France Protest Forum

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. It is important to read the notes at the Languages of France article in order to correctly interpret the numbers.

	Language	Thousands of adults	% of adult population	Notes
1	French	39,360	86%	The real figure for the whole population is closer to 90%, see notes.
2	German and German dialects (Alsatian, Lorraine German, etc.)	970	2.12%	Alsatian (600; 1.44%), standard German (210; 0.46%), Lorraine German (100; 0.22%)
3	Arabic (essentially Maghreb Arabic)	940	2.05%
4	Oc languages (Languedocian, Gascon, Provençal, etc.)	610	1.33%	Another 1,060 (2.32%) had some exposure.
5	Portuguese	580	1.27%
6	Oïl languages (Picard, Gallo, Poitevin-Saintongeais, etc.)	570	1.25%	Another 850 (1.86%) had some exposure
7	Italian (and dialects)	540	1.19%
8	Spanish	485	1.06%
9	Breton	280	0.61%	Another 405 (0.87%) had some exposure
10	About 400 other languages(Polish, Berber languages, East Asian, Catalan, Franco-Provençal, Corsican, Basque, etc.)	2,350	5.12%	Of whom English: 115 (0.25% of total adult population)
	Total	45,762	102%	46,680 including those 2% with French and another language as mother tongues were counted twice

If we add up people with mother tongue and people with some exposure to the language before the age of 5, 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%)
Oc languages: 1,670,000 (3.65%)
German and German dialects: 1,440,000 (3.15%)
Oïl languages: 1,420,000 (3.10%)
Arabic: 1,170,000 (2.55%)