second-most common language in French homes, with several million speakers.[10]
• Berber languages (Tamazigh) from North Africans are one of the most spoken languages in France, about 2,200,000 speakers.
• Italian: spoken by Italian communities in many major French cities, especially in southern regions, such as Nice, Savoie, and Corsica. About 790,000 speakers, excluding Italian dialects.
• Portuguese: spoken by about 700,000 people.
• English: significant British minorities in Aquitaine and Brittany, as well as commuters working in the UK but living in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. Dispersed minorities in Paris and on the Côte d'Azur (French Riviera). The most widely taught foreign language in the French education system, but not widely used and understood except in specific job positions (chiefly technical and tourism). About 325,000 home speakers.
• Polish: spoken by about 130,000 people[11]
• Turkish: spoken by about 221,000 people[12]
• Vietnamese: the most spoken Asian language in France, spoken by about 324,000 people[13]
• German and German dialects: spoken by about 300,000 people. Figure includes both standard German and other dialects of High German. See Alsatian and Lorraine Franconian, spoken respectively in Alsace and Lorraine.
• Kurdish languages – 200,000 (2014 estimate)[14]

At the 1999 census, INSEE sampled 380,000 adult people all across Metropolitan France, and asked them questions about their family situation. One of the questions was about the languages that their parents spoke with them before the age of five. This is the first time serious statistics were computed about the proportion of mother tongues in France. The results were published in Enquête familiale, Insee, 1999.[9]

Here is a list of the nine most prominent mother tongues in France based on Enquête familiale.

When the people with mother tongue and people with some exposure to the language before the age of five (see note #3 below) are added together, the five most widely spoken languages in metropolitan France are (note that the percentages add up to more than 100, because many bilingual people are now counted twice):

• French: 42,100,000 (92%)
• Occitan: 1,670,000 (3.65%)
• German and German dialects: 1,440,000 (3.15%)
• Oïl languages (excl. French): 1,420,000 (3.10%)
• Arabic: 1,170,000 (2.55%)

1. The data in the table are about mother tongues, and not about actual language practice. It states that 14% of the adult people living in France in 1999 were born and raised up to the age of 5 in families that spoke only (or predominantly) some other languages than French. It does not mean that 14% of adult people in France spoke some other languages than French in 1999.
2. Only adults (i.e. 18 years and older) were surveyed. This means that French people born between 1981 and 1999 are not included in the survey. The mother tongue of the younger generations is more predominantly French than is the case with the older generations because, as the Enquête familiale survey explains, regional and immigrant language transmission decreases dramatically with each new generation, as French replaces the regional and immigrant languages. In the Enquête familiale survey, only 35% of parents whose mother tongue was a regional or immigrant language reported that they spoke that language to their children. Thus, the 86% figure of people with French as their mother tongue is an underestimate because the younger generations whose predominant mother tongue is French are not counted.
3. The concept of "mother tongue" may not give a complete idea of the phenomenon of minority languages in France. This is because there are many people who were born and raised in families in which parents spoke to them only (or predominantly) French, but in which some regional or immigration languages were also occasionally used. One example: while the data shows that 610,000 adults in 1999 had one of the Occitan dialects as their mother tongue, the survey also found out that another 1,060,000 adults were born and raised in families in which one of the Occitan dialects was occasionally spoken. Some of these 1,060,000 people may speak Occitan as fluently as the 610,000 people who have it as a mother tongue, while some other (the majority, probably) have only a limited knowledge of Occitan. That 1,670,000 adults are speakers of Occitan cannot be corroborated, but it may be the case that the total number of people with some form of exposure to Occitan is higher than the 610,000 figure, though some of may have stopped using the language altogether since then.

The following languages are listed as having 50,000 or more total speakers in Metropolitan France according to the 2022 edition of Ethnologue.[15] Entries identified by Ethnologue as macrolanguages (such as Arabic, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese, encompassing all their respective varieties) are not included in this section.