Locale Fr Fr

Reference data for the French (France) locale — endonym Français (La France), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: fr-FR
• ISO 639-1: fr
• ISO 639-3: fra
• Script: Latn (Latin)
• Region: FR (FR)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 64,000,000
• L2 (additional): 4,000,000
• L1+L2 (total): 68,000,000

Base locale

This is a regional variant of Locale Fr 001 (French), the base/macro locale for this language.

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, many, other (3 forms).

• one — i = 0,1 (e.g. 0, 1)
• many — e = 0 and i != 0 and i % 1000000 = 0 and v = 0 or e != 0..5 (e.g. 1000000, …)
• other — everything else (e.g. 2~17, 100, 1000, 10000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Apply Locale Fr 001 with the conventions of France.

• Law and terminology: French law (the loi Toubon of 1994) requires French in consumer information and product documentation in France; use official terms from FranceTerme where they exist (for example "courriel" is recommended for "email", although "e-mail" and "mail" are common in speech).
• Typography: non-breaking space before : ; ! ? and inside guillemets; decimal comma and narrow non-breaking space for thousands; euro after the amount ("12,50 €").
• Vocabulary: "ordinateur", "portable" (mobile or laptop), "week-end", "petit déjeuner / déjeuner / dîner" (breakfast, lunch, dinner), "nonante" is not used (France says "quatre-vingt-dix"; "soixante-dix").
• Register: "vous" is the default; consumer brands may use "tu". Official forms use "Madame, Monsieur".
• Dates and times: day/month/year; 24-hour clock; the week starts on Monday.

Common pitfalls

• Using Canadian forms ("courriel", "magasiner", "fin de semaine") unintentionally, or Belgian/Swiss numbers ("septante").
• Omitting the space before : ; ! ?.
• The general pitfalls in Locale Fr 001 also apply.

Learn more

• Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
• Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
• Microsoft Localization Style Guides, French (https://aka.ms/french-france-styleguide and https://aka.ms/french-canada-styleguide)
• Académie française, Dictionnaire de l'Académie française and its language guidance (https://www.academie-francaise.fr)
• FranceTerme, the official French terminology database of the Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France