French

The number of French speakers around the world is estimated at 350m, with a presence in over 50 countries.

It is an official language in 31 countries making up La Francophonie (the community of French-speaking nations).

As well as in Europe, French is spoken in the US, Canada, parts of the Caribbean, Asia, various Pacific Islands and Africa (where the majority of the French-speaking population live).

Many English words have French origins, including attitude, develop, change, opportunity, jelly and entrepreneur. There are literally thousands of others.

The longest French word is Anticonstitutionnellement (25 letters) simply meaning “not in a constitutional manner”.

Although French uses the Latin alphabet and has the same 26 letters as English, certain words when written or typed have letter-forms which become joined, referred to as a ligature. The most common ligature is an “o” joined with an “e” such as in bœuf or sœur. The other is (æ) as in encyclopædia.

French vowels often have accents or diacritic marks to alter the pronunciation. The marks used are acute (´), grave (`), circumflex (ˆ), tréma (¨) and cedilla (¸).

In the French version of Scrabble, there are 102 tiles and the letters K, W, X, Y & Z all have a points value of 10.