- published: 19 Jan 2015
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French (le français [lə fʁɑ̃sɛ] or la langue française [la lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛz]) is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the province of Quebec and the Acadia region in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts of the world, the largest numbers of whom reside in Francophone Africa. In Africa, French is most commonly spoken in Gabon (where 80% report fluency)Mauritius (78%), Algeria (75%), Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire (70%). French is estimated as having between 70 million and 110 million native speakers and 190 million second language speakers. French is the second-most studied foreign language in the world, after English.
French is a distortion of the spoken Latin language of the Roman Empire, as are languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Sardinian and Catalan. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl, languages historically spoken in northern France and Belgium which have largely been supplanted by French today. The development of French was also influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole.
Gemma Christina Arterton (born 12 January 1986) is an English actress. She played the eponymous protagonist in the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and starred in the feature films St Trinian's, the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tamara Drewe. She was nominated for a BAFTA, in the Rising Star category.
Arterton was born in Gravesend, Kent, the elder daughter of Sally-Anne (née Heap), a cleaner, and Barry Arterton, a welder. Arterton was born with polydactyly, and was brought up, along with her sister, Hannah Jane, by their single mother, on a council estate in Gravesend. Arterton's parents divorced when she was five, and her father remarried in 1996. She attended Painters Ash Primary School in Northfleet, then attended Gravesend Grammar School for Girls on Pelham Road in Gravesend, she took a performance arts course at the Miskin Theatre in Dartford (part of North West Kent College) and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a full grant.