Talk:France

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Schengen Member

Some reference about France to be a member of the Schengen area is missing. Schengen2018 (talk) 11:22, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Languages

I am seriously disappointed by the fact that the language section only talks about French. Must I remind you that France is a linguistically diverse country.

Statistics

At the 1999 census, INSEE sampled 380,000 adult people all across Metropolitan France, and asked them questions about their family situation. One of the questions was about the languages that their parents spoke with them before the age of 5. This is the first time serious statistics were computed about the proportion of mother tongues in France. The results were published in Enquête familiale, Insee, 1999.

Here is a list of the nine most prominent mother tongues in France based on Enquête familiale.

Rank	Language	Mother tongue	Percentage of adult population
1	French spanish english porchigies	39,360,000	86% (note that this figure is an underestimate because people under 18 years of age were not surveyed; see note #2 below the table)
2	Germanic languages (Alsatian, Lorraine Franconian, etc.)	970,000 (of whom Alsatian: 660,000; standard German: 210,000; Lorraine Franconian: 100,000)	2.12% (of whom Alsatian: 1.44%; standard German: 0.46%; Lorraine Franconian: 0.22%)
3	Arabic (especially Maghrebi Arabic)	940,000	2.05%
4	Occitan language (Languedocian, Gascon, Provençal, etc.)	610,000 (another 1,060,000 had some exposure)	1.33% (another 2.32% had some exposure, see notes)
5	Portuguese	580,000	1.27%
6	Oïl languages (Picard, Gallo, Poitevin, Saintongeais, etc.)	570,000 (another 850,000 had some exposure)	1.25% (another 1.86% had some exposure, see notes)
7	Italian, Corsican and Ligurian (Niçard)	540,000	1.19%
8	Spanish	485,000	1.06%
9	Breton	280,000 (another 405,000 had some exposure)	0.61% (another 0.87% had some exposure, see notes)
10	About 400 other languages (Polish, Berber languages, East Asian languages, Catalan, Franco-Provençal, Corsican, Basque, West Flemish, etc.) as well as those who gave no response	2,350,000 (of whom English: 115,000)	5.12% (of whom English: 0.25% of total adult population)
	Total	45,762,000 (46,680,000 including those with two mother tongues who were counted twice)	102% (2% of people have both French and another language as their mother tongue, thus, they are counted twice)

If we add up people with mother tongue and people with some exposure to the language before the age of 5 (see note #3 below), then the five most important languages in metropolitan France are (note that the percentages add up to more than 100, because many people are now counted twice):

• French: 42,100,000 (92%)
• Occitan: 1,670,000 (3.65%)
• German and German dialects: 1,440,000 (3.15%)
• Oïl languages (excl. French): 1,420,000 (3.10%)
• Arabic: 1,170,000 (2.55%)

Notes on the table

1. The data in the table are about mother tongues, and not about actual language practice. It states that 14% of the adult people living in France in 1999 were born and raised up to the age of 5 in families that spoke only (or predominantly) some other languages than French. It does not mean that 14% of adult people in France spoke some other languages than French in 1999.
2. Only adults (i.e. 18 years and older) were surveyed. This means that French people born between 1981 and 1999 are not included in the survey. The mother tongue of the younger generations is more predominantly French than is the case with the older generations, because as the Enquête familiale survey explains, regional and immigrant language transmission decreases dramatically with each new generation, as French replaces the regional and immigrant languages. In the Enquête familiale survey, only 35% of parents whose mother tongue was a regional or immigrant language reported they spoke that language to their children. Thus, the 86% figure of people with French as their mother tongue is an underestimate because the younger generations whose predominant mother tongue is French are not counted.
3. The concept of "mother tongue" may not give a complete idea of the phenomenon of minority languages in France. This is because there are many people who were born and raised in families in which parents spoke to them only (or predominantly) French, but in which some regional or immigration languages were also occasionally used. One dialects was occasionally spoken. Some of these 1,060,000 people may speak Occitan as fluently as the 610,000 people who have it as a mother tongue, while some other (the majority, probably) have only a limited knowledge of Occitan. We cannot infer from this that 1,670,000 adults are speakers of Occitan, but it may be the case that the total number of people with some form of exposure to Occitan is higher than the 610,000 figure, though some of this number may have abandoned the language since then.

hi how r u doing — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.0.209.130 (talk) 13:35, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Regional Languages

que hay prro? putoelquelolea Can regional languages be kept in the infobox? France is a very linguistically diverse country with territories scattered throughout the world. Every time I have added this field to the infobox, vandals have removed it and claimed that it is "unnecessary" without providing a real justification. Including this field is fundamentally necessary to maintain political neutrality. Refusing to acknowledge the very existence of minority languages pushes a heavily nationalistic political agenda. The inclusion of "regional languages" has nothing to do with any separatist movement. It merely acknowledges that languages exist within France other than French.

If vandals continue to make politically motivated edits, I suggest that this article be placed under protection. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KartvelianCelt (talk • contribs) 18:14, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Edit request 3.7.2013 Population should be corrected

Estimated total population of France is 66 200 000 (1st January 2012). It should be noted that currently cited INSEE number does not include Mayotte or COM (collectivités d’outre-mer).

Source: http://www.insee.fr/fr/ffc/ipweb/ip1385/ip1385.pdf

From page four: Le champ géographique du bilan démographique de 2011 reste la France métropolitaine et les DOM, mais sans Mayotte, dont la transformation en département d’outre-mer date du 31 mars 2011. En ajoutant les 803 000 habitants des collectivités d’outre-mer et de Mayotte, la population des territoires de la République française au 1 er janvier 2012 est estimée à 66,2 millions d’habitants.

EEZ - contradicting information

The fifth paragraph says that France has the world's largest EEZ. However, under the Geography heading, it says that France has the 2nd largest EEZ.

Geography

Location and Borders

A relief map of Metropolitan France, showing cities with over 100,000 inhabitants.

France has the World's second largest territorial waters.

The European part of France is called Metropolitan France and it is located in one of the occidental ends of Europe. It is bordered by the North Sea in the north, the English Channel in the north-west, the Atlantic Ocean in the west and the Mediterranean sea in the south-east. It borders Belgium and Luxembourg in the north east. It also borders Germany and Switzerland in the east, Italy and Monaco in the south-east, Spain and Andorra in the south west. The borders in the south and in the east of the country are mountain ranges: the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Jura, the border in the east is from the Rhine river, while the border in the north and the north east melts in no natural elements. Due to its shape, it is often referred to in French as l'Hexagone ("The Hexagon"). Metropolitan France includes various islands: Corsica and coastal islands. Metropolitan France is situated mostly between latitudes 41° and 53° N, and longitudes 6° W and 10° E, on the western edge of Europe, and thus lies within the northern temperate zone. Its continental part covers about 1000 km from north to south and from east to west.

Sigs

Most of the comments on this page are unsigned, or "autosigned" by a bot. I mean absolutely no disrespect by this question, I ask it entirely in order to cure my own ignorance, and not facetiously. Do authors on frWikipedia not sign their posts? Are maybe all postings autosigned? My French is scarce to none (I can count to ten, orally, if you disregard an atrocious accent, but don't ask me to spell any words. I can spell "un", unless it has diacritical marks, in which case, I don't know). I therefore do not visit the French Wikipedia, so I don't know. rags (talk)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 March 2018

82.149.40.14 (talk) 15:48, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

In my opinion reunification of France was in 507, after the battle of Voullé, and not in 486 after the battle of Soissons (land south of Loire river was under Visigoths' control)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. — IVORK _Discuss 21:39, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

something with the data doesn't work out

I remember the article said there are 7.5% muslims in France. and an estimate from 2003 says the ranfe is 8-10%. Now, after over a decade of higher birth rate among muslims, and immigration, how can it be lower (5.6%)? Also, on "Islam in France" it says 12.5% are muslims. Something with the data is strange. Similar thing happened on Finland article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.142.4.203 (talk) 06:38, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

It's telling that the article says "Estimates of the number of Muslims in France vary widely." Figures about numbers of people in a religion are always doubtful. The source used for the 6% figure in the Infobox, strangely titled "A French Islam is Possible", has a lot of detail about getting the numbers. It's at http://www.institutmontaigne.org/res/files/publications/a-french-islam-is-possible-report.pdf . Read Page 12 in particular. It basically says that the figure could be wildly inaccurate. HiLo48 (talk) 07:10, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

- So why do you use this one source if "the figure could be wildly inaccurate"? And why is this the only estimate that shown in the opening, what about the other estimates? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.142.4.203 (talk) 15:07, 2 June 2018 (UTC)