French language

There are six official languages used in United Nations (UN) meetings and in which the UN writes and publishes all its official documents. In 1946, five languages were chosen as official languages of the UN: English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese. In 1973, Arabic was voted to be an additional official language. As of 2025, the official languages of the United Nations are:

• English (British English with Oxford spelling), in Latin alphabet;
• French (Metropolitan French – français métropolitain / langues d'oïl) in Latin alphabet;
• Spanish (Peninsular Spanish – español peninsular / castellano) in Spanish alphabet;
• Russian (Moscow Russian – московское произношение moskovskoye proiznosheniye) in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet;
• Chinese (Standard Mandarin – 中文 zhōngwén / 普通话 pǔtōnghuà) in Simplified Chinese characters;
• Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic – العربية al-ʿarabiyyah / الفصحى al-fuṣḥá) in Naskh / Arabic abjad.

According to the UN Charter each of these six languages is equally authoritative although English and French have traditionally received preferential status and are the only two official and working languages of the UN Secretariat. It is an unspoken rule that the UN Secretary General and other high ranking United Nations officials must be fluent (at least C1 – Advanced fluency level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages / CEFRL) in at least English and French. The UN has struggled to provide parity of all 6 languages as the English language has become the dominant world language in the digital age.

The Estates General of 1789 (French: États Généraux de 1789) was a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and the commoners (Third Estate). It was the last of the Estates General of the Kingdom of France.

Summoned by King Louis XVI, the Estates General of 1789 ended when the Third Estate, along with some members of the other estates, formed the National Assembly and, against the wishes of the king, invited the other two estates to join. This signaled the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The Coup of 18 Brumaire (French: Coup d'État du 18 Brumaire) brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of the French First Republic. In the view of most historians, it ended the French Revolution and would soon lead to the coronation of Napoleon as Emperor of the French. This bloodless coup d'état overthrew the Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate. This occurred on 9 November 1799, which was 18 Brumaire, Year VIII, under the short-lived French Republican calendar system.

During the French Revolution, the National Assembly (French: Assemblée nationale, [asɑ̃ble nɑsjɔnal] ), which existed from 17 June 1789 to 9 July 1789, was a revolutionary assembly of the Kingdom of France formed by the representatives of the Third Estate (commoners) of the Estates-General and eventually joined by some members of the First and Second Estates. Thereafter (until replaced by the Legislative Assembly on 30 September 1791), it became a legislative body known as the National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée nationale constituante), although the shorter form was favored.

The Storming of the Bastille (French: Prise de la Bastille [pʁiz də la bastij]), which occurred in Paris, France, on 14 July 1789, was an act of political violence by revolutionary insurgents who attempted to storm and seize control of the medieval armoury, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille. After four hours of fighting and 94 deaths, the insurgents were able to enter the Bastille. The governor of the Bastille, Bernard-René Jourdan de Launay, and several members of the garrison were killed after surrendering. At the time, the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained only seven inmates at the time of its storming and was already scheduled for demolition but was seen by the revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy's abuse of power. Its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution.

In France, 14 July is a national holiday called Fête nationale française which commemorates both the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the Fête de la Fédération which occurred on its first anniversary in 1790. In English this holiday is commonly referred to as Bastille Day.

The Catholic Church in France, Gallican Church, or French Catholic Church, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope in Rome. Established in the second century in unbroken communion with the bishop of Rome, it is sometimes called the "eldest daughter of the Church" (French: fille aînée de l'Église).

The first written records of Christians in France date from the second century, when Irenaeus detailed the deaths of 90-year-old bishop Saint Pothinus of Lugdunum (Lyon) and other martyrs of the 177 AD persecution in Lyon. In 496 Remigius baptized King Clovis I, who therefore converted from paganism to Catholicism. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Roman Empire, forming the political and religious foundations of Christendom in Europe and establishing in earnest the French government's long historical association with the Catholic Church. In reaction, the French Revolution (1789–1799) was followed by heavy persecution of the Catholic Church. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Laïcité, absolute neutrality of the state with respect to religious doctrine, is the official policy of the French Republic.

Évian-les-Bains (French pronunciation: [evjɑ̃ le bɛ̃] ), or simply Évian (Arpitan: Èvian, Évyan, or L'Èvian), is a commune in Eastern France, by the border with Switzerland. It is located in the northern part of the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

A high-market holiday resort and spa town on the shores of Lake Geneva (French: Lac Léman), it has been visited, over two centuries, by royalty such as Kings Edward VII and George V of the United Kingdom and King Farouk of Egypt, and celebrities such as countess Anna de Noailles and Marcel Proust.

York University (French: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, and over 375,000 alumni worldwide. It has 11 faculties, including the Lassonde School of Engineering, Schulich School of Business, Osgoode Hall Law School, Glendon College, and 32 research centres.

York University was established in 1959 as a non-denominational institution by the York University Act, which received royal assent in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on 26 March of that year. Its first class was held in September 1960 in Falconer Hall on the University of Toronto's St. George campus with a total of 76 students. In the fall of 1961, York moved to its first campus at Glendon Hall (now part of Glendon College), which was leased from U of T, and began to emphasize liberal arts and part-time adult education. In 1965, the university opened a second campus, the Keele Campus, in North York, within the neighbourhood community now called York University Heights.

A sénatus-consulte (French translation of Latin: senatus consultum, lit. 'decree of the senate') was a feature of French law during the French Consulate (1799–1804), First French Empire (1804–1814, 1815) and Second French Empire (1852–1870).

The French Republican calendar (French: calendrier républicain français), also commonly called the French Revolutionary calendar (calendrier révolutionnaire français), was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871, meant to replace the Gregorian calendar. The calendar consisted of twelve 30-day months, each divided into three 10-day cycles similar to weeks, plus five or six intercalary days at the end to fill out the balance of a solar year. It was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and it was part of a larger attempt at dechristianisation and decimalisation in France (which also included decimal time of day, decimalisation of currency, and metrication). It was used in government records in France and other areas under French rule, including Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Malta, and Italy.