France , Luxembourg, Haiti, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada. Also, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, Syria, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The French language was developed from the vernacular Latin of the Roman Empire, and is divided into three historic and linguistic periods: Old French, which developed before the 14th century; Middle French, which was used between the 14th and 16th centuries; and Modern French, which was used after the 16th century and continues to be in use today. During all of these periods, other languages heavily influenced the French language.

For example, Old French was infused with Germanic words and sounds when barbarian tribes invaded and settled in France after the fall of the Roman Empire. Middle French also borrowed heavily from the Italian language during the Renaissance. The close proximity of both Germany and Italy also allowed for a great transmigration of linguistic and cultural practices.

The standard for French is based on the dialect of Île de France (technically known as Francien), which has been the official standard language since the mid-16th century. Francien has largely replaced other regional dialects of French spoken in northern and central France. These dialects made up the so-called Langue d'oïl (the term is based on the French use of the word “oïl”, modern – “oui”, for “yes”). French dialects are classified into 5 main groups:

· Central: Francien, Orléanais, Bourbonnais, Champenois;

· Northern: Picard, Northern Norman, Walloon (usually considered a separate language);

· Eastern: Lorrain, Bourguignon (Burgundian), Franc-Comtois;

· Western: Norman, Gallo (around the Celtic Breton area), Angevin, Maine;

· Southwestern: Poitevin, Saintongeais, Angoumois.

Regional dialects of French survive for the most part only in uneducated rural speech, although the Picard-Walloon dialect of northern France and the Norman dialect of western France gave strong competition to Francien in medieval times, and Walloon is still spoken in Belgium. The French language of Canada, originally probably of northwestern dialect type, has developed a lot of individual features. There exists also many French-based Creoles (in Haiti, USA, the Caribbean islands etc.).

Standard French has also greatly reduced the use of the Occitan language of southern France (the so-called Langue d'oc, from Provençal “oc” for “yes”). Occitan's major dialect, Provençal, was a widely used medieval literary language.

French uses the Latin alphabet. More than 200 phonetic laws were operating in the transformation of Latin into French. The most essential of them is the suppression of the short vowels before and of all vowels after the stressed vowel. This resulted, at first, in the formation of consonant accumulations that were subsequently simplified and this led to great changes in the sounds of words as compared to their Latin parent forms as well as to cognates in the other Romance languages.