Tip: See my list of the Most Common Mistakes in English. It will teach you how to avoid mis­takes with com­mas, pre­pos­i­tions, ir­reg­u­lar verbs, and much more.

French is a Romance language, and as such one would expect the percentage of its speakers to be much higher among native speakers of other Romance languages in comparison to native speakers of Germanic languages, but the map shows this is not really the case. However, knowledge of French among speakers of Slavic languages seems to be consistently lower.

The map is based on the “Special Eurobarometer 386” and on the number of native French speakers in the respective countries (the data is from 2012, so Croatia is not included). Please note that data is self-reported, which means that some nations may overestimate or underestimate their ability to speak the language. A precise figure for France is not available; the available data sources give a result of exactly 90%, but this is probably a slight underestimation.