French Language In The United States
The French language is spoken as a minority language in the United States. According to year 2000 census figures, 1.6 million Americans over the age of five speak the language at home, making French the fourth most-spoken language in the nation behind English, Spanish, and Chinese (when both the Cantonese and Mandarin dialects are combined). Three major varieties of French developed in the United States: Louisiana French, spoken in Louisiana; New England French (a local variant of Canadian French spoken in New England); and the nearly extinct Missouri French, historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois. More recently, French has also been carried to various parts of the nation via immigration from Francophone regions. Today, French is the second most-spoken language in four states: Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
Read more about French Language In The United States: French Ancestry, Dialects and Varieties, Newer Francophone Immigrants, Francophone Tourists and Retirees, Language Study, Francophone Communities, Counties and Parishes With The Highest Proportion of French-speakers, Seasonal Migrations, French Newspapers in The United States, French Radio Stations in The United States, French Schools in The United States
Famous quotes containing the words united states, french, language, united and/or states:
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“... the English are very fond of being entertained, and ... they regard the French and the American people as destined by Heaven to amuse them.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“How many people in the United States do you think will be willing to go to war to free Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)