146-447: Le Monde ( French: [lə mɔ̃d] ; French for 'The World') is a French daily afternoon newspaper . It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including 40,000 sold abroad. It has been available online since 1995, and it is often the only French newspaper easily obtainable in non-French-speaking countries. It should not be confused with
292-582: A crucifix or priest. In his will, he made the same stipulation about his own death and funeral. Yet he believed in life after death and prayed every single morning and night, convinced as he wrote in The Man Who Laughs that "Thanksgiving has wings and flies to its right destination. Your prayer knows its way better than you do." Hugo's rationalism can be found in poems such as Torquemada (1869, about religious fanaticism ), The Pope (1878, anti-clerical ), Religions and Religion (1880, denying
438-464: A libel suit against Le Monde , which was later dropped after the newspaper apologised. In June 2017, Le Monde was certified as an International Fact-Checking Network member of the Poynter Institute .。 In 2023, Le Monde banned fossil fuel advertising to tackle climate change . Le Monde is regarded as France's leading newspaper of record . In November 2023, Le Monde joined with
584-456: A Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. From there he became a non-practising Catholic and increasingly expressed anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He frequented spiritism during his exile (where he participated also in many séances conducted by Madame Delphine de Girardin ) and in later years settled into a rationalist deism similar to that espoused by Voltaire . A census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he
730-579: A Condemned Man published in 1829 analyses the pangs of a man awaiting execution; several entries in Things Seen ( Choses vues ), the diary he kept between 1830 and 1885, convey his firm condemnation of what he regarded as a barbaric sentence; on 15 September 1848, seven months after the Revolution of 1848 , he delivered a speech before the Assembly and concluded, "You have overthrown the throne. ... Now overthrow
876-720: A French official to teachers in the department of Finistère , in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language". The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the Basque language with French..." Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process
1022-599: A bad example no longer.... The United States must renounce slavery, or they must renounce liberty." In 1859, he wrote a letter asking the United States government, for the sake of their own reputation in the future, to spare abolitionist John Brown's life, Hugo justified Brown's actions by these words: "Assuredly, if insurrection is ever a sacred duty, it must be when it is directed against Slavery." Hugo agreed to diffuse and sell one of his best known drawings, "Le Pendu", an homage to John Brown, so one could "keep alive in souls
1168-542: A banquet to celebrate the abolition of slavery, in the presence of the French abolitionist writer and parliamentarian Victor Schœlcher, Hugo declared that the Mediterranean Sea formed a natural divide between "ultimate civilisation and ... utter barbarism." Hugo declared that "God offers Africa to Europe. Take it" and "in the nineteenth century the white man made a man out of the black, in the twentieth century Europe will make
1314-431: A comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations,
1460-470: A comrade of General Hugo's during the campaign in Vendee. In October 1807, the family rejoined Leopold, now Colonel Hugo, Governor of the province of Avellino . There, Hugo was taught mathematics by Giuseppe de Samuele Cagnazzi , elder brother of Italian scientist Luca de Samuele Cagnazzi . Sophie found out that Leopold had been living in secret with an Englishwoman called Catherine Thomas. Soon, Hugo's father
1606-543: A foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050. French is the fastest growing language on the continent (in terms of either official or foreign languages). French is increasingly being spoken as a native language in Francophone Africa, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and
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#17328453407181752-693: A great source of inspiration for musicians, stirring them to create not only opera and ballet but musical theatre such as Notre-Dame de Paris and the ever-popular Les Misérables , London West End 's longest running musical. Additionally, Hugo's poems have attracted an exceptional amount of interest from musicians, and numerous melodies have been based on his poetry by composers such as Berlioz , Bizet , Fauré , Franck , Lalo , Liszt , Massenet , Saint-Saëns , Rachmaninoff , and Wagner . Today, Hugo's work continues to stimulate musicians to create new compositions. For example, Hugo's novel against capital punishment, The Last Day of
1898-474: A journey from Lunéville to Besançon. "This elevated origin," he went on, "seems to have had effects on you so that your muse is now continually sublime." Hugo believed himself to have been conceived on 24 June 1801, which is the origin of Jean Valjean 's prisoner number 24601 . In 1810, Hugo's father was made Count Hugo de Cogolludo y Sigüenza by then King of Spain Joseph Bonaparte , though it seems that
2044-486: A letter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano – with only one finger. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin , writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda , which was based on the character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame . Although for various reasons the opera closed soon after its fifth performance and is little known today, it has enjoyed
2190-675: A mentor to Hugo and his brothers. In 1811, the family joined their father in Spain. Hugo and his brothers were sent to school in Madrid at the Real Colegio de San Antonio de Abad while Sophie returned to Paris on her own, now officially separated from her husband. In 1812, as the Peninsular War was turning against France, de La Horie was arrested and executed. In February 1815, Hugo and Eugène were taken away from their mother and placed by their father in
2336-517: A modern revival, both in a piano/song concert version by Liszt at the Festival international Victor Hugo et Égaux 2007 and in a full orchestral version presented in July 2008 at Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon . He was also on friendly terms with Frederic Chopin . He introduced him to George Sand who would be his lover for years. In 1849, Hugo attended Chopin's funeral. On
2482-639: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on
2628-488: A periodical called Le Conservateur littéraire . Hugo published his first novel ( Hans of Iceland , 1823) the year following his marriage, and his second three years later ( Bug-Jargal , 1826). Between 1829 and 1840, he published five more volumes of poetry: Les Orientales , 1829; Les Feuilles d'automne , 1831; Les Chants du crépuscule [ fr ] , 1835; Les Voix intérieures , 1837; and Les Rayons et les Ombres , 1840. This cemented his reputation as one of
2774-454: A playwright grew with subsequent plays, such as Marion Delorme (1831), Le roi s'amuse (1832), and Ruy Blas (1838). Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris ( The Hunchback of Notre-Dame ) was published in 1831 and quickly translated into other languages across Europe. One of the effects of the novel was to shame the City of Paris into restoring the much neglected Cathedral of Notre Dame , which
2920-565: A precursor to his great work on social injustice, Les Misérables . Hugo became the figurehead of the Romantic literary movement with the plays Cromwell (1827) and Hernani (1830). Hernani announced the arrival of French romanticism: performed at the Comédie-Française , it was greeted with several nights of rioting as romantics and traditionalists clashed over the play's deliberate disregard for neo-classical rules. Hugo's popularity as
3066-494: A relic of the old nominal case system of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated diphthongs such as -eau which would later be leveled to monophthongs. The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in
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#17328453407183212-573: A second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German ; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union ). French is also the 16th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers , and
3358-513: A second language. However it has also become a native language in a number of urban areas, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and the Democratic Republic of the Congo . In some North African countries, though not having official status, it is also a first language among some upper classes of the population alongside indigenous languages, but only
3504-897: A second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union . Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as
3650-524: A strong impact there. He also composed or published some of his best work during his period in Guernsey , including Les Misérables , and three widely praised collections of poetry ( Les Châtiments , 1853; Les Contemplations , 1856; and La Légende des siècles , 1859). However, Víctor Hugo said in Les Misérables: The wretched moral character of Thénardier, the frustrated bourgeois,
3796-556: A superior unity and constitute a European fraternity, just as Normandy , Brittany , Burgundy , Lorraine , have been blended into France", this new state would be administered by "a great Sovereign senate which will be to Europe what the Parliament is to England". Because of his concern for the rights of artists and copyright , he was a founding member of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale , which led to
3942-536: A variant of Canadian French , is spoken in parts of New England . Missouri French was historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois (formerly known as Upper Louisiana ), but is nearly extinct today. French also survived in isolated pockets along the Gulf Coast of what was previously French Lower Louisiana , such as Mon Louis Island , Alabama and DeLisle, Mississippi (the latter only being discovered by linguists in
4088-587: A variety of genres and forms. His most famous works are the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). In France, Hugo is renowned for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles ( The Legend of the Ages ). Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani . His works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including
4234-574: A world out of Africa". This might partly explain why in spite of his deep interest and involvement in political matters he remained silent on the Algerian issue. He knew about the atrocities committed by the French Army during the French conquest of Algeria as evidenced by his diary but he never denounced them publicly; however, in Les Misérables , Hugo wrote: "Algeria too harshly conquered, and, as in
4380-437: Is 95%, and in the French collectivity of Wallis and Futuna , it is 84%. In French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, where oral and written knowledge of the French language has become almost universal (95% and 84% respectively), French increasingly tends to displace the native Polynesian languages as the language most spoken at home. In French Polynesia, the percentage of the population who reported that French
4526-467: Is a widespread second language among the Lebanese people , and is taught in many schools along with Arabic and English. French is used on Lebanese pound banknotes, on road signs, on Lebanese license plates , and on official buildings (alongside Arabic). Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon , with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English
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4672-484: Is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and Médecins du Monde (used alongside English). Given
4818-430: Is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including
4964-456: Is an official language in 27 countries , as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. Most of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share
5110-628: Is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories ( Northwest Territories , Nunavut , and Yukon ). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, making up just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario , the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are available in
5256-495: Is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English
5402-404: Is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects . The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from
5548-462: Is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). MIT economist Albert Saiz calculated a 2.3% premium for those who have French as a foreign language in
5694-775: Is one of the official languages of such major international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , the Caribbean Court of Justice , the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States , the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , the International Court of Justice , the International Criminal Tribunal for
5840-510: Is published around midday, and the cover date on the masthead is the following day's. For instance, the issue released at midday on 15 March shows 16 March on the masthead. It is available on newsstands in France on the day of release and received by mail subscribers on the masthead date. The Saturday issue is a double one, for Saturday and Sunday, thus the latest edition can be found on newsstands from Monday to Friday included, while subscribers will receive it from Tuesday to Saturday. Le Monde
5986-562: Is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence , education, and diplomacy. In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat 's only two working languages ), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO ,
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6132-423: Is that this book is going to be one of the peaks, if not the crowning point of my work." Publication of Les Misérables went to the highest bidder. The Belgian publishing house Lacroix and Verboeckhoven undertook a marketing campaign unusual for the time, issuing press releases about the work a full six months before the launch. It also initially published only the first part of the novel (" Fantine "), which
6278-538: Is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. French is an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu , where 31% of the population was estimated to speak it in 2023. In the French special collectivity of New Caledonia , 97% of the population can speak, read and write French while in French Polynesia this figure
6424-479: Is the native language of about 23% of the Swiss population, and is spoken by 50% of the population. Along with Luxembourgish and German, French is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg , where it is generally the preferred language of business as well as of the different public administrations. It is also the official language of Monaco . At a regional level, French is acknowledged as an official language in
6570-492: Is the second-most spoken language (after English) in the states of Maine and New Hampshire . In Louisiana , it is tied with Spanish for second-most spoken if Louisiana French and all creoles such as Haitian are included. French is the third most spoken language (after English and Spanish) in the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire . Louisiana is home to many distinct French dialects, collectively known as Louisiana French . New England French , essentially
6716-424: Is the sole official language in the province of Quebec , where some 80% of the population speak it as a native language and 95% are capable of conducting a conversation in it. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal , which is the world's fourth-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism
6862-738: The Aosta Valley region of Italy where it is the first language of approximately 50% of the population, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands . It is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa . The language is taught as the primary second language in the German state of Saarland , with French being taught from pre-school and over 43% of citizens being able to speak French. The majority of
7008-459: The Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as
7154-559: The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works . However, in Pauvert 's published archives, he states strongly that "any work of art has two authors: the people who confusingly feel something, a creator who translates these feelings, and the people again who consecrate his vision of that feeling. When one of the authors dies, the rights should totally be granted back to
7300-539: The Democratic Republic of Congo . There is not a single African French , but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages . Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years. Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of
7446-485: The European Union , French was the dominant language within all institutions until the 1990s. After several enlargements of the EU (1995, 2004), French significantly lost ground in favour of English, which is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French currently remains one of the three working languages, or "procedural languages", of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second-most widely used language within EU institutions after English, but remains
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#17328453407187592-547: The Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically,
7738-634: The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists , Paper Trail Media [ de ] and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories to produce the ' Cyprus Confidential ' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin , mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in
7884-820: The International Olympic Committee , the Council of Europe , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the Eurovision Song Contest , one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency , World Trade Organization and the least used of the three official languages in the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. It
8030-609: The Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia , while Old French literature began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the Vie de Saint Alexis ), or wars and royal courts, notably including the Chanson de Roland , epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court , as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange . It
8176-628: The Provisional Government of the French Republic ) on 19 December 1944, shortly after the Liberation of Paris from Nazism, and has published continuously since its first edition. In the 1990s and 2000s, La Vie-Le Monde Group expanded under editor Jean-Marie Colombani with a number of acquisitions; however, its profitability was not sufficient to cover the large debts it took on to fund this expansion, and it sought new investors in 2010 to keep
8322-951: The United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin
8468-455: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;
8614-474: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed
8760-447: The Bagne in 1839 and took extensive notes, though he did not start writing the book until 1845. On one of the pages of his notes about the prison, he wrote in large block letters a possible name for his hero: "JEAN TRÉJEAN". When the book was finally written, Tréjean became Jean Valjean . Hugo was acutely aware of the quality of the novel, as evidenced in a letter he wrote to his publisher, Albert Lacroix, on 23 March 1862: "My conviction
8906-510: The Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it has a large population of federal government workers, who are required to offer services in both French and English, and is just across the river from the Quebecois city of Gatineau . According to the United States Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth most spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all dialects of Chinese are similarly combined. French
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#17328453407189052-614: The Caribbean that are collectively referred to as the French West Indies , namely Guadeloupe , Saint Barthélemy , Saint Martin , and Martinique . French is the official language of both French Guiana on the South American continent, and of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland in North America. French was the official language of the colony of French Indochina , comprising modern-day Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . It continues to be an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia, although its influence has waned in recent decades. In colonial Vietnam,
9198-412: The Commune subjected to brutal repression. He had been in Brussels since 22 March 1871 when in the 27 May issue of the Belgian newspaper l’Indépendance Victor Hugo denounced the government's refusal to grant political asylum to the Communards threatened with imprisonment, banishment or execution. This caused so much uproar that in the evening a mob of fifty to sixty men attempted to force their way into
9344-408: The Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of
9490-696: The French media. The archive identified two senior Le Monde journalists and several contributors who were used in the operations (see also the article on Russian influence operations in France ). Michel Legris, a former journalist with the paper, wrote Le Monde tel qu'il est ( Le Monde as it is ) in 1976. According to him, the journal minimized the atrocities the Cambodian Khmer Rouge committed. In their 2003 book titled La Face cachée du Monde ( The Hidden face of "Le Monde" ), authors Pierre Péan and Philippe Cohen alleged that Colombani and then-editor Edwy Plenel had shown, amongst other things, partisan bias and had engaged in financial dealings that compromised
9636-416: The Germanic Frankish language , which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order , a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary ) including the impersonal singular pronoun on (a calque of Germanic man ), and the name of the language itself. Up until its later stages, Old French , alongside Old Occitan , maintained
9782-456: The Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned. Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides and European lawmakers began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours, calling for reforms and launching probes. In June 2010, investors Matthieu Pigasse , Pierre Bergé , and Xavier Niel acquired a controlling stake in the newspaper. In October 2018, staff learned that Pigasse had sold 49% of his stake in
9928-416: The Pension Cordier, a private boarding school in Paris, where Hugo and Eugène remained for three years while also attending lectures at Lycée Louis le Grand. On 10 July 1816, Hugo wrote in his diary: "I shall be Chateaubriand or nothing." In 1817, he wrote a poem for a competition organised by the Academie Française , for which he received an honorable mention. The Academicians refused to believe that he
10074-416: The Republic. Hugo's mother Sophie was loyal to the deposed dynasty but would declare her children to be Protestants. They met in Châteaubriant in 1796 and married the following year. Since Hugo's father was an officer in Napoleon's army, the family moved frequently from posting to posting. Léopold Hugo wrote to his son that he had been conceived on one of the highest peaks in the Vosges Mountains , on
10220-430: The Spanish title was not legally recognized in France. Hugo later titled himself as a viscount, and it was as "Vicomte Victor Hugo" that he was appointed a peer of France on 13 April 1845. Weary of the constant moving required by military life, Sophie separated temporarily from Léopold and settled in Paris in 1803 with her sons. There, she began seeing General Victor Fanneau de La Horie , Hugo's godfather, who had been
10366-528: The Upper Chamber of Parliament as a pair de France in 1845, where he spoke against the death penalty and social injustice , and in favour of freedom of the press and self-government for Poland. In 1848, Hugo was elected to the National Assembly of the Second Republic as a conservative. In 1849, he broke with the conservatives when he gave a noted speech calling for the end of misery and poverty. Other speeches called for universal suffrage and free education for all children. Hugo's advocacy to abolish
10512-448: The author's name and reflected the acute social conscience that would infuse his later work. Le Dernier jour d'un condamné ( The Last Day of a Condemned Man ) would have a profound influence on later writers such as Albert Camus , Charles Dickens , and Fyodor Dostoyevsky . Claude Gueux, a documentary short story about a real-life murderer who had been executed in France, was published in 1834. Hugo himself later considered it to be
10658-460: The book. Hugo returned to political and social issues in his next novel, L'Homme Qui Rit ( The Man Who Laughs ), which was published in 1869 and painted a critical picture of the aristocracy. The novel was not as successful as his previous efforts, and Hugo himself began to comment on the growing distance between himself and literary contemporaries such as Flaubert and Émile Zola , whose realist and naturalist novels were now exceeding
10804-519: The business. While shareholders appoint the company's CEO, the editor is elected by Le Monde ' s journalists to uphold the newsroom's independence. Le Monde has often broken major scandals, for instance, by directly implicating President François Mitterrand in the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand. In contrast to other world newspapers such as The New York Times , Le Monde
10950-531: The case of India by the English, with more barbarism than civilization." After coming in contact with Victor Schœlcher , a writer who fought for the abolition of slavery and French colonialism in the Caribbean, he started strongly campaigning against slavery. In a letter to American abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman , on 6 July 1851, Hugo wrote: "Slavery in the United States! It is the duty of this republic to set such
11096-513: The cause of Romanticism, became involved in politics (though mostly as a champion of Republicanism ), and was forced into exile due to his political stances. Along with Chateaubriand he attended the Coronation of Charles X in Reims in 1825. The precocious passion and eloquence of Hugo's early work brought success and fame at an early age. His first collection of poetry ( Odes et poésies diverses )
11242-451: The company from bankruptcy . In June 2010, French investors Matthieu Pigasse , Pierre Bergé , and Xavier Niel acquired a controlling stake in the newspaper. Le Monde was founded in 1944, at the request of General Charles de Gaulle , after the German army had been driven from Paris during World War II . The paper took over the headquarters and layout of Le Temps , which had been
11388-492: The company to Czech businessman Daniel Křetínský . Le Monde 's Independency Group, a minority shareholder that aims to protect the paper's editorial independence , had not been informed of the sale, and asked Pigasse and Křetínský to sign an "approval agreement" that would give the Independency Group the right to approve or reject any controlling shareholder. As of September 2019, they had not done so. Le Monde
11534-497: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo ( French: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo] ; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in
11680-825: The death penalty was renowned internationally. When Louis Napoleon ( Napoleon III ) seized complete power in 1851 , establishing an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor to France. He moved to Brussels , then Jersey , from which he was expelled for supporting L’Homme , a local newspaper that had published a letter to Queen Victoria by a French republican deemed treasonous . He finally settled with his family at Hauteville House in Saint Peter Port , Guernsey , where he would live in exile from October 1855 until 1870. While in exile, Hugo published his famous political pamphlets against Napoleon III, Napoléon le Petit and Histoire d'un crime . The pamphlets were banned in France but nonetheless had
11826-564: The democratic character of the state. The paper endorsed centre-right candidate Édouard Balladur in the 1995 French presidential election , and Ségolène Royal , the Socialist Party candidate, in the 2007 French presidential election . According to the Mitrokhin Archive investigators, Le Monde (KGB codename VESTNIK, "messenger") was the KGB 's key outlet for Soviet disinformation in
11972-508: The demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future". However, some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to eradicate the use of French, and as of 2024 it was removed as an official language in Mali and Burkina Faso . Significant as a judicial language, French
12118-768: The director of the newspaper. French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are
12264-448: The economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige). In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged." Knowledge of French
12410-585: The elites primarily spoke French, while many servants who worked in French households spoke a French pidgin known as " Tây Bồi " (now extinct). After French rule ended, South Vietnam continued to use French in administration, education, and trade. However, since the Fall of Saigon and the opening of a unified Vietnam's economy, French has gradually been effectively displaced as the first foreign language of choice by English in Vietnam. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as
12556-565: The event, including Libération , Le Figaro , and France Inter . Le Monde had previously published the names of Algerian officials directly involved with the Panama Papers scandal. Coverage of the scandal in Le Monde included a front-page photo of President of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika . However, the paper clarified in its next edition that Bouteflika was not directly implicated, but maintained that his associates were. Bouteflika opened
12702-506: The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, while the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of law in the Kingdom of France . During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ( lingua franca ). It retained this role until approximately the middle of
12848-858: The former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body . It is the sole internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union , and makes with English the European Court of Human Rights 's two working languages. In 1997, George Weber published, in Language Today ,
12994-818: The gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish. The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the Petit Robert , which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240. Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life ( chêne , bille , etc.), animals ( mouton , cheval , etc.), nature ( boue , etc.), domestic activities (ex. berceau ), farming and rural units of measure ( arpent , lieue , borne , boisseau ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being
13140-756: The government. It was only after Napoleon III fell from power and the Third Republic was proclaimed that Hugo finally returned to his homeland in 1870, where he was promptly elected to the National Assembly and the Senate. He was in Paris during the siege by the Prussian Army in 1870 , famously eating animals given to him by the Paris Zoo. As the siege continued, and food became ever more scarce, he wrote in his diary that he
13286-474: The greatest elegiac and lyric poets of his time. Like many young writers of his generation, Hugo was profoundly influenced by François-René de Chateaubriand , the famous figure in the literary movement of Romanticism and France's pre-eminent literary figure during the early 19th century. In his youth, Hugo resolved to be " Chateaubriand or nothing", and his life would come to parallel that of his predecessor in many ways. Like Chateaubriand , Hugo furthered
13432-440: The headquarters of Air France —was refashioned by Bouygues from the designs of Christian de Portzamparc . The building's façade has an enormous fresco adorned by doves (drawn by Plantu ) flying towards Victor Hugo , symbolising freedom of the press . In 2008, Le Monde was found guilty of defamation for saying that Spanish football club FC Barcelona was connected to a doctor involved in steroid use. The Spanish court fined
13578-450: The language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. French is the second most commonly spoken language in Canada and one of two federal official languages alongside English. As of the 2021 Canadian census , it was the native language of 7.7 million people (21% of the population) and the second language of 2.9 million (8% of the population). French
13724-474: The language, although it has now given way to Tamil and English. A former French mandate , Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used. Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The French language in Lebanon
13870-602: The language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario . Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The Ontarian city of Ottawa ,
14016-475: The last to hold onto Gaulish. The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc . Langue d'oïl grew into what
14162-463: The masses that the issues it highlighted were soon on the agenda of the National Assembly of France . Today, the novel remains his best-known work. It is popular worldwide and has been adapted for cinema, television, and stage shows. An apocryphal tale has circulated, describing the shortest correspondence in history as having been between Hugo and his publisher Hurst and Blackett in 1862. Hugo
14308-423: The memory of this liberator of our black brothers, of this heroic martyr John Brown, who died for Christ just as Christ. Only one slave on Earth is enough to dishonour the freedom of all men. So the abolition of slavery is, at this hour, the supreme goal of the thinkers. As a novelist, diarist, and member of Parliament, Victor Hugo fought a lifelong battle for the abolition of the death penalty. The Last Day of
14454-495: The monthly publication Le Monde diplomatique , of which Le Monde has 51% ownership but is editorially independent. Le Monde is considered one of the French newspapers of record , along with Libération and Le Figaro . A Reuters Institute poll in 2021 found that Le Monde is the most trusted French newspaper. The paper's journalistic side has a collegial form of organization, in which most journalists are tenured, unionized, and financial stakeholders in
14600-603: The most important newspaper in France, but its reputation had suffered during the Occupation . Beuve-Méry reportedly demanded total editorial independence as the condition for his taking on the project. Le Monde began publishing a weekly digest edition in English on 23 April 1969. In December 2006, on the 60th anniversary of its publishing début, Le Monde moved into new headquarters in Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui , 13th arrondissement of Paris . The building—formerly
14746-621: The music of Gluck , Mozart , Weber and Meyerbeer . In Les Misérables , he calls the huntsman's chorus in Weber's Euryanthe , "perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever composed". He also greatly admired Beethoven and, rather unusually for his time, appreciated works by composers from earlier centuries such as Palestrina and Monteverdi . Two famous musicians of the 19th century were friends of Hugo: Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt . The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in
14892-420: The necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". When public education was made compulsory , only French was taught and the use of any other ( patois ) language was punished. The goals of the public school system were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany . Instructions given by
15038-484: The newspaper nearly $ 450,000. In 2014, Groupe Le Monde announced that Le Monde would move into a new headquarters, also in the 13th arrondissement, around 2017, with space for 1,200 people. In April 2016, two Le Monde reporters were denied visas to visit Algeria as part of the French Prime Minister press convoy to Algeria. The denial of visas to Le Monde reporters caused some French media to boycott
15184-574: The official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick); Belgium ( Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region ); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont); Monaco;
15330-468: The opera Rigoletto and the musicals Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris . He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment and slavery . Although he was a committed royalist when young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism , serving in politics as both deputy and senator. His work touched upon most of
15476-570: The other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French
15622-701: The other hand, he had low esteem for Richard Wagner , whom he described as "a man of talent coupled with imbecility." Well over one thousand musical compositions have been inspired by Hugo's works from the 19th century until the present day. In particular, Hugo's plays, in which he rejected the rules of classical theatre in favour of romantic drama, attracted the interest of many composers who adapted them into operas. More than one hundred operas are based on Hugo's works and among them are Donizetti 's Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Verdi 's Rigoletto (1851) and Ernani (1844), and Ponchielli 's La Gioconda (1876). Hugo's novels, as well as his plays, have been
15768-528: The other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language. All three countries are full members of La Francophonie (OIF). French was the official language of French India , consisting of the geographically separate enclaves referred to as Puducherry . It continued to be an official language of the territory even after its cession to India in 1956 until 1965. A small number of older locals still retain knowledge of
15914-435: The other, the people." He was one of the earlier supporters of the concept of domaine public payant , under which a nominal fee would be charged for copying or performing works in the public domain, and this would go into a common fund dedicated to helping artists, especially young people. Hugo's religious views changed radically over the course of his life. In his youth and under the influence of his mother, he identified as
16060-544: The paper's independence. It also accused the paper of dangerously damaging the authority of the French state by having revealed various political scandals (notably corruption scandals surrounding Jacques Chirac , the " Irish of Vincennes " affair, and the sinking of a Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior , by French intelligence under President François Mitterrand ). This book remains controversial , but it attracted much attention and media coverage in France and worldwide at
16206-579: The political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. His opposition to absolutism , and his literary stature, established him as a national hero. Hugo died on 22 May 1885, aged 83. He was given a state funeral in the Panthéon of Paris , which was attended by over 2 million people, the largest in French history. Victor-Marie Hugo was born on 26 February 1802 in Besançon in Eastern France. He
16352-532: The popularity of his own work. His last novel, Quatre-vingt-treize ( Ninety-Three ), published in 1874, dealt with a subject that Hugo had previously avoided: the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution . Though Hugo's popularity was on the decline at the time of its publication, many now consider Ninety-Three to be a work on par with Hugo's better-known novels. After three unsuccessful attempts, Hugo
16498-462: The preferred language of certain institutions or administrations such as the Court of Justice of the European Union , where it is the sole internal working language, or the Directorate-General for Agriculture . Since 2016, Brexit has rekindled discussions on whether or not French should again hold greater role within the institutions of the European Union. A leading world language , French
16644-405: The previous success of Les Misérables . Dedicated to the channel island of Guernsey , where Hugo spent 15 years of exile, the novel tells of a man who attempts to win the approval of his beloved's father by rescuing his ship, intentionally marooned by its captain who hopes to escape with a treasure of money it is transporting, through an exhausting battle of human engineering against the force of
16790-443: The reasons for the closing of the blogs were unclear, it could be linked to the dominance of social networks like Facebook. Le Monde launched an English language edition of its news website on 7 April 2022, featuring its articles translated from French. In 1981, Le Monde backed the election of socialist François Mitterrand , partly on the grounds that the alternation of the political party in government would be beneficial to
16936-464: The rest largely speak French as a first language. As a French Creole language , Haitian Creole draws the large majority of its vocabulary from French, with influences from West African languages, as well as several European languages. It is closely related to Louisiana Creole and the creole from the Lesser Antilles . French is the sole official language of all the overseas territories of France in
17082-412: The scaffold." His influence was credited in the removal of the death penalty from the constitutions of Geneva , Portugal , and Colombia . He had also pleaded for Benito Juárez to spare the recently captured emperor Maximilian I of Mexico , but to no avail. Although Napoleon III granted an amnesty to all political exiles in 1859, Hugo declined, as it meant he would have to curtail his criticisms of
17228-469: The sea and an almost mythical beast of the sea, a giant squid. Superficially an adventure, one of Hugo's biographers calls it a "metaphor for the 19th century–technical progress, creative genius and hard work overcoming the immanent evil of the material world." The word used in Guernsey to refer to squid ( pieuvre , also sometimes applied to octopus) was to enter the French language as a result of its use in
17374-516: The time of its publication. Following a lawsuit, the authors and the publisher agreed in 2004 not to proceed with any reprinting. The Prix littéraire du Monde has been awarded annually by Le Monde since 2013. It is awarded at the beginning of September to a novel published at the start of the French literary season—or "rentrée littéraire". The winner of the prize is chosen by a jury made up of journalists—literary journalists from Le Monde des livres , cultural or other editorial staff—chaired by
17520-462: The total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050, largely due to rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa . OIF estimates 700 million French speakers by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. In a study published in March 2014 by Forbes , the investment bank Natixis said that French could become the world's most spoken language by 2050. In
17666-673: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French
17812-508: The urban intellectual elite. The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable Romanization . Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French contributing loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by
17958-479: The use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is an official language at the federal level along with Dutch and German. At the regional level, French is the sole official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons , which are German-speaking ) and one of
18104-416: The usefulness of churches) and, published posthumously, The End of Satan and God (1886 and 1891 respectively, in which he represents Christianity as a griffin and rationalism as an angel ). The Hunchback of Notre-Dame also garnered attention due to its portrayal of the abuse of power by the church, even getting listed as one of the "forbidden books" by it. In fact, earlier adaptations had to change
18250-447: The villain, Claude Frollo from being a priest to avoid backlash. Vincent van Gogh ascribed the saying "Religions pass away, but God remains," actually by Jules Michelet , to Hugo. Although Hugo's many talents did not include exceptional musical ability, he nevertheless had a great impact on the music world through the inspiration that his works provided for composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hugo himself particularly enjoyed
18396-531: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of
18542-402: The world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie , an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories can speak French as either a first or a second language . This number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as
18688-622: The writer's house shouting, "Death to Victor Hugo! Hang him! Death to the scoundrel!" Hugo, who said "A war between Europeans is a civil war," was a strong advocate for the creation of the United States of Europe . He expounded his views on the subject in a speech he delivered during the International Peace Congress which took place in Paris in 1849. Here he declared "nations of the continent, will, without losing your distinctive qualities and glorious individuality, be blended into
18834-669: Was a Catholic, and he replied, "No. A Freethinker ." After 1872, Hugo never lost his antipathy towards the Catholic Church. He felt the Church was indifferent to the plight of the working class under the oppression of the monarchy. Perhaps he also was upset by the frequency with which his work appeared on the Church's list of banned books . Hugo counted 740 attacks on Les Misérables in the Catholic press. When Hugo's sons Charles and François-Victor died, he insisted that they be buried without
18980-415: Was among the first French newspapers on the web, with its first web edition on 19 December 1995. It is among the 50 most visited websites in France. Starting in the 2000s Le Monde allowed its subscribers to publish a blog on its website. These blogs were called the "les blogs abonnées du Monde.fr". On 10 April 2019, Le Monde announced that it would be closing its blog platform on 5 June 2019. Although
19126-508: Was attracting thousands of tourists who had read the popular novel. Hugo began planning a major novel about social misery and injustice as early as the 1830s, but a full 17 years were needed for Les Misérables to be realised and finally published in 1862. Hugo had previously used the departure of prisoners for the Bagne of Toulon in Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné . He went to Toulon to visit
19272-572: Was called to Spain to fight the Peninsular War . Madame Hugo and her children were sent back to Paris in 1808, where they moved to an old convent, 12 Impasse des Feuillantines , an isolated mansion in a deserted quarter of the left bank of the Seine. Hiding in a chapel at the back of the garden was de La Horie, who had conspired to restore the Bourbons and been condemned to death a few years earlier. He became
19418-732: Was during the period of the Crusades in which French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that became a lingua franca ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the Arabs during the Crusades who referred to them as Franj , numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as algébre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero). Within Old French many dialects emerged but
19564-464: Was finally elected to the Académie française in 1841, solidifying his position in the world of French arts and letters. A group of French academicians, particularly Étienne de Jouy , were fighting against the "romantic evolution" and had managed to delay Victor Hugo's election. Thereafter, he became increasingly involved in French politics. On the nomination of King Louis-Philippe , Hugo entered
19710-400: Was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Arpitan . The evolution of Latin in Gaul
19856-525: Was hopeless; it was in America what it had been in Europe. Contact with a wicked man is sometimes enough to rot a good deed and cause something bad to come out of it. With Marius's money, Thénardier became a slave trader. Like most of his contemporaries, Hugo justified colonialism in terms of a civilizing mission and putting an end to the slave trade on the Barbary coast. In a speech delivered on 18 May 1879, during
20002-633: Was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha . Spoken by 19.71% of the European Union's population, French is the third most widely spoken language in the EU, after English and German and the second-most-widely taught language after English. Under the Constitution of France , French has been the official language of the Republic since 1992, although the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates
20148-632: Was launched simultaneously in major cities. Installments of the book sold out within hours and had an enormous impact on French society. The critical establishment was generally hostile to the novel; Taine found it insincere, Barbey d'Aurevilly complained of its vulgarity, Gustave Flaubert found within it "neither truth nor greatness", the Goncourt brothers lambasted its artificiality, and Baudelaire —despite giving favourable reviews in newspapers—castigated it in private as "repulsive and inept". However, Les Misérables proved popular enough with
20294-416: Was on vacation when Les Misérables was published. He queried the reaction to the work by sending a single-character telegram to his publisher, asking ? . The publisher replied with a single ! to indicate its success. Hugo turned away from social/political issues in his next novel, Les Travailleurs de la Mer ( Toilers of the Sea ), published in 1866. The book was well received, perhaps due to
20440-449: Was only fifteen. Hugo moved in with his mother to 18 rue des Petits-Augustins the following year and began attending law school. Hugo fell in love and secretly became engaged, against his mother's wishes, to his childhood friend Adèle Foucher . In June 1821, Sophie Trebuchet died, and Léopold married his long-time mistress Catherine Thomas a month later. Hugo married Adèle the following year. In 1819, Hugo and his brothers began publishing
20586-488: Was published in 1822 when he was only 20 years old and earned him a royal pension from Louis XVIII . Though the poems were admired for their spontaneous fervor and fluency, the collection that followed four years later in 1826 ( Odes et Ballades ) revealed Hugo to be a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song. Victor Hugo's first mature work of fiction was published in February 1829 by Charles Gosselin without
20732-481: Was reduced to "eating the unknown". During the Paris Commune —the revolutionary government that took power on 18 March 1871 and was toppled on 28 May—Victor Hugo was harshly critical of the atrocities committed on both sides. On 9 April, he wrote in his diary, "In short, this Commune is as idiotic as the National Assembly is ferocious. From both sides, folly." Yet he made a point of offering his support to members of
20878-575: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of
21024-554: Was the language they use the most at home rose from 67% at the 2007 census to 74% at the 2017 census. In Wallis and Futuna, the percentage of the population who reported that French was the language they use the most at home rose from 10% at the 2008 census to 13% at the 2018 census. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie ,
21170-534: Was the youngest son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828), a general in the Napoleonic army , and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821). The couple had two other sons: Abel Joseph (1798–1855) and Eugène (1800–1837). The Hugo family came from Nancy in Lorraine , where Hugo's grandfather was a wood merchant. Léopold enlisted in the army of Revolutionary France at fourteen. He was an atheist and an ardent supporter of
21316-400: Was traditionally focused on offering analysis and opinion, as opposed to being a newspaper of record. It de-emphasized maximum coverage of the news in favor of thoughtful interpretation of current events. In recent years the paper has established a greater distinction between fact and opinion. Le Monde was founded by Hubert Beuve-Méry at the request of Charles de Gaulle (as Chairman of
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