Breton language

Breton
Bilingual sign in Huelgoat in Brittany
Pronunciation	,
Native to	Brittany (France)
Region	Lower Brittany
Ethnicity	Bretons
Native speakers	107,000 in Brittany (2024) 16,000 in (Number includes students in bilingual education)
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Brittonic Southwestern Brittonic Breton
Dialects	Gwenedeg Kerneveg Leoneg Tregerieg Gwerranneg †
Writing system	Latin script (Breton alphabet)
Official status
Recognised minority language in	France Brittany
Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-1	Template:ISO 639-1
ISO 639-2	Template:ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3	Variously: bre – Modern Breton xbm – Middle Breton obt – Old Breton
Linguist List	xbm Middle Breton
	obt Old Breton
Glottolog	bret1245  Bretonic bret1244  KLT Breton vann1244  Gwenedeg
ELP	Template:Endangered Languages Project
Linguasphere	Template:Infobox language/lingualist
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Percentage of Breton speakers in each region of Brittany, 2018
Breton is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Breton is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language group spoken in Brittany, part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still in use on the European mainland.

Breton is an Insular Celtic language that was brought from Great Britain to Brittany by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages, which makes Breton most closely related to Cornish, another Southwestern Brittonic language. Welsh and the extinct Cumbric, both Western Brittonic languages, are more distantly related, and the Goidelic languages (Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic) have a slight connection due to their origins being from Insular Celtic.

Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to 107,000 in 2024, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. The number of children attending bilingual classes rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.

History and status

Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany (Template:Langx), roughly to the west of a line linking Plouha (west of Saint-Brieuc) and La Roche-Bernard (east of Vannes). It comes from a Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica (present-day Brittany) and had even established a toehold in Galicia (in present-day Spain). Old Breton is attested from the 9th century. It was the language of the upper classes until the 12th century after which it became the language of commoners in Lower Brittany. The nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie, adopted French. The written language of the Duchy of Brittany was Latin until it switched to French in the 15th century. There is a limited tradition of Breton literature. Some philosophical and scientific terms in Modern Breton come from Old Breton. The recognized stages of the Breton language are Old Breton – c. 800 to c. 1100, Middle Breton – c. 1100 to c. 1650, Modern Breton – c. 1650 to present.

The French monarchy was not concerned with the minority languages of France, which were spoken by the lower classes, and required the use of French for government business as part of its policy of national unity. During the French Revolution, the government introduced policies favouring French over the regional languages, which it pejoratively referred to as . The revolutionaries assumed that reactionary and monarchist forces preferred regional languages to keep the peasant masses underinformed. In 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his "report on the " to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that "federalism and superstition speak Breton".

Since the 19th century, under the Third, Fourth and now Fifth Republics, the French government has attempted to stamp out minority languages—including Breton—in state schools, in an effort to build a national culture. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until the late 1960s.

In the early 21st century, the political centralization of France, the influence of the media and the increasing mobility of people have caused only about 200,000 people to be active speakers of Breton, a dramatic decline from more than 1 million in 1950. Most of today's speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton is now classified as an endangered language.

In the early 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton; the other half were bilingual. By 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons, and the rapid decline has continued, with likely no monolingual speakers left today. A statistical survey in 1997 found around 300,000 speakers in Lower Brittany of whom about 190,000 were aged 60 or older. Few 15-to 19-year-olds spoke Breton. In 1993, parents were finally legally allowed to give their children Breton names.

Revival efforts

File:Affiche Charrue Huard.jpg

1911 poster with Breton slogan, ("It's miraculous!!")

In 1925, Professor Roparz Hemon founded the Breton-language review . During its 19-year run, tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language. Its publication encouraged the creation of original literature in all genres, and proposed Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, replaced . Other Breton-language periodicals have been published, which established a fairly large body of literature for a minority language.

In 1977, Diwan schools were founded to teach Breton by immersion. Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully-immersive primary school and partially-immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton.

The Asterix comic series has been translated into Breton. According to the comic, the Gaulish village where Asterix lives is in the Armorica peninsula, which is now Brittany. Some other popular comics have also been translated into Breton, including The Adventures of Tintin, , Titeuf, Hägar the Horrible, Peanuts and Yakari.

Some original media are created in Breton. The sitcom is in Breton. Radio Kerne, broadcasting from Finistère, has exclusively Breton programming. Some movies (Lancelot du Lac, Shakespeare in Love, Marion du Faouet, Sezneg) and TV series (Columbo, Perry Mason) have also been translated and broadcast in Breton. Poets, singers, linguists, and writers who have written in Breton, including Yann-Ber Kallocʼh, Roparz Hemon, Añjela Duval, Xavier de Langlais, Pêr-Jakez Helias, Youenn Gwernig, Glenmor, Vefa de Saint-Pierre and Alan Stivell are now known internationally.

Today, Breton is the only living Celtic language that is not recognized by a national government as an official or regional language.

The first Breton dictionary, the Catholicon, was also the first French dictionary. Edited by Jehan Lagadec in 1464, it was a trilingual work containing Breton, French and Latin. Today bilingual dictionaries have been published for Breton and languages including English, Dutch, German, Spanish and Welsh. A monolingual dictionary, was published in 1995. The first edition contained about 10,000 words, and the second edition of 2001 contains 20,000 words.

In the early 21st century, the ("Public Office for the Breton language") began a campaign to encourage daily use of Breton in the region by both businesses and local communes. Efforts include installing bilingual signs and posters for regional events, as well as encouraging the use of the Spilhennig to let speakers identify each other. The office also started an Internationalization and localization policy asking Google, Firefox and SPIP to develop their interfaces in Breton. In 2004, the Breton Wikipedia started, which counts just over 90,000 articles as of December 2025. In March 2007, the signed a tripartite agreement with Regional Council of Brittany and Microsoft for the consideration of the Breton language in Microsoft products. In October 2014, Facebook added Breton as one of its 121 languages after three years of talks between the and Facebook.

France has twice chosen to enter the Eurovision Song Contest with songs in Breton; once in 1996 in Oslo with "" by Dan Ar Braz and the fifty piece band Héritage des Celtes, and most recently in 2022 in Turin with "" by Alvan Morvan Rosius and vocal trio Ahez. These are two of five times France has chosen songs in one of its minority languages for the contest, the others being in 1992 (bilingual French and Antillean Creole), 1993 (bilingual French and Corsican), and 2011 (Corsican).

Geographic distribution and dialects

File:Breton dialectes-en.svg

Dialects of Breton

Breton is spoken mainly in Lower Brittany but also in a more dispersed way in Upper Brittany (where it is spoken alongside Gallo and French), and in areas around the world that have Breton emigrants.

The four traditional dialects of Breton correspond to medieval bishoprics, rather than to linguistic divisions. They are (, of the county of Léon), (, of Trégor), (, of ), and (, of Vannes). (, of Guérande) was spoken up to the beginning of the 20th century in the region of Guérande and Batz-sur-Mer. There are no clear boundaries between the dialects because they form a dialect continuum and vary only slightly from one village to the next. , however, requires a little study to be intelligible with most of the other dialects. Due to this difficulty in intelligibility, the Glottolog project split the Gwenedeg dialects into a separate language entry from the KLT Breton dialects in v5.2 under the name Vannetais.

File:Municipal electronic information sign in Breton in Carhaix.jpg

Electronic information sign in Breton, Carhaix

Distribution of Breton speakers by region

Region	Population	Number of speakers	Percentage of speakers
Basse Bretagne	1,300,000	185,000	14.2%
Centre Ouest Bretagne	112,000	20,000	20%
Trégor-Goelo	127,000	25,000	20%
Pays de Brest	370,000	40,000	11%
Pays de Cornouaille	320,000	35,000	11.5%
Pays de Lorient	212,000	15,000	7.3%
Pays de Vannes	195,000	11,000	5.5%
Pays de Guingamp	76,000	12,000	17%
Pays de Morlaix	126,000	15,000	12%
Pays de St Brieuc	191,000	5,000	3%
Pays de Pontivy	85,000	6,500	8%
Pays d'Auray	85,000	6,500	7.6%
Haute Bretagne	1,900,000	20,000	2%
Pays de Rennes	450,000	7,000	1.5%
Loire-Atlantique	1,300,000
Pays de Nantes	580,000	4,000	0.8%
TOTAL	4,560,000	216,000	4.6%

Official status

File:Ofis ar Brezhoneg vehicle.jpg

, the Breton language agency, was set up in 1999 by the Brittany region to promote and develop the use of Breton.

Nation

French is the sole official language of France. Supporters of Breton and other minority languages continue to argue for their recognition and for their place in education, public schools, and public life.

Constitution

In July 2008, the legislature amended the French Constitution, adding article 75-1: (the regional languages belong to the heritage of France).

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which obliges signatory states to recognize minority and regional languages, was signed by France in 1999 but has not been ratified. On 27 October 2015, the Senate rejected a draft constitutional law ratifying the charter.

File:Bilingual sin in Gwened.jpg

Bilingual sign in Gwened/Vannes

Region

Regional and departmental authorities use Breton to a very limited extent. Some bilingual signage has also been installed such as street name signs in Breton towns.

Under the Toubon Law, it is illegal for commercial signage to be in Breton alone. Signs must be bilingual or only in French. Since commercial signage usually has limited physical space, most businesses have signs only in French.

, the Breton-language agency, was set up in 1999 by the Brittany region to promote and develop the daily use of Breton. It helped to create the campaign, to encourage enterprises, organisations and communes to promote the use of Breton, for example by installing bilingual signage or translating their websites into Breton.

Education

File:Breton school sign in Rennes.jpg

Sign in French and partly in Breton in Rennes, outside a school with bilingual classes

In the late 20th century, the French government considered incorporating the independent Breton-language immersion schools (called ) into the state education system. This action was blocked by the French Constitutional Council based on the 1994 amendment to the Constitution that establishes French as the language of the republic. Therefore, no other language may be used as a language of instruction in state schools. The Toubon Law implemented the amendment, asserting that French is the language of public education.

The Diwan schools were founded in Brittany in 1977 to teach Breton by immersion. Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The schools have also gained fame from their high level of results in school exams, including those on French language and literature. Breton-language schools do not receive funding from the national government, though the Brittany Region may fund them.

Another teaching method is a bilingual approach by ("Two Languages") in the State schools, created in 1979. ("Awakening") was created in 1990 for bilingual education in the Catholic schools.

Statistics

In 2018, 18,337 pupils (about 2% of all students in Brittany) attended , and schools, and their number has increased yearly. This was short of the goal of Jean-Yves Le Drian, the president of the Regional Council, who aimed to have 20,000 students in bilingual schools by 2010 and "their recognition" for "their place in education, public schools, and public life"; nevertheless, he described being encouraged by the growth of the movement.

In 2007, some 4,500 to 5,000 adults followed an evening or correspondence one Breton-language course. The transmission of Breton in 1999 was estimated to be 3 percent.

Growth of the percentage of pupils in bilingual education Year Number Percentage of all pupils in Brittany 2005 10,397 1.24% 2006 11,092 1.30% 2007 11,732 1.38% 2008 12,333 1.4% 2009 13,077 1.45% 2010 13,493 1.48% 2011 14,174 1.55% 2012 14,709 1.63% 2013 15,338 1.70% 2014 15,840 1.73% 2015 16,345 1.78% 2016 17,024 1.86% 2017 17,748 1.93% 2018 18,337 2.00% 2019 18,890 2.00% 2020 19,165 2.00% 2021 19,336 2.2% 2022 19,765 2.3% 2024 20,280 2.5%

Percentage of pupils in bilingual education per department Department Primary education (2022) Finistère 9.0% Morbihan 6.7% Côtes-d'Armor 4.4% Ille-et-Vilaine 1.8% Loire-Atlantique 0.5%

Municipalities

The 10 communes with the highest percentage of pupils in bilingual primary education, listed with their total population Commune Percentage (2023) Population (2007) Sant-Riwal (Finistère) 100% 177 Bulad-Pestivien (Côtes-d'Armor) 100% 412 Larruen (Côtes-d'Armor) 100% 457 Plounevez-Moedeg (Côtes-d'Armor) 68.2% 1,467 Langoned (Morbihan) 43.6% 1771 Kawan (Côtes-d'Armor) 42.9% 1528 Kommanna (Finistère) 42.1% 995 Mêl-Karaez (Côtes-d'Armor) 40.9% 1463 Pleuzal / Runan (Côtes-d'Armor) 39.4% 1466 Mêlrant (Morbihan) 38.8% 1519

The 10 communes of historic Brittany with the highest total population, listed with their percentages of pupils in bilingual primary education These figures include some cities in the department of Loire-Atlantique, which is now included in the Pays de la Loire region. See for example Brittany (administrative region). Commune Percentage (2008) Population (2007) Naoned (Loire-Atlantique) 1.4% 290,943 Roazhon (Ille-et-Vilaine) 2.87% 213,096 Brest (Finistère) 1.94% 146,519 Señ Neñseir (Loire-Atlantique) 0.41% 71,046 Kemper (Finistère) 3.17% 67,255 An Oriant (Morbihan) 2.71% 59,805 Gwened (Morbihan) 7.71% 55,383 Sant-Maloù (Ille-et-Vilaine) 0.55% 50,206 Sant-Brieg (Côtes-d'Armor) 3.98% 48,178 Sant-Ervlan (Loire-Atlantique) ? 44,364

Other forms of education

In addition to bilingual education (including Breton-medium education), the region has introduced the Breton language in primary education, mainly in the department of Finistère. The "initiation" sessions are generally one to three hours per week and consist of songs and games.

Schools in secondary education ( and ) offer some courses in Breton. In 2010, nearly 5,000 students in Brittany were reported to be taking this option. Additionally, the University of Rennes 2 has a Breton-language department, which offers courses in the language, along with a master's degree in Breton and Celtic Studies.

Phonology

Vowels

Vowels in Breton may be short or long. All unstressed vowels are short; stressed vowels can be short or long. (Vowel length is not noted in usual orthographies, as it is implicit in the phonology of particular dialects, and not all dialects pronounce stressed vowels as long. An emergence of a schwa sound occurs as a result of vowel neutralization in post-tonic position in different dialects.

All vowels can also be nasalized, which is noted by appending an ⟨n⟩ letter after the base vowel, by adding a combining tilde above the vowel (most commonly and easily done for a and o because they are used in Portuguese orthography) or most commonly by non-ambiguously appending an ⟨ñ⟩ letter after the base vowel (this depends on the orthographic variant).

	Front		Central	Back
	unrounded	rounded		unrounded	rounded
Close	i /i/	u /y/			ou /u/
Close-mid	e /e/	eu /ø/			o /o/
Open-mid	e /ɛ/	eu /œ/			o /ɔ/
Open			a /a/	a /ɑ/

Diphthongs are .

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal		Velar		Uvular	Glottal
						plain	lab.	plain	lab.
Nasal		m /m/		n /n/		gn /ɲ/
Plosive	voiced	b /b/		d /d/				g /ɡ/	gw, gou /ɡʷ/
	voiceless	p /p/		t /t/				k /k/	kw, kou /kʷ/
Fricative	voiced	v /v/	(z, d /ð/)	z, zh /z/	j /ʒ/			cʼh /ɣ/
	voiceless	f /f/		s /s/	ch /ʃ/			cʼh /x/			h, zh /h/
Trill				r /r/						(r /ʁ/)
Approximant	median				(r /ɹ/)	y /j/	u /ɥ/		w /w/
	lateral			l /l/		lh /ʎ/

• The pronunciation of the letter ⟨r⟩ now varies: is used in the French-influenced standard language and, generally speaking, in the central parts of Lower Brittany (including the south of Trégor, the west of Vannetais and virtually all parts of Cornouaille), whereas is the common realisation in Léon and often in the Haut-Vannetais dialect of central Morbihan (in and around the city of Vannes and the Pays de Pontivy), but in rapid speech, mostly a tapped occurs. In the other regions of Trégor, or even may be found.
• The voiced dental fricative (/ð/) is a conservative realisation of the lenition (or the "spirant mutation" in cases that the phenomenon originates from the mutation of , respectively) of the consonants and which is to be found in certain varieties of Haut-Vannetais. Most of the Breton dialects do not inherit the sound and so it is mostly not orthographically fixed. The Peurunvan, for instance, uses ⟨z⟩ for both mutations, which are regularly and more prominently pronounced in Léonais, Cornouaillais, Trégorrois and Bas-Vannetais. In traditional literature written in the Vannetais dialect, two different graphemes are used to represent the dental fricative depending on the scripture's historical period. There was a time that ⟨d⟩ was used for the sound, but it is today mostly replaced by the regular ⟨z⟩, a practice that can be traced back to at least the late 17th century. The area this phenomenon has been found to be evident in encompasses the towns of Pontivy and Baud and surrounding smaller villages like Cléguérec, Noyal-Pontivy, Pluméliau, St. Allouestre, St. Barthélemy, Pluvigner and parts of Belle-Île. The only known place to have the mutation occur outside the Vannes country is the Île de Sein, an island located off Finistère's coast. Some scholars also used as the symbol for the sound to indicate that it was rather an "infra-dental" consonant, than a clear interdental, which is the sound the symbol usually describes. Other linguists, however, did not draw that distinction, either because they identified the sound to actually be an interdental fricative (such as Roparz Hemon in his phonetic transcription of the dialect used in Pluméliau or Joseph Loth in his material about the dialect of Sauzon in Belle-Île) or because that they attached no importance to it and ascertained that their descriptions did not need a further clarification of the sound's phonetic realisation, as it was a clearly-distinguishable phoneme.

Orthography

The first extant Breton texts, contained in the Leyden manuscript, were written at the end of the 8th century, 50 years prior to the Strasbourg Oaths, which are considered to be the earliest example of French. Like many medieval orthographies, Old and Middle Breton had an orthography that was at first not standardised, and the spelling of a particular word varied at the author's discretion. In 1499, however, the Catholicon, was published; as the first dictionary written for both French and Breton, it became a point of reference on how to transcribe the language. The orthography presented in the Catholicon was largely similar to that of French, in particular with respect to the representation of vowels, as well as the use of both the Latinate digraph ⟨qu⟩, which was a remnant of the sound change > in Latin, and the Brittonic ⟨cou-⟩ or ⟨cu-⟩ to represent before front vowels.

As phonetic and phonological differences between the dialects began to magnify, many regions, particularly the Vannes country, began to devise their own orthographies. Many of those orthographies were more closely related to the French model albeit with some modifications. Examples of modifications include the replacement of Old Breton -⟨z⟩ with -⟨h⟩ to denote word-final (an evolution of Old Breton in the Vannes dialect) and the use of -⟨h⟩ to denote the initial mutation of (today, this mutation is written ⟨cʼh⟩).

In the 1830s, Jean-François Le Gonidec created a modern phonetic system for the language.

During the early 20th century, a group of writers known as elaborated and reformed Le Gonidec's system. They made it more suitable as a super-dialectal representation of the dialects of Cornouaille, Leon and Trégor (known as from , and in Breton). This KLT orthography was established in 1911. At the same time, writers of the more divergent Vannetais dialect developed a phonetic system, which was also based on that of Le Gonidec.

Following proposals that had been made during the 1920s, the KLT and Vannetais orthographies were merged in 1941 to create an orthographic system to represent all four dialects. This ("wholly unified") orthography was significant for the inclusion of the digraph ⟨zh⟩, which represents a in Vannetais and corresponds to a in the KLT dialects.

In 1955, François Falcʼhun and the group Emgleo Breiz proposed a new orthography, which was designed to use a set of graphemes closer to the conventions of French. This ("University Orthography", known in Breton as ) was given official recognition by the French authorities as the "official orthography of Breton in French education". It was opposed in the region and was only by the magazine and the publishing house Emgleo Breiz, which disappeared in 2015.

In the 1970s, a new standard orthography was devised: the or . This system is based on the derivation of the words.

Today, most writers continue to use the Peurunvan orthography, and it is the version taught in most Breton-language schools.

Alphabet

Breton is written in the Latin script. Peurunvan, the most commonly used orthography, consists of the following letters:

a, b, ch, cʼh, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, y, z

The circumflex, grave accent, trema and tilde appear on some letters. The diacritics are used in the following way:

â, ê, î, ô, û, ù, ü, ñ

Differences between and

Both orthographies use the above alphabet although ⟨é⟩ is used only in .

Differences between the two systems are particularly noticeable in word endings. In Peurunvan, final obstruents, which are devoiced in absolute final position and voiced in sandhi before voiced sounds, are represented by a grapheme that indicates a voiceless sound. In OU they are written as voiced but represented as voiceless before suffixes: "big", "bigger".

In addition, Peurunvan maintains the KLT convention, which distinguishes noun/adjective pairs by nouns written with a final voiced consonant and adjectives with a voiceless one. No distinction is made in pronunciation. e.g., 'Breton language' vs. 'Breton (adj)'.

Comparison of different orthographies

(1975)	(1941)	(1956)	English gloss
			rain
			who
			book
			for
			with
			of her
			add
			most beautiful
			where

Pronunciation of the Breton alphabet

C (as a single letter), Q and X appear mainly in loanwords. ⟨ks⟩ or ⟨gz⟩ may be used to represent /ks/ or /ɡz/. The digraph ⟨zh⟩ represents a variable sound that may exhibit as , , or , and descends from a now-extinct sound , which is still extant in Welsh as ⟨th⟩.

Letter	Kerneveg	Leoneg	Tregiereg	Gwenedeg
A a
â	[1]
ae
an
añ
ao
aou
B b	[2]
Ch ch	[3]
Cʼh cʼh	,[4]	,[5] ,[6] [7]	,[8]	[9]
cʼhw				[10]
D d	[11]
E e	[12]		,[13] [14]
ê	[15]
ei
eeu
eo
eu	[16]
eü
eue
F f	[17]
'f
G g	[18]			[19][20]
gn	[21]
gw	[22]			[23]
H h	[24]
I i	[25]
ilh	[26]
J j	[27]
K k				[28]
L l	,[29] [30]
M m
N n	,[31] [32]
ñ
ñv
O o	[33][34]
oa
ôa	[35]
oe
on
oñ
ou				[36][37]
où[38]
oü
P p
R r	,[39][40] [41]
S s
sh
sk				[42]
st
T t
U u	[43]
ui
ul, un, ur[44]
V v	[45]
vh
W w	[46]			[47]
Y y
Z z	, Ø,[48] [49]	[50][51]	, Ø[52][53]	, Ø,[54] [55]
zh	[56]			[57]

Notes:

1. ^ Vocative particle: "O Brittany".
2. ^ Word-initially.
3. ^ Word-finally.
4. ^ Unwritten lenition of ⟨ch, cʼh, f, s⟩ and spirantization of ⟨p⟩ > ⟨f⟩ .
5. ^ Unstressed ⟨e, eu, o⟩ represent in Leoneg but in the other dialects. The realisations appear mainly before ⟨rr⟩ (also less often before ⟨cʼh⟩), semivowels , consonant clusters beginning with ⟨r⟩ or ⟨l⟩. Stressed long ⟨e, eu, o⟩ represent .
6. ^ In Gwenedeg velars are palatalized before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩, i.e. ⟨k⟩, ⟨g⟩, ⟨kw/kou⟩, ⟨cʼhw/cʼhou⟩, ⟨gw/gou⟩, ⟨w/ou⟩, ⟨sk⟩ represent . In the case of word-final ⟨g⟩ and ⟨k⟩ palatalization to also occurs after ⟨i⟩.
7. ^ Before a vowel other than ⟨i⟩ the digraph ⟨ni⟩ is written instead of ⟨gn⟩, e.g. "to drive", radical , 1PS preterite , 3PS preterite .
8. ^ Silent in words such as , , , , , and . Always silent in Gwenedeg and Leoneg.
9. ^ ⟨i⟩ is realized as when it precedes or follows a vowel (or when between vowels), but in words such as , , it represents (in orthography ⟨ï⟩ may be used: , , ).
10. ^ ⟨ilh⟩ represents when it follows a vowel, after a consonant it represents . But before a vowel other than ⟨i⟩, ⟨li⟩ is written instead of ⟨ilh⟩, e.g. "to follow", radical , 1PS preterite , 3PS preterite . In some regions may be heard instead of .
11. ^ Word-finally after a cluster of unvoiced consonants.
12. ^ In front of ⟨k, g⟩.
13. ^ The digraph ⟨ou⟩ is realized like ⟨w⟩ when preceded or followed by a vowel (or when between vowels), but in words such as , , it represents .
14. ^ The digraph ⟨où⟩ represents plural endings. Its pronunciation varies by dialect: rating geographically from Northwest Leon to Southeast Gwened.
15. ^ ⟨v⟩ usually represents , but word-finally (except in word-final ⟨ñv⟩) it represents in KLT, in Gwenedeg and in Goëlo. The pronunciation is retained word-finally in verbs. In words , , , , , it represents in KLT, in Gwenedeg and in Goëlo. Word-finally following ⟨r, l, n, z⟩ it represents .
16. ^ But silent in words such as , , , , , , , , , , ', , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . ⟨z⟩ is generally silent in Kerneweg, Tregerieg and Gwenedeg, but in Leoneg ⟨z(h)⟩ is always pronounced.
17. ^ Used to distinguish words such as "river", "heir", "town" (also written ) from "sense", "bold", "dear".
18. ^ Used to distinguish "circuit/tour" from "foot".
19. ^ In northern dialects (mainly in Leoneg), there is a tendency to voice ⟨cʼh⟩ between vowels. also appears as the lenition of ⟨g, cʼh⟩ and mixed mutation of ⟨g⟩.
20. ^ The lenition of ⟨d⟩ and the spirantization of ⟨t⟩ are both represented by ⟨z⟩ is mainly pronounced although in certain regions (especially for the spirantization of ⟨t⟩ in Cornouaille) and (in some Haut-Vannetais varieties)³¹ also occur.
21. ^ The pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ varies by dialect, nowadays uvular (or ) is standard; occurs in Leoneg, or in Tregerieg, and in Gwenedeg.
22. ^ In Gwenedeg an unstressed ⟨e⟩ often represents .
23. ^ Lenited varieties of ⟨r, l, n⟩ may appear word-initially in case of soft mutation.
24. ^ In Leoneg in front of a nasal.
25. ^ In Leoneg ⟨w⟩ represents before ⟨e, i⟩.
26. ^ In Leoneg ⟨z(h)⟩ represents or before ⟨i⟩.
27. ^ In Leoneg ⟨gwr⟩ represents .
28. ^ Before a vowel.
29. ^ Forms of the indefinite article.
30. ^ A conservative realisation of the initial mutation of ⟨d⟩ and ⟨t⟩, used in certain parts of the Vannes country.

Grammar

Nouns

Breton nouns are marked for gender and number. While Breton has a fairly typical gender system for Western Europe, Breton has number markers that demonstrate rarer behaviors.

Gender

Breton has two genders: masculine () and feminine (). It has largely lost its historic neuter (), as has also occurred in the other Celtic languages and in the Romance languages. Certain suffixes (-ach/-aj, -(a)dur, -er, -lecʼh, -our, -ti, -va) are masculine, while others (-enti, -er, -ez, -ezh, -ezon, -i, -eg, -ell, and the singulative -enn) are feminine. The suffix -eg can be masculine or feminine.

There are certain non-determinant factors that influence gender assignment. Biological sex is applied for animate referents. Metals, time divisions (except for "hour", "night" and "week") and mountains tend to be masculine, while rivers, cities and countries tend to be feminine.

However, gender assignment to certain words often varies between dialects.

Number

Number in Breton is primarily based on an opposition between singular and plural. However, the system is full of complexities in how the distinction is realized.

Although modern Breton has lost the dual number as a productive grammatical category, remnants of its use are preserved in certain nouns referring to paired body parts such as for eyes, ears, cheeks, legs, armpits, arms, hands, knees, thighs and wings. Those forms typically feature a prefix (daou-, di- or div-), which is etymologically derived from the numeral two. The dual number is no longer a productive feature of Breton grammar and survives only in a lexicalized form. Certain words such as daoulagad ('eyes') and divskouarn ('ears') are historically dual in origin. These forms can nevertheless undergo pluralization once more to yield daoulagadoù ('pairs of eyes') and diskouarnoù ('pairs of ears').

Like other Brythonic languages, Breton has a singulative suffix, which forms singulars out of collective nouns for which the morphologically less complex form is the plural. Thus, the singulative of the collective "mice" is "mouse". "Breton exhibits a more complex system than Welsh in this respect. Collective nouns can undergo pluralization, yielding forms with meanings distinct from the base collective. For example, pesk ('fish', singular) forms the collective plural pesked ('fish'), which may then be singulativized as peskedenn to denote an individual fish from a group. This singulative of the plural can in turn be pluralized once more, producing peskedennoù ('fishes')."

"In addition, the Breton plural system is complicated by the existence of two distinct pluralizing functions. Alongside the 'default' plural, there is a second formation used to convey a sense of variety or diversity. As a result, a single noun may yield two semantically different plurals; for example, park ('park') forms parkoù ('parks') and parkeier ('various different parks')." Ball reports that the latter pluralizer is used only for inanimate nouns. Certain formations have been lexicalized to have meanings other than that which might be predicted solely from the morphology: "water" pluralized forms which means not "waters" but instead "rivers", while now has come to mean "running waters after a storm". Certain forms have lost the singular from their paradigm: means "news" and is not used, while has become the regular plural, 'different news items'.

Meanwhile, certain nouns can form doubly marked plurals with lexicalized meanings – "child" is pluralized once into "children" and then pluralized a second time to make "groups of children".

The diminutive suffix also has the somewhat unusual property of triggering double marking of the plural: means "little child", but the doubly pluralized means "little children"; boat has a singular diminutive and a simple plural , thus its diminutive plural is the doubly pluralized .

As seen elsewhere in many Celtic languages, the formation of the plural can be difficult to predict, being determined by a mix of semantic, morphological and lexical factors.

The most common plural marker is , with its variant ; most nouns that use that marker are inanimates, but collectives of both inanimate and animate nouns always use it as well.

Most animate nouns, including trees, have a plural in . However, in some dialects the use of this affix has become rare. Various masculine nouns including occupations, as well as the word ("Englishman", plural ), take the suffix , with a range of variants including , , and .

The rare pluralizing suffixes / and are used for a few nouns. When they are appended, they also trigger a change in the vowel of the root: triggers a vowel harmony effect in which some or all preceding vowels are changed to ( "cousin" → "cousins"; "crow" → "crows"; "partridge" → "partridges"); the changes associated with / are less predictable.

Various nouns instead form their plural merely with ablaut: or in the stem is changed to : "wing" → "wings"; "tooth" → "teeth"; "rope" → "ropes".

Another set of nouns have lexicalized plurals that bear little if any resemblance to their singulars. These include "girl" → , "pig" → , "cow" → , and "dog" → .

In compound nouns, the head noun, which usually comes first, is pluralized.

Verbal aspect

Like in other Celtic languages, as well as in English, a variety of verbal constructions can be used to express grammatical aspect such as to show a distinction between progressive and habitual actions:

Breton	Cornish	Irish	English
			I am talking to my neighbour
			I talk to my neighbour (every morning)

Inflected prepositions

Like in other modern Celtic languages, Breton pronouns are fused into preceding prepositions to produce a sort of inflected preposition. Here are some examples in Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, along with English translationsL

Breton	Cornish	Welsh	Irish	Scottish Gaelic	Manx	English
Template:Interlinear						I have a book
Template:Interlinear						you have a drink
Template:Interlinear						he has a computer
Template:Interlinear						she has a child
Template:Interlinear						we have a car
Template:Interlinear						you have a house
Template:Interlinear						they have money

In the examples above, the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx) use the preposition meaning at to show possession, and the Brittonic languages use the one meaning with. The Goidelic languages, however, use the preposition with to express "belong to" (Irish , Scottish , Manx , The book belongs to me).

The Welsh examples are in literary Welsh. The order and the preposition may differ slightly in Colloquial Welsh (Formal , North Wales , South Wales ).

Initial consonant mutations

Breton has four initial consonant mutations. Though modern Breton lost the nasal mutation of Welsh (but for rare words such the word "door": "dor" "an nor"), it also has a "hard" mutation, which has voiced stops become voiceless, and a "mixed" mutation, which is a mixture of hard and soft mutations.

Initial consonant mutations in Breton

Unmutated consonant	Mutations
	Hard	Mixed	Soft	Aspirant
m		v	v
b	p	v	v
p			b	f
g	k	cʼh	cʼh
k			g	cʼh
d	t	t	z
t			d	z
gw	kw	w	w

Word order

Normal word order, like the other Insular Celtic languages, is at its core VSO (verb-subject-object), which is most apparent in embedded clauses. However, Breton finite verbs in main clauses are additionally subject to V2 word order in which the finite main clause verb is typically the second element in the sentence. In fact, starting a sentence with a finite verb is generally ungrammatical in Breton.

Noun phrases, adverbial phrases, verbal nouns and the negative particle ne may stand in sentence-initial position to satisfy the V2 requirement. That makes it perfectly possible to put the subject or the object at the beginning of the sentence, largely depending on the focus of the speaker. The following options are possible (all with a little difference in meaning):

• the first places the verbal infinitive in initial position (as in (1)), followed by the auxiliary 'to do'.
• the second places the auxiliary verb 'to be' in initial position (as in (2)), followed by the subject and the construction + infinitive. At the end comes the object. This construction is an exception to verb-second.
• the third places the construction + infinitive in the initial position (as in (3)), followed by the auxiliary verb , the subject and the object.
• the fourth option places the object in initial position (as in (4)), followed by an inflected verb and then by the subject.
• the fifth, and originally least common, places the subject in initial position (as in (5)), followed by an inflected verb, followed by the object, just like in English (SVO).

Vocabulary

Breton uses much more borrowed vocabulary than its relatives further north; by some estimates a full 40% of its core vocabulary consists of loanwords from French.

Words and phrases

File:Road signs bilingual Breton in Quimper.jpg

Bilingual signage in Quimper/Kemper. Note the use of the word in the Breton for 'police station' and 'tourist office', plus for all directions.

Visitors to Brittany may encounter words and phrases (especially on signs and posters) such as the following:

Breton	English
	welcome
	you're welcome
	Brittany
	Breton (language)
,	house
	town hall
	town centre
	all directions
	school
	university
	pipe band (nearly)
	lit. "night festival", a or "day festival" also exists
	goodbye
	pancakes (a pancake = , see singulative)
	cider
	Breton mead
	Cheers!
	always at sea
	rich butter and sugar cake

Borrowing from Breton by other languages

The English words and have been borrowed from French, which took them from Breton. However, this is uncertain: for instance, is or ("long stone"), ("straight stone") (two words: noun + adjective) in Breton. Dolmen is a misconstructed word (it should be ). Some studies state that these words were borrowed from Cornish. can be directly translated from Welsh as "long stone" (which is exactly what a or is). The Cornish surnames Mennear, Minear and Manhire all derive from the Cornish ("long stone"), as does "settlement by the long stone".

The French word ("to jabber in a foreign language or an unintelligible manner") is derived from Breton ("bread") and ("wine"). The French word ("large seagull") is derived from Breton , which shares the same root as English "gull" (Welsh , Cornish ).

Sample texts

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Breton:

English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Lord's Prayer

Hon Tad,
cʼhwi hag a zo en Neñv,
ra vo santelaet hocʼh anv.
Ra zeuio ho Rouantelezh.
Ra vo graet ho youl war an douar evel en neñv.
Roit dimp hiziv bara hor bevañs.
Distaolit dimp hon dleoù
evel m'hor bo ivez distaolet d'hon dleourion.
Ha n'hon lezit ket da vont gant an temptadur,
met hon dieubit eus an Droug.

Language comparison

English	French	Breton	Cornish	Welsh	Scottish Gaelic	Irish
earth
sky		(older )
heaven
food			(older )
house						(south )
church
person, man
dog						( hound)
sell						trade, pay
eat					( feed)	( feed)
drink					(archaic )	(archaic )
see					(fut. )	(south )
black
white					( 'fair')
green
red				(also: )	(hair, etc. )	(hair, etc. )
yellow
book
day						(also in names of weekdays)
year
beer						ale
go					(verbal noun )	(verbal noun, )
come					(verbal noun, )	(participle, )
cat
live
dead
name
water
true
woman
sheep					'sheep' ( 'stag', 'ox';)	'stag', 'ox'; 'sheep'
better						níos fearr
say				(also: )	( speak)	( speak)
night					'tonight'; 'night'	'tonight'; 'night'
root						, (south )
iron
summer
winter

.bzh

.bzh is an approved Internet generic top-level domains intended for Brittany and the Breton culture and languages. In 2023, the Breton internet extension .bzh had more than 12,000 registrations. Alongside the promotion of the .bzh internet extension, the www.bzh association promotes other services to develop Brittany's image on the web: campaign for a Breton flag emoji (File:Flag of Brittany (Gwenn ha du).svg), and email service.

See also

• Armoricani
• Gaelic revival, Irish-language revival
• Julian Maunoir, 17th-century Breton-language orthographer
• List of Celtic-language media
• , an association promoting the language

References

Further reading

Overviews

• Press, Ian (2010). "Breton". In Ball, Martin J.; Fife, James (eds.). The Celtic languages, 2nd Edition. Abingdon; New York: Routledge. pp. 427–487.
• Stephens, Janig (1993). "Breton". In Ball, Martin J.; Fife, James (eds.). The Celtic languages. Routledge language family descriptions. Abingdon; New York: Routledge. pp. 349–409. ISBN 978-0415280808.
• Ternes, Elmar (1992). "The Breton language". In MacAulay, Donald (ed.). The Celtic languages. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge; New York; Oakleigh: Cambridge University Press. pp. 371–452. ISBN 978-0521231275.

Historical development

• Hemon, Roparz. A Historical Morphology and Syntax of Breton. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975.
• Jackson, Kenneth H. (1967). A historical phonology of Breton. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. ISBN 978-0-901282-53-8.
• Schrijver, Peter (2011). "Middle and early modern Breton". In Ternes, Elmar (ed.). Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From medieval British to modern Breton. Bremen: Hempen Verlag. pp. 359–430. ISBN 9783934106802.
• Schrijver, Peter (2011). "Old British". In Ternes, Elmar (ed.). Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From medieval British to modern Breton. Bremen: Hempen Verlag. pp. 1–84. ISBN 9783934106802.
• Ternes, Elmar (2011). "Neubretonisch". In Ternes, Elmar (ed.). Brythonic Celtic – Britannisches Keltisch: From medieval British to modern Breton. Bremen: Hempen Verlag. pp. 431–530. ISBN 9783934106802.

Grammars and handbooks

• Desbordes, Yann (1990). Petite grammaire du breton moderne. Lesneven: Mouladurioù Hor Yezh. ISBN 978-2868630520.
• Falcʼhun, François (1951). Le système consonantique du breton avec une étude comparative de phonétique expérimentale. Rennes: Plihon.
• Favereau, Francis. Grammaire du breton contemporain. Morlaix: Skol Vreizh, 1997.
• Hemon, Roparz. Breton Grammar, 3rd edn. Trans. & rev'd by Michael Everson. Westport: Evertype, 2011.
• Kervella, Frañsez (1947). Yezhadur bras ar brezhoneg. Brest: Al Liamm.
• McKenna, Malachy. A handbook of modern spoken Breton. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1988 (repr. 2015).
• Press, Ian (1986). A grammar of modern Breton. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (repr. 2011).
• Press, Ian & Hervé Le Bihan. Colloquial Breton: the complete course for beginners. London: Routledge, 2004 (repr. 2007, 2015).

External links

• Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg official website.
• France 3 breizh, the public Breton TV channel.
• Endangered, Breizh net: an essay about the situation of the Breton language.
• 100 Breton Internet-related words, Breizh, archived from the original on 12 December 2007, retrieved 15 October 2005
• Amsez Wask Breizh, Agence bretagne presse: news in Breton.
• "Blog Breizh", blog.breizh.bz, archived from the original (blog) on 12 June 2011, retrieved 7 July 2006: Brittany information, articles about Breton.
• Richard, Meredith, "Labara 6: a taste of Breton verse", Ogmios Project, Summerlands.
• Breton, Omniglot, archived from the original on 15 February 2008, retrieved 20 January 2008.

Dictionaries

• English online dictionary and grammar for Breton
• A multilingual dictionary containing many Breton words alongside those of other languages

Learning

• Breton site including online lessons
• Jouitteau, M. Grammaire du breton, (extensive Breton grammar in French, with glossed examples and typological comparisons), IKER, CNRS, 2009 > 2017].