Wikidata:Lexicographical data/Focus languages/Form/French

Language: French

Language details

What is the language, language family, usual scripts, where is it spoken, by how many people, and what other languages do speakers (%) of this language usually speak? (Some of this information can be found in the article list of languages by total number of speakers)

French is a Western Indo-European language usually written in latin script. It is spoken worldwide as a second language, and the majority native language in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada (Québec), an official or/and the main language of many countries of the Francophonie. It is widely spoken in some areas of the Africa, Caribbean, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania (French polynesia). There are about 80 Million native speakers and about 200 Million second language speakers. See en:French language.

Current representation of this language in Wikimedia projects

Is there a Wikipedia or a Wiktionary? Is it a language in Wikidata? If yes, what are the statistics for pages in Wikipedia or Wiktionary, or for Lexemes in Wikidata? (Details are in m:Complete list of Wikimedia projects, and in the local Special:Statistics pages, and in Ordia for Lexemes.

• fr:, about 2.3 Million articles, about 18,000 active contributors
• wikt:fr:, about 4.1 Million entries, 460 active contributors
• s:fr:, about 313 000 texts, 230 active contributors
• French (Q150) has about 10,000 Lexemes in Wikidata (see on Ordia)

Current representation of this language in other sources

Is there an open corpus of text for this language? How many books are published in this language? Is this language taught in schools? Is it an official language of a country or region? (Please link to details)

There are many and large easily available corpora in French (see Wikisource above for a free one, already described in Wikidata). It is a major language with many books and documents. It is an official language in many countries and institutions. See en:French language. French is amongst one of the best represented languages in the world.

Seed group of participants

Describe a bit about the seed group that wants to coordinate and actively participate. Describe its size, its current activity, why this group will likely still exist in three years time. Does anyone in the group know how to code? How many in the group know French? How many in the group are not living where the language is spoken, or are not native speakers?

There is a large community of French contributors, both from native and second language backgrounds, across many different geographies and cultures. There are many users who know how to code. They all speak French. There are many who are not native and live in non-French speaking places.

Potential for community growth

Describe the potential for the language community to grow. Is Internet access widely available? Through which kind of devices usually? What is the literacy rate in the language community? Are there universities, vocational schools, or similar institutions, and how large are the student populations?

The community is already large and is still growing. For instance, the project Lingua Libre, who aims to record pronunciations, passed the 400 000 files milestones, almost half of them being in French.

Openness of the existing community to innovation

If there is a Wikipedia in that language, how open has it been to Wikidata? To Article Placeholder? To bot editing and usage of modules?

French Wikipedia has extensive bot usage, has created some of the most widely copied modules and templates. They have some of the earliest experience with bot creating articles. They have been reluctant regarding a broad adoption of Wikidata, given that their own community was in fact larger than the Wikidata community and thus can provide sufficient quality control itself.