The French language is one that is used by almost 300,000,000 people worldwide in more than fifty-five countries. It is used as one of the six official languages of the United Nations and is also one of the official languages of the International Olympic Committee. The written language is comprised of twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet and the earliest documentation of written French is from 842 A.D.
French is a romance language with Latin roots. The Latin roots were placed when ancient Rome conquered Gaul (present-day France and Belgium) in the first and second centuries B.C. While the Gauls used the Celtic language of Gaulish, Latin dominated the region once the Romans arrived. There were also Germanic invasions of the area and the language continued to change with the Germanic influence. Since then, the language has had influences from other languages, including Greek, Italian, and English, making it the language that it is today.
The French language spread to be spoken in more than fifty-five countries through colonization. France was a global power from the sixteenth century through the nineteenth century and colonized land in areas of the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, parts of Africa, and various nations in the Pacific Ocean.
