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Where most French speakers actually live
Block C begins the part of the Francophonie that a learner trained in Paris is least prepared for, and it is worth setting out the scale before the detail. Of the roughly 300 million people who speak French, the largest share live in Africa, and the projections put that share higher still by mid-century because of demographic growth in the Sahel and Central Africa. Kinshasa is now the largest French-speaking city in the world. So the situation in this block is not a curiosity at the edge of the language; it is statistically closer to the centre of it than Paris is, and will be more so. The arrangement is different in kind from anything in Blocks A and B. In Senegal, French is the official language, the language of schooling from primary level, of administration, of the courts, of the press and of written communication generally. It is also, for the large majority, not a first language: people grow up in Wolof, Pulaar, Serer, Diola, Mandinka or another of the national languages, and acquire French at school. That produces a population with a very wide range of French — from people who write it with complete fluency to people who use a little in transactions — and it makes the question 'do you speak French?' a question about schooling rather than about origin. Two consequences for a learner, and the second is the one that matters. First, practically: in Dakar you can function entirely in French, and the French of educated speakers is clear, often somewhat more formal than Parisian speech, and generally easier for a learner to follow than Québécois. Second, and less comfortable: your French here is the language of a former colonial power, in a country colonised by France until 1960, where the choice to retain it as the official language was made at independence and is still argued about. That history is not hidden and nobody will raise it aggressively with you, but it is present, and arriving with a cheerful assumption that French is a neutral shared gift would be a misreading. Lessons 86, 87 and 88 take this up properly rather than leaving it as atmosphere. For now, the practical note: Senegal's reputation for hospitality is deserved and is a genuine social institution rather than a tourist-board line. You will be invited to eat, repeatedly, and 'je n'ai pas faim' is not a sufficient refusal. The lesson that follows is about the language you will actually hear, which is not only French.