 Today, around 800 million people are native speakers of Romance languages worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa, as well as elsewhere.Additionally, the major Romance languages have many non-native speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas.This is especially the case for French, which is in widespread use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, Djibouti, Lebanon and North Africa (excluding Egypt, where it is a minority language).