Francophonie
La Francophonie ,as it is now known, can be defined as the world community of French-speaking countries, or the collective unit formed by French speaking people.
Worldwide there are more than 150 million Francophones. Two out of three Francophones live outside of France, and in more than forty countries on five continents. La Francophonie "is a community, based on a common language, which believes in the unity and diversity of cultures.” It should come as no surprise that French has for some time been one of the most widely used languages in the world, and for a long time it was the only language of international diplomacy. However, there is a great deal more to the Francophonie community than simply sharing a common language.
The French language is being used as a way to bring about a coming together, a sharing, and a collaboration that is strengthening those countries that have linguistic commonalties. As a result, people have an opportunity to come into contact with a huge array of cultural differences and diverse traditions, which fosters tolerance - something the world needs more of.
French is second only to English for the number of countries where it has official status – 32 as opposed to 45. And, with 56 members, La Francophonie is now larger than the Commonwealth, which has 53. Kinshasa is the world's second largest French speaking city, after Paris, and before Montreal and Brussels.
All around the world the month of March is celebrated as a month of the French language and March the 20th is the international day of the French speaking countries.
Because of the importance of the French language and culture we also celebrated it in school by eating great and delicious pancakes from Keops .
Elena, year 9 student and Mattia, year 11 student also talked about the importance of the French language.
During the lunch break Ana, an AS student showed us what the french speaking exam was like on that level and in French she talked about medias and answered teacher’s questions on the topic.
It was very interesting to learn from our friends that the French language is complex and very important. It was a wonderful day when we learnt something new and enjoyed delicious pancaked at the same time.
