France and its culture.

Essay by xxchickbabexxHigh School, 10th gradeA-, June 2003

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France is a unique country. With its romantic language, first of its kind art and architecture, and world known food, France is very far from an ordinary, run of the mill country.

The French language is a member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. It is know as the language of lovers. French is spoken as a first language by more than 70,000,000 people, mainly in France, then Belgium, Switzerland, in former French and Belgium colonies in Africa and Canada. This language ranks only second, after English as a national language, and is the official language in over 33 countries around the world. Along with English, these are the only 2 global languages. French is one of the most useful languages for jobs and for some regions, and is the only foreign language that can be useful throughout the world as well as in the United States.

Of the 300 or so international job offerings in the US State Department, required or preferred French, which ranked the highest. Of the various types of professional positions for which international organizations recruited five French speaking people according to the fact sheet released by the UN Employment Information Unit Bureau of International Organization Affairs U.S. Department of State. French is the foreign language spoken by our largest trading partner, and in 2000 the United States exported more to countries having French as a national language than to countries having any other language. After serving as an international language in diplomacy and commerce as well as among educated people during the last few centuries, it still enjoys great prestige culturally and is one of the languages used officially by the United Nations.

France would not be France without its beautiful world-renowned sense of the arts,