French is the second most studied language in the world, spoken by 274 million people

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The French Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guillaume Rousson, will open  a Francophone bilingual department at the Obala Gymnasium in Sarajevo on June 12.

Since September 2018, the bilingual department at the Obala Gymnasium will offer its first-year students a program with classes in French and Bosnian, supported by the French Institute in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  In addition to French language classes, other subjects such as mathematics will also be taught in French, and students will receive assistance from a lecturer from France. Thanks to this accelerated school learning, students in the bilingual class will receive the international French language diploma DELF at the end of the year.

This is the second bilingual French program in Bosnia and Herzegovina, besides the Gymnasium in Mostar. The opening of this department will further enable students from Bosnia and Herzegovina to prepare for the future, especially in the context of increasingly close ties with the European Union and the Francophone world.

French is the fifth most spoken language in the world. It is spoken by 274 million people on all continents. French is also the second most studied language in the world, after English, and the third most used in the business world, after English and Chinese. With rapid growth, French is expected to reach 700 million speakers by 2050.