什麼是法語

屬羅曼諸語言，通行於法國、比利時、瑞士、加拿大（主要在魁北克）及其他從前或現在法屬國家和地區。是二十五個以上國家的官方語言。使用人口約7,200萬。法語書面文獻溯源至西元9世紀。法蘭西島方言即巴黎方言是標準法語的基礎，從16世紀中葉以來就是官方的標準語，在很大程度上取代了曾通用於法國北部和中部的所謂奧依語的其他地區方言。標準法語也大大縮小了法國南部奧克西坦語的使用範圍。但法語若干方言大多隻能保存於文化落後的農村地區。語法方面，法語和母語拉丁語相較，變化很多。名詞已無變格。陽性和陰性還有區別，但通常不由名詞表示。動詞變化有三個「人稱」和單、複數形式，可是某些形式仍只是在拼寫上有區別，發音卻完全相同。

French language

Romance language spoken as a first language by about 72 million people in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada (mainly Quebec), and many other countries and regions formerly governed by France. French is an official language of more than 25 countries. Its earliest written materials date from the 9th century. Numerous regional dialects were eventually pushed aside by Francien, the dialect of Paris, adopted as the standard language in the mid-16th century. This largely replaced the dialects of northern and central France, known as the langue d'o?l (from o?l, the northern word for “yes”), and greatly reduced the use of the Occitan language of southern France, known as langue d'oc (from oc, Occitan for “yes”). Regional dialects survive mostly in uneducated rural speech. French grammar has been greatly simplified from Latin. Nouns do not have cases, and masculine and feminine gender are marked not in the noun but in its article or adjective. The verb is conjugated for three persons and for singular and plural; though spelled differently, several of these forms are pronounced identically.