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Lesson Transcript

Hi everybody! Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I'll answer your most common French questions.
The question for this lesson is: What is le monde francophone?
In a nutshell, le monde francophone is "the French world," or all the parts of the world where French, or some form of French, is spoken.
That’s everything from other French-speaking countries in Europe like Switzerland, Belgium and Luxemburg, to French West Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, the French Caribbean, parts of northern South America, as well as Quebec and some other provinces in Canada.
The main reason why French is so widely spoken across the globe is because of colonial history. Between the 17th and early 20th centuries, France and other European countries established colonies around the world.
That doesn’t mean that French sounds the same everywhere – every place has its own dialects. For example, Haitian Creole is a language that’s derived from French, but mixed with other languages.
In West Africa, French pronunciation has a local accent. West African vocabulary, rhythms and tonalities have merged with European French, and Français Populaire Africain, or FPA, but the sound of French is different in every French African country.
There are also plenty of expressions normally used in other francophone countries that don’t exist in France. For example Ça fait deux jours which literally means, “It’s been two days,” but in Burkina Faso normally means, “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”
Just like language is deeply intertwined with culture, though, le monde francophone also goes a lot deeper than just a shared language. A lot of travel and cultural exchanges happen among le monde francophone.
A fun fact is that in an international competition like the World Cup, countries in le monde francophone typically root for each other – as long as they’re not playing against each other! It’s a different kind of patriotism that’s really only found in le monde francophone.
That’s it for now! If you have more questions, please leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them!
A bientôt, see you soon!

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