The language barrier can be an obstacle at the start.
Poorly mastered English or incomplete notions of Spanish are likely to dissuade travelers from visiting certain destinations.
Fortunately, French, spoken by 321 million speakers in the world, makes it possible to be understood on five continents, from Quebec to French Polynesia or from French-speaking Switzerland to the Seychelles.
With, in each country, accents, variants and local expressions that make all the flavor and richness of the language of Molière, the fifth most spoken on the planet.
If, of course, we could bet with closed eyes that Paris is the most French-speaking city in the world, this is no longer the case since 2016. Taking into account the population, the French capital has since been overtaken by that of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa, whose "built-up urban area" (
see precise definition at the end of the article
) has 12.83 million inhabitants, according to the 18th edition of the Demographia World Urban Areas report written by demographers and urban planners of the whole world.
This Central African country, also called Congo-Kinshasa (to differentiate it from the Republic of Congo, without the "democratic", says Congo-Brazzaville) has among its 90 million citizens 51% speaking French daily, according to the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF).
Read alsoWhy do we hate meeting French people when traveling?
The Rise of Africa
Montreal, in the province of Quebec in Canada, is the most French of American cities.
Here the lively quays of old Montreal with its Ferris wheel.
STANISLAS FAUTRÉ / Le Figaro Magazine
The urban area of Paris is now the second largest French-speaking region in the world with 11 million inhabitants.
Far behind, in third position, is Abidjan, the most populous city in Côte d'Ivoire.
It is notably followed by Casablanca in Morocco and Dakar in Senegal, neck and neck with Montreal, in the province of Quebec in Canada.
In these cities, French is the official language or at least the language spoken and understood by the majority of its residents.
The figures below correspond to the estimated number of inhabitants and not to the number of French speakers.
Africa occupies a dominant place there, driven by the strong demographic growth of the continent.
What confirm the forecasts of the OIF announcing that 80% of French speakers will be Africans by 2050. French could then become the third most spoken language in the world.
The 15 most populated French-speaking cities in the world:
Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo): 12.8 million
Paris (France): 11 million
Abidjan (Ivory Coast): 5.4 million
Yaoundé (Cameroon): 4.6 million
Casablanca (Morocco): 4.3 million
Bamako (Mali): 4 million
Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso): 3.8 million
Algiers (Algeria): 3.7 million
Dakar (Senegal): 3.7 million
Montreal (Quebec, Canada): 3.7 million
Mbuji-Mayi (Democratic Republic of Congo): 3.6 million
Douala (Cameroon): 3.6 million
Port-au-Prince (Haiti): 3.1 million
Conakry (Guinea): 2.9 million
Beirut (Lebanon): 2.8 million
Source:
Demographia World Urban Areas, 18th edition, July 2022.
Definition:
By “built-up urban area”, the report designates “
continuous built development which, by definition, excludes rural land
”, specifies one of its authors, Wendell Cox, American urban planner.
It corresponds to “
the city in its physical form, as opposed to metropolitan areas, which are economic or functional cities (centres of employment and housing)
”.
For Paris, for example, the study takes into consideration the "urban unit" as defined by INSEE, namely a perimeter of 2853 km² encompassing 411 municipalities (i.e. a small part of the metropolitan area which represents 1929 municipalities and 18,941 km²).