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A Romance language. French belongs to a big family of languages that all came from Latin, the language of ancient Rome. This family also includes Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian.
Born from Vulgar Latin. French didn't come from fancy, formal Latin. It evolved from Vulgar Latin, the everyday Latin that regular Roman people spoke in the empire. Over hundreds of years, it changed into the French we know today.
Spoken across the globe. Today, hundreds of millions of people speak French, not just in France but in many countries around the world including parts of Africa, Canada, and beyond.
Replaced its cousins. French had sister languages called langues d'oïl that were spoken in northern France and southern Belgium, but French eventually became so powerful that it took over and these relatives mostly disappeared.
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