Language comparison
French vs Italian
Both belong to the Indo-European family; their closest common node in the Glottolog tree: Italo-Western Romance. Both are used in: Switzerland, Italy, Malta.
Relatedness is not mutual intelligibility: languages of one branch can be unintelligible to each other, while very close ones (such as Serbian and Croatian) differ mainly in status and script. That is why we give no “similarity percentage”.
French
français
- Family and branch (Glottolog)
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Italic
- Latino-Faliscan
- Latinic
- Imperial Latin
- Romance
- Italo-Western Romance
- Western Romance
- Shifted Western Romance
- Northwestern Shifted Romance
- Gallo-Rhaetian
- Oil
- Central Oil
- Macro-French
- Global French
- French
- Script
- Latin
- Hello / thank you
- bonjour / merci
- Speakers (estimate)
- c. 333 million sum over countries per CLDR, including second-language users
- Official (16)
- France, DR Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Senegal, Guinea, Republic of the Congo, Togo, Gabon, New Caledonia, Monaco, St. Martin, Wallis & Futuna, St. Barthélemy, St. Pierre & Miquelon, French Southern Territories
- Co-official (18)
- Cameroon, Canada, Burundi, Madagascar, Haiti, Belgium, Switzerland, Chad, Central African Republic, Mauritius, Rwanda, Luxembourg, Equatorial Guinea, Djibouti, French Polynesia, Comoros, Vanuatu, Seychelles
- Working (3)
- Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger
- Official in a region (1)
- Italy
- Without status
- widely used in 15 countries, a minority language in 6 countries
Italian
italiano
- Family and branch (Glottolog)
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Italic
- Latino-Faliscan
- Latinic
- Imperial Latin
- Romance
- Italo-Western Romance
- Italo-Dalmatian
- Italian Romance
- Central Italian Romance
- Italian
- Script
- Latin
- Hello / thank you
- buongiorno / grazie
- Speakers (estimate)
- c. 70 million sum over countries per CLDR, including second-language users
- Official (3)
- Italy, San Marino, Vatican City
- Co-official (1)
- Switzerland
- Official in a region (2)
- Croatia, Slovenia
- Without status
- widely used in 1 country, a minority language in 8 countries
Where they are spoken
- French 50
- Italian 4
- both 3
Countries where the language has a legal status or is known by at least 10% of the population (CLDR); countries where it is only a minority language are not shown.