English has once again outranked French as the most spoken language in the world, according to the 2022 report from the International Organization of Francophonie (OIF), as the world celebrates international francophonie day on March 20.
English placed at the top of the most practiced languages internationally, said the report.
According to the head of the Observatory of the French Language, there are 321 million French speakers, as the language records a 3.5% presence on the internet. A number that remains low in comparison to English (25%), Chinese (15%), and Spanish (7%).
The report sheds light on the increasing “professional” importance of the English language, revealing that “98.7% of job offers within the United Nations require knowledge of English, while French has decreased by 1.2 points since 2017, to 10.4%.”
As for internal communication in the international organization, 98% of the content of the intranet sites of the Secretariat’s entities are available in English, noting “an increase of 23 points since 2018, compared to 16% in French.”
The Multilingual dilemma is “much better” in the European Union, says the report, noting that “only between 3.7% in the European Commission and 12% in the European Parliament of the documents produced are in French as a source language, a continuous decline over the last twenty years when the proportion was 34% back in 1999.”
In addition to the overwhelming propagation of English in international institutions, the Internet, and everyday life, “only 25% of European citizens are able to understand a newspaper article or audiovisual information in English, according to a survey, while less than 1% of the population of the member countries has English as its mother tongue.
Dwindling in popularity, “60% of daily French speakers are now on the African continent and they speak several languages, often local, in addition to French,” while Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean zone show the greatest increase in French since 2018 with a 15% growth.
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