History of French and is a lingua franca in some regions, notably in Africa. The legacy of French as a living language outside Europe is mixed: it is nearly extinct in some former French colonies (Southeast Asia), while the language has changed to creoles, dialects or pidgins in the French departments in the West Indies, even though people there are still educated in standard French. On the other hand, many former French colonies have adopted French as an official language, and the total number of French speakers has increased, especially in Africa. In the Canadian province of Quebec, different laws have promoted the
The Universality of the French Language grammar, “what is not clear is not French”, Rivarol blamed the languages with inversions. Unlike the French syntax, which he described as “a straight line”, idioms such as Greek and Latin confused locators by leading them into a grammatical labyrinth. Due to inversion traps, Latin or Greek prose lost their clarity and accuracy. However, the only weak point that Rivarol reproached French consisted in the incompatibility with music. According to the French pamphleteer, the rigid structure of French clashed with meandering chord of musical notes. However this constancy of the order was the reason why philosophers adopted the French language.