French is the international language of cooking, fashion, theatre, the visual arts, dance and architecture. French is an official language in 29 countries and has over 76.8 million worldwide speakers. French is both a working language and an official language of the United Nations, the European Union, UNESCO, NATO, the International Olympic Committee, the International Red Cross and international courts. French is the language of the three cities where the European Union institutions are headquartered: Strasbourg, Brussels and Luxembourg. French is a good base for learning other languages, especially Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian) as well as English, since a significant percentage of English vocabulary is derived from French.