French
French is the main language of France and the Francophonie.
It is a Romance langue like all other languages coming from Latin (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Catalan, Gallician, Romanian and some smaller languages).
It has been for Centuries, the international language, a position it has lost after the Two World Wars. It still is one of the main language for many international institutions, but in aviation, shipping and scientific publications in general English is now more important if not simply prevalent.
The Académie française and the Conseil International de la langue française (CILF) are the two main ruling bodies for the French language.
The Trésor de la langue française (TLF) is the largest dictionary and it is freely accessible online as is the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (but that one's nine edition isn't complete as yet).
Larousse, Robert, Hachette, Auzou are other dictionaries, some are/were freely accessible online, others have free access for some years for their paper dictionaries owners.
In Quebec, there is the online publication of the excellent Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique (GDT). And there is a French dictionary online with inscription formula: Usito .
The French Wikipedia(Wikipédia in French) and Wiktionary (Wiktionnaire in French) are also quite useful next to their English bigger brothers.
Links
- Dictionnaire de l'Académie française
https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/
- Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé
- Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique
http://www.granddictionnaire.com/
- Wikipédia
- Wiktionnaire