Corsican language
Encyclopedia
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
(France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) and northern Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
(Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
). Corsican is the traditional native language of the Corsican people, and was long the vernacular language
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
alongside the Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, official language in Corsica until 1859, which was replaced by French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
due to the acquisition of the Island by France in 1768. Over the next two centuries, the forced use of French grew to the extent that, by the Liberation in 1945, all islanders had a working knowledge of French. The twentieth century saw a wholesale language shift, with islanders changing their language practices to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican speakers left by the 1960s. By 1990, an estimated 50% of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican, and a small minority, perhaps 10%, used Corsu as a first language.
Number of speakers
The January 2007 estimated population of the island was 281,000, while the figure for the March 1999 census, when most of the studies – though not the linguistic survey work referenced in this article – were performed, was about 261,000 (see under CorsicaCorsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
). Only a fraction of the population at either time spoke Corsican with any fluency. The 2001 population of 341,000 speakers on the island given by Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
exceeds either census and thus may be considered questionable, like its estimate of 402,000 speakers worldwide.
The use of Corsican over French has been declining. In 1980 about 70% of the population "had some command of the Corsican language." In 1990 out of a total population of about 254,000 the percentage had declined to 50%, with only 10% using it as a first language. The language appeared to be in serious decline when the French government reversed its non-supportive stand and began some strong measures to save it. Whether these measures will succeed remains to be seen. No recent statistics on Corsu are available.
UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
classifies the Corsican language as a potentially endangered language, as it has "a large number of children speakers" but is "without an official or prestigious status." The classification does not state that the language is currently endangered, only that it is potentially so. In fact it is being vigorously affirmed. Often acting according to the current long-standing sentiment unknown Corsicans cross out French roadway signs and paint in the Corsu names. The Corsican language is a key vehicle for Corsican culture, which is notably rich in proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s and in polyphonic
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
song.
Governmental support
The 1991 "Joxe Statute", in setting up the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, also provided for the Corsican AssemblyCorsican Assembly
The Corsican Assembly is the unicameral legislative body of the territorial collectivity of Corsica. It has its seat at the Grand Hôtel d'Ajaccio et Continental, in the Corsican capital of Ajaccio.-History:...
, and charged it with developing a plan for the optional teaching of Corsu. The University of Corsica Pascal Paoli
University of Corsica Pascal Paoli
The University of Corsica Pascal Paoli is a French university, based in Corte, Haute-Corse. It is under the Academy of Corsica.-See also:* List of public universities in France by academy* Pasquale Paoli...
at Corte
Corte
Corte is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica. It is the fourth-largest commune in Corsica .-Administration:Corte is a subprefecture of the Haute-Corse department.-History:...
took a central role in the planning.
At the primary school level Corsu is taught up to a fixed number of hours per week (three in the year 2000) and is a voluntary subject at the secondary school level, but is required at the University of Corsica. It is available through adult education. It can be spoken in court or in the conduct of other government business if the officials concerned speak it. The Cultural Council of the Corsican Assembly advocates for its use; for example, on public signs.
Sources
According to the anthropologist Dumenica Verdoni, writing new literature in modern Corsican, known as the Riacquistu, is an integral part of affirming Corsican identity. Persons who had a notable career in France returned to Corsica to write in Corsican, such as the musical producers, Dumenicu Togniotti, director of the Teatru Paisanu, which produced polyphonic musicals, 1973–1982, followed in 1980 by Michel Raffaelli's Teatru di a Testa Mora, and Saveriu Valentini's Teatru Cupabbia in 1984. The list of prose writers includes Alanu di Meglio, Ghjacumu Fusina, Lucia Santucci, Marcu Biancarelli,and many others.A mythology concerning the Corsican language is to some degree current among foreigners, that it was a spoken language only or was only recently written. Omniglot goes so far as to assert "Corsican first appeared in writing towards the end of the 19th century ...." Throughout the 19th and 18th century there was a steady stream of writers in Corsican, many of whom wrote also in other languages.
Ferdinand Gregorovius
Ferdinand Gregorovius
Ferdinand Gregorovius was a German historian who specialized in the medieval history of Rome. He is best known for Wanderjahre in Italien, his account of the walks he took through Italy in the 1850s, and the monumental Die Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter , a classic for Medieval and early...
, 19th century traveller and enthusiast of Corsican culture, reports that the preferred form of the literary tradition of his time was the vocero, a type of polyphonic ballad originating from funeral obsequies. These laments were similar in form to the chorales of Greek drama except that the leader could improvise. Some performers were noted at this, such as the 18th century Mariola della Piazzole and Clorinda Franseschi.
The trail of written popular literature of known date in Corsican currently goes no further back than the 17th century. An undated corpus of proverbs from communes may well precede it (see under External links below). Corsican has also left a trail of legal documents ending in the late 12th century. At that time the monasteries held considerable land on Corsica and many of the churchmen were notaries
Notary
A notary is a lawyer or person with legal training who is licensed by the state to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents...
.
Between 1200 and 1425 the monastery of Gorgona
Gorgona, Italy
Gorgona is the northernmost island in the Tuscan Archipelago, a group of islands off the west coast of Italy. Between Corsica and Livorno, this diminutive island has been valued most for its wildlife, especially marine birds, and its isolation. The latter quality resulted in the foundation of...
, Benedictine
Benedictine
Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...
for much of that time and in the territory of Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
, acquired about 40 legal papers of various sorts written on Corsica. As the church was replacing Pisan prelates with Corsican ones there the legal language shows a transition from entirely Latin through partially Latin, partially Corsican to entirely Corsican. The first known surviving document containing some Corsican is a bill of sale from Patrimonio
Patrimonio
Patrimonio is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica.-Geography:Located 12 km from Bastia and 4 km from the micro-region of Saint-Florent, this wine-growing commune is the gateway to the Cap Corse .-History:The village of Patrimonio is well known for...
dated to 1220. These documents were moved to Pisa before the monastery closed its doors and were published there.
Research into earlier evidence of Corsican is ongoing. It is entirely possible that archaeology or research in monastic archives will turn up more.
Origins
The Corsican language has been influenced by the languages of the major powers taking an interest in Corsican affairs; earlier by those of the Medieval Italian powers: TuscanyTuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
(828-1077), Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
(1077–1282) and Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
(1282-1768), more recently by France (1768–present), which, since 1789, has promulgated the official Parisian French. The term gallicised Corsican refers to Corsu up to about the year 1950. The term distanciated Corsican refers to an idealized Corsu from which various agents have succeeded in removing French or other elements.
The general classification of Corsican as a Romance language allows two possibilities as to the identity of the speakers of the first distinct Corsican, or Proto-Corsican. They created the language either from Proto-Romance or from a subsequent Romance language.
In 40 AD neither a Romance nor an Italic language were spoken by the natives of Corsica. The Roman exile, Seneca the younger
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
, reports that both coast and interior were occupied by natives whose language he did not understand (see under Prehistory of Corsica). Latin at that time was generally spoken only in the Roman colonies. There was probably a substratic language that is still visible in the toponymy or in some words, for instance Gallurese
Gallurese
Gallurese is a Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken in the northeastern part of Sardinia. It is often considered as a variety of Corsican, or a transitional language between Corsican and Sardinian....
zerru 'pig'. The same is valid for Sardinian
Sardinian language
Sardinian is a Romance language spoken and written on most of the island of Sardinia . It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum....
. The occupation of the island by Vandals
Vandals
The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Vandals under king Genseric entered Africa in 429 and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics....
about 469 AD marks the end of authoritative influence by Latin-speaking Romans (see under Medieval Corsica
Medieval Corsica
The history of Corsica in the medieval period begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the invasions of various Germanic peoples in the fifth century and ends with the complete subjection of the island to the authority of the Bank of San Giorgio in 1511.-Eastern Imperial...
). If the natives of that time were speaking Latin they must have acquired it during the late empire. The documents of the early Christian church concerning Corsica are in Latin, but they are only communications between church officials (see under Ajaccio).
The next window of opportunity for the predecessor of a Proto-Corsican was the administration of Corsica by Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
, then speaking the Tuscan dialect
Tuscan dialect
The Tuscan language , or the Tuscan dialect is an Italo-Dalmatian language spoken in Tuscany, Italy.Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine variety...
, an immediate predecessor of Italian. The first Italian documents date from the 10th century but Italian must have developed earlier and Tuscan even earlier. Tuscan would have come from the latest phases of Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
; Proto-Corsican from the Tuscan spoken on Corsica.
The last historical possibility is that Proto-Corsican came from the Tuscan dialect of Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
; its period of Corsican administration, however, was relatively short. Genoese is not a likely possibility as Corsican is attested before the presence of Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
on Corsica, and the linguistic features of Corsican do not match well with those of Genoese. Historical circumstances alone reduce the window of opportunity only to within several hundred years.
Classification by subjective analysis
One of the main sources of confusion in popular classifications is the difference between a dialectDialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
and a language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
. Typically it is not possible to ascertain what an author means by these terms. For example, one might read that Corsican is a "central southern Italian dialect
Italian dialects
Dialects of Italian are regional varieties of the Italian language, more commonly and more accurately referred to as Regional Italian. The dialects have features, most notably phonological and lexical, percolating from the underlying substrate languages...
" along with Tuscan, Neapolitan
Neapolitan language
Neapolitan is the language of the city and region of Naples , and Campania. On October 14, 2008 a law by the Region of Campania stated that the Neapolitan language had to be protected....
, Sicilian
Sicilian language
Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
and others or that it is "closely related to the Tuscan dialect of Italian," where it is generally understood that Italian is from Tuscan.
One of the characteristics of Tuscan and Italian is that Latin -u- in -um becomes -o: annum "year" but Italian anno. Corsican has annu, retaining the -u. Or, the -re infinitive ending as in Latin mittere, "send", is retained in Tuscan but lost in Corsican, which has mette/metta, "to put." The Latin relative pronoun, "who," "qui," "quae," and "what," "quod," are inflected in Latin, while relative pronoun in Italian for "who" and "what" is "che" and in Corsican is uninflected chì."
Dialects
The language has several dialects including Northern Corsican, spoken in the BastiaBastia
Bastia is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France located in the northeast of the island of Corsica at the base of Cap Corse. It is also the second-largest city in Corsica after Ajaccio and the capital of the department....
and Corte
Corte
Corte is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica. It is the fourth-largest commune in Corsica .-Administration:Corte is a subprefecture of the Haute-Corse department.-History:...
area, and Southern Corsican, spoken around Sartene
Sartène
Sartène , is a commune in the Corse-du-Sud department of France on the island of Corsica.Its history dates back to medieval times and granite buildings from the early 16th century still line some of the streets. One of the main incidents in the town's history was an attack by pirates from Algiers...
and Porto-Vecchio
Porto-Vecchio
Porto-Vecchio is a commune in the Corse-du-Sud department of France on the island of Corsica.It is the seat of the canton of Porto-Vecchio, which it shares with Sari-Solenzara, Conca and Lecci. Port-Vecchio is a medium-sized port city placed on a good harbor, the southernmost of the marshy and...
. The dialect of Ajaccio
Ajaccio
Ajaccio , is a commune on the island of Corsica in France. It is the capital and largest city of the region of Corsica and the prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud....
has been described as in transition. The dialects spoken at Calvi and Bonifacio are closer to the Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
dialect, also known as Ligurian
Ligurian language (Romance)
Ligurian is a Gallo-Romance language spoken in Liguria in Northern Italy, parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of France, Monaco and in the villages of Carloforte and Calasetta in Sardinia. Genoese , spoken in Genoa, the capital of Liguria, is its most important dialect...
.
Maddalena archipelago
The Maddalena Archipelago is a group of islands in the Straits of Bonifacio between Corsica and north-eastern Sardinia, Italy. It consists of seven main islands and numerous other small islets.-Geography:...
the local dialect (called Isulanu, Maddaleninu, Maddalenino) was brought by fishermen and shepherds from Bonifacio during immigration in the 17th-18th centuries. Though influenced by Gallurese
Gallurese
Gallurese is a Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken in the northeastern part of Sardinia. It is often considered as a variety of Corsican, or a transitional language between Corsican and Sardinian....
it has maintained the original characteristics of Corsican. There are also numerous words of Genoese
Genoese dialect
Genoese is a dialect of the Ligurian language, the one spoken in Genoa .Ligurian is listed by Ethnologue as a language in its own right, of the Romance branch, and not to be confused with the ancient Ligurian language...
and Ponzese
Ponza
Ponza is the largest of the Italian Pontine Islands archipelago, located 33 km south of Cape Circeo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It also the name of the commune of the island, a part of the province of Latina in the Lazio region....
origin.
Languages related to Corsican in Sardinia
GallureseGallurese
Gallurese is a Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken in the northeastern part of Sardinia. It is often considered as a variety of Corsican, or a transitional language between Corsican and Sardinian....
is spoken in the extreme north of Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
, including the region of Gallura
Gallura
Gallura is a region of northern Sardinia, Italy.The name Gallùra means "area located on high ground".-Geography:...
and the archipelago of La Maddalena
La Maddalena
La Maddalena is a town and comune located on the island with the same name, in northern Sardinia, part of the province of Olbia-Tempio, Italy.-The town:...
. Sassarese, is spoken in Sassari
Sassari
Sassari is an Italian city. It is the second-largest city of Sardinia in terms of population with about 130,000 inhabitants, or about 300,000 including the greater metropolitan area...
and in its neighbourhood, in the north-west of Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
. Whether these two languages should be included in the Corsican language as dialects, included in Sardinian
Sardinian language
Sardinian is a Romance language spoken and written on most of the island of Sardinia . It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum....
as dialects, or considered as independent languages, is debatable.
Article 2 Item 4 of Law Number 26, October 15, 1997, of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia grants "al dialetto sassarese e a quello gallurese" equal legal status with the other languages on Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
. They are being legally defined as different languages from Sardinian
Sardinian language
Sardinian is a Romance language spoken and written on most of the island of Sardinia . It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum....
by the Sardinian government.
Alphabet
Corsican uses the Latin script with some changes. Although the words written in it are close enough to ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and Latin for the non-Corsican speaker with a language background to follow, the pronunciation of those letters in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
or Italian is not a guide to the pronunciation of Corsican, which follows complex rules.
Vowel inventory
The grapheme "i" appears in some digraphsDigraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
and trigraph
Trigraph (orthography)
A trigraph is a group of three letters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined. For example, in the word schilling, the trigraph sch represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative , rather than the consonant cluster...
s in which it does not represent the phonemic vowel. All vowels are pronounced except in a few well-defined instances. "I" is not pronounced before a, o, u after sc, sg, c and g: sciarpa [ˈʃarpa]; or initially in some words: istu [ˈstu].
Vowels may be nasalized before n, which is assimilated to m before p or b, and the liquid consonant, gn. The nasal vowels are represented by the vowel plus n, m or gn. The combination is a digraph or trigraph indicating the nasalized vowel. The consonant is pronounced in weakened form. The same combination of letters might not be the digraph or trigraph but might be just the non-nasal vowel followed by the consonant at full weight. The speaker must know the difference. Example of nasal: pane is pronounced [ˈpãnɛ] and not [ˈpanɛ].
The vowel inventory, or collection of phonemic vowels (and the major allophones), transcribed in IPA symbols, is:
| Description | Grapheme (Minuscule) |
Phoneme Phoneme In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances.... |
Phone Phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory... or Allophone Allophone In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language... s |
Usage | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open front unrounded Near open |
a | /a/ | [a] [æ] |
Occasional northern |
casa [ˈkaza] carta [ˈkærta] |
| Open back unrounded | a | /â/ | [ɑ] | ||
| Close-mid front unrounded Open-mid Near-open Open |
e | /e/ | [e] [ɛ] [æ] [a] |
Inherited as open or close Occasional southern Occasional southern |
U celu [uˈd͡ʒelu] Ci hè [ˈt͡ʃɛ] terra [ˈtarra] |
| Close front unrounded Rounded |
i | /i/ | [i] [j] |
1st sound, diphthong Diphthong A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel... |
mi [mi] fiume [ˈfjumɛ] |
| Close-mid back rounded | o | /o/ | [o] | giòvani [ˈd͡ʒowãni] | |
| Close back rounded | u | ||||
See also
- Gallurese language
- Sassarese language
- Languages of France
- List of ISO 639-1 codes
- List of ISO 639-2 codes