It can be argued that by analogy to Spain and the Spanish
language, one might wish to consider
a cultural or at least
linguistic France. In North America French is an official language
in Canada and Haiti, in Europe in
Belgium, Luxembourg,
Monaco, Switzerland and Vatican; and in Africa in Benin,
Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon,
the Central African Republic,
Chad, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea,
Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger,
the Republic of the Congo,Rwanda, Senegal, the Seychelles and
Togo; and in Oceania New Caledonia and
Vanuatu.
There are also some enclaves: Jersey and Guernsey in the English
Channel, Pondicherry in India and the Aosta Valley in
Italy.
There are endless disputes about whether French should be
de
jure
an official language in Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia as
well as Louisiana, where it
often can be described as a de facto
official language.
Mauritania abolished French as a de jure
official language in
1991, but old habits die hard.
What difference it really
makes if a language is official is past our
ability to discern. We note that in all cases written French is the
same even
when the spoken French is quite divergent. There is
also the complication of how literate someone is in French, and
whether
French is used as a primary or secondary language.