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French is part of a group of languages known as Romance languages (also including also Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian) because they are descended from Latin, the language of the ancient Romans. This contrasts with English, which is classified as a Germanic language (also including German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish etc.). The two other principal language groups in Europe are Slav (Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian etc.) and Celtic (Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish, Breton etc.).
6000 BC –3000 BC
Although there are great differences between these language groups, they all nevertheless derive from the same family of languages called Indo-European languages, also including languages such as Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. These languages are thought to have originated around the Black Sea (modern-day Ukraine) around 6000 BC, before population movements, possibly for environmental reasons such as climate change or exhaustion of pastures, caused the dispersion throughout Asia and Europe during the millennium 4000 BC – 3000 BC. Because of this dispersion, subgroups of Indo-European languages began to develop in isolation, causing the formation of the various groups mentioned above.
French owes its existence to a number of ancient languages. These include:

Gaulish, the language of the Celtic peoples (of which the fictional Asterix the Gaul was one) who inhabited primarily the territory of what is now modern-day France, prior to the Roman invasions.
Latin, the language of the invading Romans.
Frankish, the language of the Germanic peoples who occupied this territory after the fall of the Roman Empire, and who gave France its name.
Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, who occupied many of the coastal and in-land navigable areas of northern France before being granted the area now known as Normandy (meaning “Land of the Norsemen”).