Vietnamese French is spoken in Vietnam, which has the largest Francophone population in Asia where over 5% of the population are learning the language or can speak it well.[6] French is also spoken among the elderly in Vietnam as a legacy of the colonial French era and also by the country's elite. A French pidgin called Tây Bồi was spoken by Vietnamese servants in French households during the colonial era. Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the number of French speakers in Vietnam and the number of students taking the language has declined in favor of English but French remains taught as an optional foreign language in higher education.