Editing French (section)

== History ==
The language began to develop from the Romance language, through dialect variations and abstractions of Latin.

The first written documentation of the French language is from the year 842 (4602), and in 1539 (5299) it was declared the official language of law and administration by King François I.

During the following years, the French language continued to spread and replaced Latin in academic institutions and in scientific and philosophical circles.

With the spread of the French Empire beginning in the 17th century, the French language spread to additional parts of the world outside Europe, mainly in Africa and Asia.

Starting from 1880 (5640) onwards, following the compulsory education law enacted in France, French spread throughout France also as a practical spoken language in everyday life.

Until World War I, over 50% of France's residents did not speak French but rather other languages that form part of the country's linguistic landscape: Romance languages such as Occitan or Provençal in its various versions, Bearnese, Auvergnat, Gascon, etc., and non-Romance languages such as Breton, Flemish, Alsatian German, Basque, Italian, Corsican, etc. This led to the fact that in the year that the war broke out, 1914 (5674), half of the soldiers still did not fully understand the officers' commands. The army served largely as a linguistic melting pot among the male population. Later, the education system and media - radio and television - also contributed to its spread among the people.

Besides the spread of the language in France itself, the language spread to countries where French residents emigrated, such as Belgium, Switzerland, the province of Quebec in Canada, and various states in the United States such as Louisiana, Maine, and New Hampshire.

French greatly influenced the English language, and a large number of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and roots in the English language originated from Old French, or from Latin, which entered the English vocabulary through the "mediation" of French.