Francization

Francization (in American English, Canadian English, and Oxford English) or Francisation (in other British English), also known as Frenchification, is the expansion of French language use—either through willful adoption or coercion—by more and more social groups who had not before used the language as a common means of expression in daily life.^[1][2][3][4] As a linguistic concept, known usually as gallicization, it is the practice of modifying foreign words, names, and phrases to make them easier to spell, pronounce, or understand in French.

According to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the figure of 220 million Francophones (French-language speakers) is underestimated^[5] because it only counts people who can write, understand and speak French fluently, thus excluding a majority of African French-speaking people, who do not know how to write.^[6] French has the world's fastest-growing relative share of speakers.

In 2014, a study from the French bank Natixis claimed French will become the world's most-spoken language by 2050.^[7][8][9] However, critics of the study state that French coexists with other languages in many countries and the study's estimates are prone to exaggeration.

The number of Francophones in the world has been rising substantially since the 1980s. In 1985, there were 106 million Francophones around the world. That number quickly rose to 173.2 million in 1997, 200 million in 2005, 220 million in 2010 (+10% from 2007).^[10] and reached 274 million in 2014.^[11] Forecasts expect that the number of French speakers in Africa alone will reach 400 million in 2025, 715 million (readjusted in 2010)^[12] by 2050 and reach 1 billion and 222 million in 2060 (readjusted in 2013).^[13] The worldwide French-speaking population is expected to quadruple, whereas the world population is predicted to grow by half.^[14]