Talk:France

To whoever added : '*If only strict France is considered this number lows to some 40 milion', the least you could do is explain to the rest of us what on earth you mean by 'strict France.' The first time I read it I thought you meant the Metropole, but then I saw the entry for Spain and realize that you're removing some groups (Basques? Catalans? Occitans?). --MichaelTinkler

I wonder why someone has added, among the languages spoken in France, German and Dutch. These are not spoken in France, except by tourists. -- GP

There really is a very small minority of Dutch speakers in France, located in the northeast corner, at the Belgian border. I don't known whether these people speak it as a first language, however. It is also claimed that the possibility to meet a Dutchman in the summer is higher in France than in Amsterdam, so there are lot of people speaking Dutch ;-)

Well, though the Flemish (rather than Dutch) traditions may still be present around Lille, I have never met any Flemish-speaking person coming from French Flanders. Maybe among people over 70 years ?

While Flemish is really just a dialect of Dutch (although many speakers of both languages will deny that), I really don't know who speak it, it is just mentioned in most reputable language reports of France. Jeronimo

I could image some people in the Alsace/Elzas speaking German, but I don't really know. Jeronimo

You may be right, but actually they probably wouldn't agree ; the dialect(s) spoken in Alsace is (are) germanic, but Alsatians are reluctant to call it German. Of course, this is subject to debate.

I have replaced "Dutch" and "German" by "Flemish" and "Alsatien" respectively. These are the actual names of these dialects, and they both link to articles, which in turn link to "Dutch" and "German". - User:Olivier

I've replace Alsatien by Alsacien. First because it's the way we write it. Then, because by judging the number of hits on google (35 instead of 28 200 for Alsacien), most being personal pages or wikipedia page, it's obviously not the english way to write it. Mispelling probably.